5 ms·
I wonder how much of this has to do with the medium of communication. People often have wonderful clarity when speaking but then muddle things up horribly when
by adriand 5y ago
I wonder how much of this has to do with the medium of communication. People often have wonderful clarity when speaking but then muddle things up horribly when they write/create decks/etc.
I previously worked with a very smart and capable woman who was in charge of a client-facing department at an agency I was part of. She would ask me to review a presentation she had put together (often sales-focused, but not always), and I'd go through and at the end I'd often find myself saying, "You know, I'm finding this is (muddled | too much information | unclear). What exactly are you trying to say?"
And then she'd give me a succinct, spoken paragraph that completely nailed it. And I would say, "Okay, write that down and present that!"
I thought about this a fair bit because it was such an effective approach. It bears noting that, AFAIK, different parts of the brain are used for written communication as opposed to spoken communication. For instance it is possible to acquire a brain injury that prevents speech but not writing or vice versa. So although I think part of this issue is psychological (people get less clear, e.g. unnecessarily formal or stilted, when writing), I think another part of it has to do with the way people think.
I think a good technique that helps with this is having someone verbally ask you pointed questions ("what does this do?", "why should I care?", "how is it different?") while being recorded, and then take your spoken answers and use those in your written materials.
- sokoloff 5y ago> People often have wonderful clarity when speaking but then muddle things up horribly when they write/create decks/etc. I find writing (narrative prose, not PowerPoint) a great way to force me to clarify my thinking.
- boringg 5y agoI feel while decks are terrible they force whoever said intelligent individual to sit down and try and package all their thoughts into a cohesive narrative. If they can't do that, then they have a seriously problem ahead of themselves getting capital and people to come work for them. Alternatively - if they can't do that as they are really good speakers, they need to find someone who can translate their in-cohesiveness into something digestible for other people. This skillset is very rare and I would argue is super important in the early days alongside building effective product/executing/product fit.
- jacobr1 5y agoI often find the confusions comes from not clearly understanding what is being communicated, and what you think the other side expects. The slide deck format, is often build from top-down hierarchy. Slides for areas A, B, C. When really you might have a narrative where you want to convey the material from C, with A & B as footnotes. Are you telling a story or writing the table of contents for textbook?
- boringg 5y agoAgree it isn't the be all end all - but it does force someone to think about the narrative and, to your point, who you are speaking to and what you think you need to communicate and also to try and figure out what the other side expects/knows (which is a tough thing to do).
- dr_dshiv 5y agoTotally. Speaking is so easy for me, writing is a bloody challenge. I think it has to do with interaction resonance with another person, too, not just the medium.
- jamiek88 5y agoOpposite for me. I often wish I could end verbal meetings and send a note instead.