Summary: Brief

Review and Analysis of McCormack's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Publisher: Must Read Summaries
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9782511035726
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

The must-read summary of Joseph McCormack's book: `Brief: Make a Bigger Impact by Saying Less`.

This complete summary of the ideas from Joseph McCormack's book `Brief` teaches you how to get straight to the point by being concise, clear and brief. According to McCormack, being brief has become a crucial quality in society today. If being brief can and must be applied whenever possible, it is important to master the concept.

There are three main things to keep in mind to be systematically brief:
A - Awareness
D - Discipline
D - Decisiveness

Added-value of this summary:
• Save time
• Understand the importance of being brief as well as the key principles
• Increase your professional efficiency

To learn more, read `Brief` and learn how to say more by saying less!

Summary of Brief (Joseph McCormack)

AWARENESS Why now for brevity?

Today more than ever before, people are awash in a sea of information which comes at them every day. If you ramble and drone on, people will switch off and start doing something else, even while you're still talking. The imperative is to get your audience hooked before they get distracted. If you're disciplined enough and prepared enough to get to the point quickly and be done, your clients will thank you.

The real challenge in communicating today looks something like this:

150: The Elusive 600: 750

Most people tend to speak at about 150 words a minute. The human brain, however, generally has the capacity to consume around 750 words a minute. That creates what can be called “The Elusive 600” effect where the listener starts thinking about other things while they're listening to what you're saying. If you don't get to the point of what you're saying quickly, you will lose the listener even if they're standing right in front of you.

To offset The Elusive 600 effect, you've got to be clear, concise and compelling. In other words, you've got to be brief. Getting to the point quickly and leaving out the dross is actually hard work but unless you do it, people are going to drift off to other things. It's just the natural result of The Elusive 600.

The moment you say to someone “This will just take a minute to explain,” you'll see their stress levels reduce almost immediately. People today are under time pressure because of four forces which are present in almost every industry that exists:

1. People feel inundated – by a huge volume of emails, texts, magazines, blogs and television shows. It's almost like people are drowning in information.
2. Everyone is having trouble focusing and prioritizing – the sheer volume of stuff that's out there tires people mentally and drains energy.
3. Workers are getting interrupted more frequently – every 8 minutes according to one study. That's 50 to 60 interruptions in the typical 8-hour work day.
4. Everyone is getting impatient – people just automatically expect things to happen faster.

What all of this means is people lose patience quickly if you cannot get to the point of what you're trying to say quickly and concisely. If you try and provide too much detail, they will tune out. Ideas now have to be packaged tightly or listeners won't give you the time of day.

There are seven underlying reasons why brevity is difficult to master in practice:

1. Cowardice
2. Confidence
3. Callousness
4. Comfortable
5. Confusion
6. Complication
7. Carelessness

1. Cowardice – sometimes you're afraid to come right out and take a stand. You want to avoid being challenged to defend your stance.
2. Confidence – you might prefer to keep talking so you can display your superior knowledgeon the subject.
3. Callousness – you may be so self-centered you don't even respect your listener's time.
4. Comfortable – you might feel you can take up lots of time because you know the other party well. At times, familiarity really does breed contempt.
5. Confusion – you might be trying to think out loud so you keep chatting while you think.
6. Complication – you might firmly believe there's so much stuff they need to know that you cannot give a direct answer.
7. Carelessness – you might talk so much you end up going in circles and sending out mixed messages.

All of these cardinal sins make it difficult for you to be a lean communicator. The good thing about knowing about these sins is you can then identify what you need to work on to become a master of brevity.

“To be brief doesn't just mean being concise. Your responsibility is to balance how long it takes to convey a message well enough t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Book Presentation
• Summary
• About the Summary Publisher
• Copyright