The Lead:
You will achieve more success
if you clarify the main point
for all of your communications,
and make it the first thing you say.
(You can stop reading here.)
“Don’t bury the lead” is good age-old advice, but not just for journalists and marketers.
How often do you get an email where the request for you to do something is so obscured or so near the bottom that you never see it?
How often are you in a meeting or a conversation where the point is revealed long after you have lost interest?
It’s an easy trap to fall into:
We all like to share the context of whatever we are talking about so we can show how cleverly we got to that point.
Sometimes we just have interesting stuff that we want to use to “warm up” the audience with before we spring the main point on them. Or we think the main point will have more impact as a closing statement than an opening one.
Or sometimes we are just lazy and disorganized and don’t really know what our main point is in the first place.
It makes a real impact if you force yourself to clarify your one main point and say it up front.
It also saves time!
We waste a lot of time communicating things that just don’t matter.
So it’s also helpful to train the other people around you to do this too!
Some ideas to Lead with the Lead:
(So you’ll get more done, build credibility and save time.)
An email:
Subject: I need your decision on [this issue] by 3pm on Tuesday.
Body:
My recommendation is “NO”.
I’ve provided the information below.
A conversation:
Why I believe this matters to you is [this one main point].
A meeting:
My desired outcome for this meeting is [to communicate, solve, decide, request [something specific]].
An outcome:
The key outcome we achieved is X.
Would you like to hear anything else?
A negotiation:
I often use this approach when I am negotiating. The fishing and the dancing around really bore and irritate me, so I start with: This is exactly what I want or this is exactly what I can offer.
That then starts a long discussion where the other party is negotiating and I just keep repeating my main point. (By the way, this works almost all the time.)
A Yes or No question
YES.
…
or NO.
If you stay in the habit of burying the lead you will lose opportunities, sacrifice credibility, and burn time.
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