Transcription
I'm going to teach you how to use four McKenzie communication frameworks so you can sound competent and composed in the workplace. This is a four-part series that I have stitched together to make it easy for you to find all of those frameworks in one place. So, let's do it.
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I'm going to show you how to communicate like a McKenzie consultant by showing you one of their well-known communication frameworks, their SCR framework. I had the pleasure of doing workshops for McKenzie at their regional headquarters and off-site retreats for many years and taught their relatively new hires how to communicate clearly and concisely so they could translate their amazing expertise in a way that was helpful for their clients. The SCR framework will help you sound more prepared, polished, and competent. The three talking points tell a tight, coherent story. If the information is tailored to your listeners like this, then your message will be more persuasive and have a logical force. And you can use the STR talking points to shape a message as brief as just three sentences. It's one sentence for each point. Or you could use it to shape an overall message of one to two minutes, like for a pitch. You could even use these three points as the introduction for a longer presentation that unpacks the message in more detail. And we'll talk more about that later in this four-part series. For this video, we'll keep it simple and stick to just one or two sentences for each point to teach you the key parts of the framework. It's up to you to adapt the STR framework to fit your message. So, imagine talking to an external client or somebody internal to your organization and you'd like to explain a situation to them and convince them to follow your recommended course of action. Here are the three points to use.
The first point is S. You explain the situation. You start by explaining the context and background information that the listener needs to understand the rest of the story you're about to tell. There's no news here, nothing surprising. This information is simply setting the stage and orients your listeners to the topic. In many cases, you'll mainly be reminding listeners of what they already know. Here are three quick examples.
Example one, working from home example. As you know, a few years ago, our company made a big move to encourage people to work from home. We initially thought we could strike the right balance.
Example two, which is a labor shortage. We're all familiar with the data that shows the education sector has had trouble hiring for years.
Example three is competition. It's common knowledge that dine-in restaurants like ours are struggling to make a profit because of increased competition. As you can see, this type of information will already be familiar to any of your listeners. You're just orienting them to the topic by giving them context.
Second point is C, the complication. Here you'll talk about a new or emerging issue that concerns you. This talking point is essentially about the problem. What's the complication you're talking about, the obstacle, the risk, or the issue that the team is currently facing? What is the new or pressing issue standing in the way of the team moving forward toward its goals? Let's continue with our examples.
Our most recent data shows that working from home is not as effective as we intended. We're losing most of our opportunities to collaborate organically and innovate like we used to. And that has always been part of our competitive edge.
For the past 2 years, we can confirm it's taking two to three times as long to hire for vacant positions because many college graduates are going into healthcare, marketing, and high-tech to earn more money instead of education.
Many customers are now using services like Uber Eats and Door Dash or are choosing to eat at fast casual dining restaurants instead of dining in. Each of those examples states what the key complication is or the problem.
Third, the R stands for resolution. This is where you offer your proposed plan or recommended solution to the complication you just mentioned. This is your action step. And that's why this SCR framework has a persuasive flow. It's built on the same problem solution structure that forms almost all persuasive messages. McKenzie uses the terms complication and resolution, but they're essentially talking about the problem and solution. The point is your listeners will be much more likely to accept your proposed solution after they've heard the problem or the complication. That's a very compelling way to structure a message as opposed to simply jumping to a solution without providing a motivating rationale first. Let's get back to the examples.
That's why I recommend we designate specific days of the week, Wednesdays and Thursdays, for all of our in-person collaborative meetings that are meant to launch or advance new projects.
We know we can't compete on salary, so my proposal is to focus on emphasizing better health benefits, vacation schedules, and retirement plan in our recruiting process. Additionally, I suggest we apply for an education grant to provide generous signing bonuses to new hires.
To turn the ship around, I propose we implement a three-part solution to one, enhance the dining experience, two, create a customer loyalty program, and three, hold more special events to attract new customers.
You'll notice when we put the STR message all together, this can be very brief. Each example here would only last about 30 seconds if you put it all together. It can even be as short as three total sentences if you really sharpen your wording. And I always recommend don't obsess about every single word. Don't try to make it perfect. Just write out some notes, some talking points, and then speak conversationally. For a written message, you could use these talking points to structure an important email or a longer written proposal. If you were doing a presentation, you could use the STR points to structure your introduction, and then each of your body points would dive deeper into the specific parts of your solution. I'll show you exactly how to do that later in this four-part series.
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I'm going to show you how to use McKenzie and company's pyramid principle to structure a message in a thorough and persuasive way. And as a bonus, near the end, I'm going to tell you about a related concept, McKenzie's MEI principle. That is how to make sure your talking points are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. Like all McKenzie frameworks, the pyramid principle is just as much of an analytical tool to clarify your thinking as it is a schema to structure a message. It's like the old expression goes, clear speaking shows clear thinking. Barbara Mento wrote a book based upon her experience at McKenzie called the pyramid principle. And there's a great article on the product mindset website that I'm drawing from as well. And I'll put links to the book and the article in the description below this video.
McKenzie's pyramid has three levels. The top level, second level, and the third level. Your top level message answers the question, what's your overall point. What's the main message you want your listeners to take away? What is it you want your message to accomplish? This is more than simply expressing a general idea. Your level one message should lean towards some action that you want to see happen. Some people call this your key takeaway, your bottom line, your headline, your argument, or in some cases, the point of view that you are advocating for. If you had to summarize your entire message down to one concise sentence that was memorable and actionable, what would you say?
Here are two top level examples for a presentation that you might give. We must update our logo and branding. We should increase our investments in reaching new customers. Notice that these are boiled down to one concise action-oriented sentence. You lead your message with your level one statement on the top of the pyramid. One of the reasons McKenzie promotes the pyramid approach is that some speakers and writers want to do the opposite. They want to tell the whole winding story and all the details and then finally land on the bottom line recommendation at the end of the message. If that's you, I recommend that you figure out what that key message is that you're tempted to put all the way at the end as your call to action and instead reword a little bit and give it as your top level message first to figure out what you really want to say here at level one. Ask yourself questions like this. If this is the only thing my listeners heard was this one sentence, my top level message, what would I say? What is the overall point I want to make? What's the big idea or action I want my listeners to get on board with?
The second level of the pyramid consists of your subpoints. These are the necessary supporting points to build out your overall level one argument. Many people call these subpoints your buckets. And as your subpoints spread out, this visually starts to look a little more like a pyramid. You might give your three arguments or your three reasons to support a direction you believe is the right one. It's possible that your level two subpoints outline a process you want your listeners to follow and you have your three-part plan that lays out your ideas in practice.
For example, my three reasons for wanting to update our logo and branding are number one, the current logo is too complex and it doesn't look good on printed materials. Number two, customers find the meaning of our current logo and branding ambiguous. And three, we're losing old customers without gaining new ones. In that example, I'll be giving three reasons or justifications to support my overall level one argument.
This time, let's say I wanted to focus on explaining a process that I'm recommending to reach new customers. I might say the three ways to invest in reaching new customers are through online ads, email outreach, and personalized follow-up. You'll notice in that example, the way I phrased my sub points was more concise than in the previous example. You always want to strive to be clear and concise in that level one message. And for your level two subpoints, using three points is also fairly traditional in writing and speaking. Readers can digest that. Listeners can digest that. But ultimately, the substance of your message will determine exactly how many main points you use. And if you've done this before, you'll know that trying to figure out what's in those buckets is no easy task. You have to ask yourself, what primary questions do my listeners need to be answered? What are the top reasons we should do this? What are the key parts of the plan? Who specifically should be involved in this project?
Now, on to level three. The third level is where you put all of the data that supports each of your subpoints. The supporting details will be completely unique in each of your messages. The idea is each one of your points should have support behind it, not just your opinion. You can't really just say, "You really need to do this." that's usually not going to cut it. To be truly thorough and persuasive, you need to provide a logic and rationale, hard data, case studies, illustrative examples, customer feedback, and other concrete support in each bucket. I'd like to use the metaphor of a courtroom. Level one would be your big overall argument, like my client is innocent. Level two of the pyramid is where you have the specific planks of your argument that you'll lay out in court. My client has an alibi, has no motive, and wasn't physically capable of the crime. For each of those three planks, of course, you would need evidence, official documents, surveillance video, witnesses. In other words, a lawyer in court has to support every aspect of the case. And just like in court, the supporting details are where you'll spend the overwhelming majority of your time when you're communicating. It doesn't take long to communicate your level one point and state your level two subpoints, but it takes time to spell out all the details in the supporting materials inside of those buckets.
As a bonus, now let's talk about how to make sure your sub points are what McKenzie calls me. That's me, which stands for mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. And it's a mouthful. Mutually exclusive simply means that each of your subpoints in your message and the data that supports each of those subpoints do not overlap. Each bucket is mutually exclusive. So for example, in my message about finding new customers, my sub points were that we should reach them through online ads, email outreach, and personalized follow-up. Let's say just for illustration purposes that one of my data points to support the use of more online advertisements was a story, a specific story about a customer who found our business through online ads. Once I sort that story into the online ad bucket, I should not recycle another part of that story or bring it back to support another point like the thing about email outreach as well. In the same way, don't cite the same statistic over and over again in each bucket. that'll start to sound redundant and create unwanted blurriness between your subpoints. Instead, strive to make your subpoint buckets and the evidence inside each bucket mutually exclusive. You want to use fresh, distinct data in each of your subpoints. You can make sure that your buckets are mutually exclusive by doing what we call a vertical logic check. Make sure that each of your data points supports the point right above it. and make sure that that subpoint supports your overall top level argument. If you find that some data, an example or illustration doesn't directly support the point above it, then that's probably a loose thread that doesn't belong on your outline. And when you're doing a vertical logic check, if you find a piece of data that pops up in more than one bucket in level two, then keep it with that subpoint it fits best and delete it from the other bucket. Now, are there exceptions to this rule of being mutually exclusive? of course, but strive as your default approach to make sure each subpoint and the data within them are distinct.
And the CE stands for collectively exhaustive. You would do what McKenzie calls a horizontal logic check to make sure that you have the right comprehensive spread of subpoints and that those subpoints flow in a natural logical order, first, second, third. In our example about creating a new logo and new branding, you have to make sure that the key questions that your listeners will be asking themselves are answered through your subpoints. Do your best to anticipate what your listeners want to know most. Now, I personally think the word quote exhaustive is a bit of an exaggeration. That sounds like a lot of pressure. That could give the wrong impression that you're supposed to tell your listeners everything that you know, which often times is the cause of being long-winded. Instead, just make sure you have the right spread of sub points and that there are no obvious questions or parts of the process that are left out. If you leave out something important, you should expect that your listeners are going to give you some push back on that missing piece. And by doing your vertical logic check and horizontal logic check, that'll make sure your sub points and the details within them are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
Let's do a quick summary. The pyramid principle consists of three levels and make sure that the information in your pyramid is mei by doing a vertical and horizontal logic check. As mentioned, this framework is just as much of a thinking and analytical tool as it is a speaking tool because it forces you to take a disciplined approach to your preparation and really clarifies your thinking in the process.
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I'm going to show you how to use McKenzie and company's presentation framework that combines their SCR framework with their pyramid principle framework. This is the way they do it and you can do it too so that your next presentation sounds clear, comprehensive, and concise. Let's quickly recap the two frameworks that we're going to put together.
The first is the SCR framework. That's usually for a brief message that has just three points. In point S, you explain the situation or the context of the background that your listeners need to understand. This is essentially what topic you're talking about. The C stands for complication. This is the problem that you are bringing to the conversation, the issue, the risk, the news that has come to the forefront that the group needs to tackle. And the R stands for resolution or the recommended course of action you want the team to follow. In the first video in this series about the SER framework, I said that you can use this for a short standalone message that could be as brief as just three sentences. But the STR framework also is almost the perfect basis for an introduction to an entire presentation with one small alteration. That is, you put a question right after the complication. The complication introduces some kind of problem and the question you ask right after it is a follow-up to that complication. And it'll always be a pretty simple question. Don't overthink it. Here are some samples. It'll usually be some version of, "So, what are we going to do about this?" Or, "How can we fix this problem?" "What's the best way to solve this issue?" There's nothing profound about this question. It's merely a way to engage your listeners and get them thinking, and to make your presentation introduction slightly more interactive. And ultimately you're going to answer that question yourself by giving them a summary statement about your resolution, your recommendation. That's the R point stands for resolution. It also does double duty as your level one message in the pyramid. So that means yes, there's a bit of overlap between the two frameworks because they're smooshed together to create a presentation framework. In school presentations, we call this our point your thesis statement. So we'll expand our basic SCR framework into a presentation introduction by adding the Q. So it becomes SCQR. The most concise version of this would be just four sentences.
After your introduction, we move to the body. And that's where the rest of the pyramid principle kicks in. If you watch the previous two videos, you probably already know exactly where I'm going with this. The subpoints in your pyramid become the subpoints of your presentation. Then at level three, you put all the data and your supporting materials into each of those appropriate buckets. And when we map it out, you can see this framework looks like a presentation already. Let's fill it in with some information to show you how this might look in your notes as you prepared a hypothetical presentation about using AI on your team. I'm not going to deliver this as if it's a speech. I'm just going to talk through it like I'm talking through the outline.
As everybody here already knows, many industries and most companies in our sector have been using AI in lots of different ways. The issue for our company is that we have been slower to adopt AI as a daily tool and the data from the past two quarters shows that it's starting to cost us our competitive edge. That raises the question, how are we going to get back on track and catch up? I'd like to recommend three ways we can use AI to streamline our process without sacrificing our innovative culture. First, we can start by adopting various existing AI tools that are already available for daily use. Second, I recommend we organize a small task force to develop specific AI tools we can use to speed up our unique workflow. And third, I'd like to hold an off-site retreat where we get hands-on and experiment with ways to use AI to augment our innovative culture rather than replacing people. After that road map of three points, we'd circle back and work our way through the details of each of those three buckets by giving rationale, examples, supporting data, and any other details that strengthen each of those subpoints. That's the way we'd use this template to map out the introduction and body points.
But what about the conclusion? Well, our conclusion would depend upon the type of presentation we're making. To my knowledge, McKenzie does not recommend one specific conclusion or one specific framework to draft a conclusion. But just to be thorough, at the most basic level, I recommend you say in conclusion or in closing to let listeners know you're about to finish. Next, you would reiterate that level one message. For a very short presentation, those two parts would be expressed as one sentence. and that could work as your entire conclusion. A third component that some speakers add is to recap their three main points. And there are certainly longer versions of conclusions, but those are the essential components you should have. And that is how you combine the STR framework with the pyramid principle structure to create an entire presentation. I would say no matter what message you want to communicate, using this approach to design and draft your message behind the scenes will automatically make you seem more prepared and competent than you would have been without it. And if it's good enough for some of the smartest people in industry, then it's good enough for you.
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I'm going to tell you about a big picture problem solving framework that McKenzie and company use as they work for their clients. You may never work for McKenzie or even external clients, but you can still learn from this framework for your own professional purposes. As a leader, you can recommend that your team use this problem-solving process to tackle whatever big issues you face. And if you're ever on a team that's working through a problem solving process or steps, this is a big picture framework that will help you understand how to participate effectively in each key part. And that way, I'm not going to give you all of Mckenzie's specific terminology. I'll explain it in a way that'll help you apply it to almost any professional setting. As part of my work as an outside consultant to McKenzie, I helped run practice problem solving sessions and watched many of their new consultants work through the first half of these steps in problem solving scenarios that we did live in the room. So, I'm going to emphasize the first half of the process where the group actually works together, but I'll share all the steps online. I've seen slightly different versions of this process. Sometimes with six steps, sometimes with seven. My video is not to be definitive and authoritative. I'm grounding what I say in a podcast on Mackenzie's website that was from 2019. That's the basis for selecting this version of the steps. And I'll put a link to that episode in the description below so you can listen for yourself.
The first step is defining the problem. Sometimes they call this problem definition. This is where the group asks questions like, "What is the actual problem we're trying to solve? What are the constraints? Is this a long-term problem or a short-term problem or both? Have we identified some root causes or we still talking about symptoms? I've seen a lot of groups in professional settings skip this key step. The trouble with skipping this step is that if you were to hypothetically ask each person in the room to write down what they believe the problem was at the beginning, it's very likely you would have completely different answers. But by the end of this conversation, using the power of the group, discussion, debate, analysis, give and take, the group should be able to agree on a basic definition of the problem and write out a concise statement of exactly what that problem is. For example, you might write out a problem like this. How can we improve the effectiveness of online learning? This is a completely hypothetical situation, just an illustration to walk you through McKenzie's problem solving process. Either way, their problem should be worded in a way that calls for solutions to that problem.
Step two is to dissect the problem into its component parts. Yes, we already identified and defined the essential problem, but now through group discussion and the use of diagrams and logic trees and other tools, we're going to identify the most significant aspects of the problem. Many problems have multiple causes or symptoms. Some issues have moving parts. McKenzie might start, in fact, by using the pyramid principle that we talked about in an earlier video in this series to diagram the component parts of that problem. McKenzie uses the pyramid principle all the time, every day for everything. Engineers and other professions might prefer to use a fishbone diagram. As an illustration of how this works, think about what your mechanic does when you bring your car in and tell them what is wrong with it. It's making a certain noise. It has a problem you can't quite identify. The mechanic asks you questions at first and then starts looking at the car himself to see if the problem might be, for example, mechanical, electrical, or a computer problem. If it's a mechanical problem, you break that down further. Is it part of the main engine, the transmission, the fuel system, etc. The mechanic is using a mental logic tree to simplify the problem solving process and figure out what part of the engine he should be looking more closely at. And we do the same thing when we're trying to improve, for example, the effectiveness of online learning. You might realize that one of the major problems with online learning is that the platform or the technology is nowhere near as interactive as in-person learning. Or you may decide from your analysis of the problem that teachers who were trained for the classroom may not necessarily have the skills to create a dynamic online class. So as we dissect the particular problem, we end up with two or three related problems that we need to solve. Dissecting the problem like this helps simplify the task.
Third is prioritization. This is where the group asks about how they can have the greatest impact on solving those problems. In the group problem solving sessions I observed at McKenzie, the consultants often ask, "What are our levers?" For example, if you're trying to improve the effectiveness of online learning, what are the levers you can pull or the variables that you can control? You might be able to influence how to hire better instructors. the learning management system you're using or training. Those might be good levers to prioritize, but you may realize there's not much you can do about other issues like budget or the short attention span of learners. This is a bit like seeing the issue through the paro principle, the 8020 mindset. What 20% should we focus on that will create 80% of the results we want? And by identifying and prioritizing your most influential levers, you can focus your attention on actions that will have the largest impact. You don't want to waste your time too much talking about variables that are out of your control, levers you cannot pull.
Fourth, develop a work plan to look for data and answers that will help the team create an informed response to the problem in those later steps. There's no one-size-fits-all to developing a work plan. The plan depends upon the first three steps. You might have a work plan where you have a few subgroups on the team and that each of those teams are working their part of the problem. In terms of making online learning more effective, you may want to create a work plan that involves three parts. The first is a subgroup that researches better interactive learning management systems. Another subgroup on the team would spend their time identifying some effective training that existing teachers can go through. And the third group might work with human resources to figure out better ways to hire teachers who specialize in online learning. The details of this plan don't need to be all spelled out in advance because it's quite likely that as everybody looks into their tasks a little further and starts collecting information, you're going to learn things along the way that'll change your focus and lead to new questions. The key to a good work plan is that it has an initial focus, a clarity, and provides an actionable starting place to get to work. Now, when it comes to actually working through this plan, it could take a day or two. It could take weeks or even longer. So, in the groups that I was working with and observing and coaching, this is typically where we'd stop our problem solving simulation. So, on a day-to-day basis, I never got to see them tracking down data. But in your professional roles over the years, I'm sure that you have had to go out, ask questions, look for answers, collect data, and so forth. So once you've done that, let's move on to the next step.
Step five in McKenzie's process is to do an analysis. This work happens behind the scenes. So it's typically not part of an ongoing group discussion. This is where each subgroup that's gone off to work their part of the plan takes that information they've gathered and analyzes it as best they can. You might have tons of quantitative data to comb through or you might just have a few pieces of qualitative data. Either way, you want to make sure your analysis provides a healthy, well-rounded picture of the problem and likely action steps that could solve that problem.
Step six is this extra step of synthesizing your analysis into clear, distilled, understandable recommendations. This usually involves a well-developed presentation for the group and the client if there's a client involved. You develop a detailed deck of slides that show all of the key findings. You might think the data speaks for itself, but it doesn't. It's up to you to provide your recommended solution that you believe that data supports. The strength of your recommendation should reflect the strength of your analysis. So yes, you want to have confidence in your recommendations. But if that's not what the data shows from your view, then giving recommendations with qualifications is completely appropriate. Maybe you're the decision maker. Maybe your supervisor will decide. Maybe it's the entire team. You want to help whoever is making the decision make a fair and fully informed choice. Don't overpromise or tell an unnecessarily one-sided story.
Here's a summary of the six steps McKenzie uses in their problem-solving process. Like I said, this is not a definitive list. It's one version that McKenzie has promoted through its public online podcast. It's a great starting place to understand how they approach these conversations and you can use it to lead your own teams or at minimum this will help you participate more effectively as a team member when your group is solving problems. And since this is the end, part four and this wraps up our series on these McKenzie frameworks, then I'd like to know if you made it to the end, let me know in the comment section, and I'll be sure to give you a heart and say congratulations for making it all the way. And feel free to check out my website. There is a 100% free course about the top five communication skills that all professionals should have in addition to other free resources. Until next time, thanks.