When I first started working at Tech Field Day, one of the things that I struggled with was writing. Sure, I’d been writing blog posts for almost three years at that point. But what I really had issues with was my communication style through email. Every message became a small blog post unto itself. I spent more time answering every possible question and providing way more information than was needed. Luckily, Stephen Foskett helped me figure out that concise communication was critical. That lesson has grown on me through the current day.

Working With a Watch

I want you to think back to an interaction that you’ve had recently where you were talking to someone. Maybe you were asking them a question or looking for them to provide an opinion about something. How much did they talk? Was it a short pointed answer? Or did it feel as if it was going on forever? It’s something I’ve noticed recently with people I talk to in real life. The discussions aren’t short and focused. Instead they carry a lot of extra information and exposition that makes things take far too long.

Yes, I know the irony of that statement for anyone that has ever met me and talked to me in person. I know for a fact I can go on and on about things. I have worked over the years to try and be better about keeping my answers and discussion precise and laser-focused. I think that society in general has different ideas now. It feels, to me, like the majority of society thinks a longer explanation is a better one. More words must mean more content, right?

The one thing that stands out to me to highlight this is when someone is asked to give a summary report of a working group breakout session. We’ve all done this. A group meets and discusses topics. Someone takes notes. Then when groups reassemble someone is asked to give a short summary of what was discussed in the group. The most restrictive summaries I’ve seen are about a minute long. Sixty seconds to summarize fifteen or twenty minutes worth of meeting discussion. How can you do that?

The goal of a short summary is to strip away everything that’s not essential. You get rid of three minutes of introductions. You condense five minutes of back-and-forth arguing on a topic. You skip past the pleasantries and filler words. You reduce the discussion to the essential points necessary to convey what was actually done. And then, you have to give that report. As much as it is important to summarize your discussion it’s also critical to keep your summary brief. Without notes or a good handle on what the key points should be your summary is likely going to be three times longer than your time limit.

I know this happens because I watched it happen. The person before me stood up and spent four minutes of a one-minute summary going on about things that were discussed without attempting to summarize it. The people in the room felt like it was dragging on. So I decided to turn the discussion around. I scribbled some quick notes. When it was my turn the moderator told me that I had one minute to summarize our working group. I told him to start a timer. He scoffed but I went ahead anyway. I didn’t speak any faster than normal. I just hit the high points, expressed the areas that needed group support, and thanked everyone for their time. I looked over at the moderator, who was still fumbling with his iPad and said I was done. Total time? About forty-five seconds. No more than necessary. The room was quite thankful.

Which Words Work?

You can’t be brief without having all the facts. You can’t be concise without understanding how to keep things short. You need to express as much as possible in the fewest words you can. That means understanding what the core message is and getting it out there as quickly as possible. I’ve started taking notes about things as people are talking so that I’m not surprised when someone calls on me. I use the notes to help focus my thinking around what is meant, not exactly what is being said.

One thing I like to do is to restate the discussion in my words with a shorter impact. If someone spends five minutes explaining an issue you can boil it down to a couple of sentences as a way to show that you’re understanding but also to help them see how to keep things concise. If you can’t convey the issue in two or three sentences you have a lot of information to deal with. You need to ask yourself if you need to explain it all or if you need to summarize the entire discussion at a higher level of encapsulation to move the conversation along. We do this all the time. If someone asks how your car is running do you detail the warning lights and possible causes and information you researched on the Internet? Or do you simply say that it has some issues that need to be worked on?

Note that this level of summarization is dependent on who you’re speaking with. If you’re talking to an executive, keep it brief and general. They need to know the minimum to make decisions, not solve the problems. If you’re speaking to an expert, focus on the direct issues and leave out the unnecessary color of the conversation. Act like you’re speaking to your doctor. This hurts, here’s how long it’s been hurting, and here’s what you’ve tried to fix it. They don’t need to know how it’s impacting your golf game or why it made you late to the grocery store. They just need to know what is wrong and how to fix it.

Tom’s Take

You don’t have to be overly terse in your conversations but I think you will find that you can use fewer words to get your point across. Summarization and focus on key areas sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Then why do meetings seem to take forever? I think you’ll find that once you start putting in an effort to be more concise others will follow your lead and do so as well. No long explanations for simple answers. No exposition where it’s unwarranted. Save the wordy answers for an LLM response. Keep it short and simple and people will thank you for being a valuable communicator.