Vincent Wu - Communicating with Executives Effectively - Summary 🔗

This is my summary of the video, mostly quoting the slides.

Goal 🔗

Effectively communicate with busy executives to successfully motivate action.

The busy executive’s thought process 🔗

At their level, almost everything is a trust and leadership problem. They either trust you to get it done or they change leadership. Doing it themselves is not an option.

• Is this important? Review now?
• Are the right people working on it?
• Do I agree with the next steps?

What executives listen for 🔗

Executives need to believe in both your vision and leadership ability to get it done. You cannot establish this belief without showing progress, details and data.

Motivate action? 🔗

• Situation
• Complication
• Question
• Answer
• Main Arguments

Three steps to structuring effective communication 🔗

1. Start with the answer first
2. Group and summarize your supporting arguments
3. Logically structure your writing

Step #1: Start with the answer first 🔗

What should we do? => “You should do X”

• Executives are busy and impatient
• Executives think in a top-down manner
• You are more persuasive when you are direct

Are you answering the right question? 🔗

• Know your audience
• Calibrate with their perspective
• Understand the context

People only engage when they are learning, laughing, or disagreeing.

Bad to good 🔗

Step #2: Group and summarize your supporting arguments 🔗

• Audience will group and summarize your arguments, with or without you
• Ideas should always form a pyramid under a single thought (i.e. your answer)
• Ideas at any level must always be summaries of the ideas grouped below them

Deductive 🔗

Because I’m a bird, I fly.

• Birds fly.
• I’m a bird.
• Therefore I can fly.

Inductive 🔗

Sumo wrestlers are strong.

• They train a lot.
• They eat a lot.
• They often compete.

Inductive is recommended 🔗

Given a choice, use induction rather than deduction to formulate the argument at the main level. Inductive reasoning is easier for the reader to absorb because it require less effort to comprehend. The tendency is to want to present your thinking in the order in which you developed it, which is generally a deductive process.

Well structured - Deductive 🔗

Buy the Pacific Avenue warehouse

• We use three criteria to judge whether to buy the warehouse
• This building meets those criteria
• Therefore, buy

Better structured - Inductive 🔗

Buy the Pacific Avenue warehouse because it meets our criteria

• It is on a corner
• It is larger than 5000 square feet
• It is under $10 a square foot

The Rule of 3 🔗

Always present 3 reasons.

Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive 🔗

Ideas in any grouping must be in logical order. Make sure they truly belong together and nothing has been left out.

Step #3: Logically structure your writing 🔗

• Every story ever told: Situation-Complication-Question-Answer
• Ideas in each group should actually belong together, be at the same level of importance, and follow some logical structure

Introductions should tell a story and lead to one question 🔗

1. Limit the introduction to what the reader will agree is true.
2. Anchors the reader in a specific time and place.
3. Always put historical chronology in the introduction.

Every (business) story ever told: Situation, Complication, Question, Answer 🔗