Transcription
Working at Google, I see endless emails every single day.
There are two buckets: one with very succinct, clear, impactful emails. You just know this person knows how to do their job well.
Then, there are other emails. While they have good ideas hidden in them, they’re long-winded. It’s hard to articulate what exactly is going on, and it takes so much effort that some people just skim and gloss over the details.
What I realized was that all of the very well-crafted emails and communications followed at least some, if not all, of these five communication frameworks from entrepreneurs and CEOs.
So, let’s go through these five cheat sheets in under five minutes.
First, let’s go over the components that you must include in a clear, concise communication with leaders. This one comes from Emmett Shear, the former CEO of Twitch.
Frame conversations with the leader in one of four ways:
First one is, “Here’s what I’m doing, FYI.” I’m just letting you know what is happening.
Number two is, “Here’s what I’m doing, I need your approval.” So, making it clear that there is an ask for them.
Number three is, “Here’s what I’m thinking, I need your input, I need your advice.” So, giving them different options to say, “Here’s what I’m thinking through, can you help me decide, give me some advice?”
And number four is, “Here’s what we previously agreed upon. This is what happened, this is what we’ve learned.” So, you’re keeping them in the loop, letting them know what has happened and what’s going to happen next.
When you communicate, always know what your purpose is and what you want from the other person.
Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, but how much detail should I go into for all of these?” You know, “Here’s what I’m doing.”
And Shear actually has the second framework, which is how you should be formatting what you’re saying. That’s the what, why, and so what.
The depth of your description should have enough so that they know what is going on and why those things are going on. Not just a giant description of all the details, but why those things are important.
Then, it leads to the so what, which is usually the ask. So, if I need your approval or I need you to think through this with me, give me some guidance as to which direction we’re going.
Or it’s, “Here’s what happened, this is why it happened.” So, these are the things that we learned, whether it went well or didn’t go well.
And so, next time when we follow on with this, what will happen next?
Of course, it’s not so easy to just simply articulate very succinctly the what, the why, and so on.
So here, Paul Graham recommends writing. For him, writing doesn’t just communicate ideas; they generate them.
So, writing is like thinking. I’ve talked about this in this video before. It’s so important to put ideas down on paper and then see them evolve.
This is why memo-first companies like Amazon, like Twitch, and many other companies force their employees to write before holding a meeting.
Just so the person who wants to share ideas actually knows what they’re thinking.
As Paul Graham says, expect 80% of your ideas to come after you start writing, and expect 50% of ideas to be wrong when you first start.
Clear thinkers, deep thinkers, write first to think before they speak.
This leads me to meetings, and Google has a great framework to think about how to hold productive meetings.
So, the fourth framework is making meetings up to par.
P.A.R.
P is purpose. Does this really need to be done in a meeting? What is the purpose? Sometimes there are just recurring meetings. You know, do we really need them?
Number two is A, agenda shared in advance. So people can prepare, people can know whether it’s relevant to them or not, and show up.
And R is result that you can achieve within whatever the 15, 30, or 45 minutes for the meeting. So that you can get some result out of the meeting.
To make sure that P.A.R. is followed, you have a sandwich method where you start with action items from the previous meeting.
Making that connection, making sure everyone is ready and prepared and accountable for whatever they committed to beforehand.
Then, you end with a summary of all the decisions made. Right? We had the results in the previous framework. Make sure that is summarized and go through action items for checking in the next meeting.
Of course, all this communication is just one side of the coin. The other side is listening, which lots of people are bad at.
But if you’re good at it, you really shine through.
So, we’ll cover that in this video here, and I’ll see you in the next one. Bye.