The nerve wracking thing about doing a post on communication is that there’s always room for improvement. I learned this the hard way my freshman year in Professor Rosen’s seminar. I learned it again my first year at McKinsey.

We communicate all the time, so we think that means we’re good at it. But without conscious effort, we simply repeat the same mistakes. The starting point is to recognise that we can always write better, speak better, listen better.

Here are some tips that have helped me so far.

1. Remember that the listener pays

If every speaker were to pay listeners for their time, communication would be perfect. The cost would force us to think before we improv our way through a meeting.

Speaking for 10 minutes in a 6 person meeting burns a man-hour. Imagine what you could get done with an uninterrupted hour. You could solve what the damn meeting is about.

Therefore, mentally note the cost of your comms. Target your content and audience properly. And don’t add colleagues “just in case”.

2. Pick the right medium

In an office, there are 3 ways to talk with someone:

1. Email
2. Chat (Slack, Whatsapp, etc)
3. Live (phone, video or in-person)

As you step up from 1 through 3, the cost to the listener goes up. But so does the speed and richness of the interaction.

Consequently, here is when to use each medium.

1. Email: response needed today with minimal back-and-forth
2. Chat: response needed this hour with moderate back-and-forth
3. Live: response needed now. Or it’s too complex for chat (lots of back-and-forth). Or relationship building is needed.

Pick the wrong medium and you get frustration. The most common mistake? A lot of meetings and chat should be emails.

3. Say it in fewer words

More specifically:

1. Say your point upfront
2. Draft emails – and then edit it down
3. Prep for meetings
4. Waffle sparingly

Explanation:

1. State your request/conclusion/question at/near the start. Make your preamble 5 seconds, not 5 minutes. Detail can come later
2. Emails are perfect for honing your skills in deciding relevancy and structuring information
3. Jot your points before the meeting. Otherwise you’ll talk rubbish while trying to conjure something insightful
4. Waffle is telling stories, jokes, etc. It can be great for bonding. But don’t overdo it

4. Signpost

Signposting is telling your audience about transitions. This is especially important in verbal comms. “There are 3 things I want to ask about: A, B and C” or “We’ve been talking about A. Now let me ask about B?”

In written comms, it’s easier. You have headers, bullet points and page breaks to help you.

5. Propose a strawman

When putting out a problem, don’t leave it open-ended. Propose something. e.g. “To acquire more customers, how about if we double our spend on ads?” instead of “What should we do to acquire more customers?”. The open-ended version of that meeting is easily twice as long.

Good communicator –> good decision-maker

Clear concise communication isn’t just a matter of style or convenience. It shows clear thinking. Deciding what and how to say something is complex. You have to prioritise, structure, decide relevancy, adapt to the medium and audience, etc.

You have to do something similar when making decisions. Therefore, as a rule of thumb, good communicators make good decision-makers.

But the paradox is that you never truly become good at it. Because as I learned back in Rosen’s seminar, the moment when you think you’re doing it well is when you need to be doing it better. There’s always room for improvement.

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GS Dun designs-and-builds technology to solve hard problems. The name is short for “get sh** done”, so while we can talk the talk, we prefer to keep our meetings short and just get on with it.