Joe Pantigoso is an alumnus and a lecturer in the M.S. in Strategic Communication program and Senior Director of Global Brand at SAP, a leading software company.
Have you ever gotten halfway through an e-mail at work and still not know what it’s about?
The following framework can help you avoid creating these kinds of ineffective communications. Not only will your reader get what you’re trying to communicate more quickly but you might get the response you're looking for faster- which is why you wrote the e-mail in the first place.
Step 1: Think Before You Ink
Start by identifying your objective. What do you want the audience to think, feel, and do? I know that sounds like Communications 101, but in my experience, business people often forget this step and just download everything in their head onto an e-mail without focusing on the outcome they want. This yields a walls of words and poor results.
Step 2: Elevate and Eliminate
Put the most important information first, followed by what's less important. Do this throughout your e-mail, putting the most important informations on top. Journalists have long used this “inverted pyramid” approach because the easiest thing for a reader to do is to stop reading.
Then eliminate the clutter. Two business school professors—brothers Dan Heath at Duke and Chip Heath at Stanford —say in their book "Made to Stick" that we need to become “masters of exclusion.” This is not easy. Knowing what to eliminate often requires judgment that only comes from experience and deep subject-matter understanding.
Step 3: Structure for Clarity
Finally, structure for clarity using visual tools like headers, white space, and bullet points. This help readers scan your information faster.
Think of this framework like a checklist:
1)Think before you ink: Is this e-mail going to get my reader to do what I want them to do?
2)Elevate and eliminate: Could the reader read the first sentence and know what it's about? Did I remove unnecessary info?
3)Structure for clarity: Did I make it easy for my audience to skim my content easily?
So before you hit that send button again, stop and use this communicating simply framework to help you get the results you want.