- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
Get heard by being clear and concise
The only way to survive in business today is to be a lean communicator. Busy executives expect you to respect and manage their time more effectively than ever. You need to do the groundwork to make your message tight and to the point. The average professional receives 304 emails per week and checks their smartphones 36 times an hour and 38 hours a week. This inattention has spread to every part of life. The average attention span has shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight in 2012.
So, throw them a lifeline and be brief.
Author Joe McCormack tackles the challenges of inattention, interruptions, and impatience that every professional faces. His proven B.R.I.E.F. approach, which stands for Background, Relevance, Information, Ending, and Follow up, helps simplify and clarify complex communication. BRIEF will help you summarize lengthy information, tell a short story, harness the power of infographics and videos, and turn monologue presentations into controlled conversations.
- Details the B.R.I.E.F. approach to distilling your message into a brief presentation
- Written by the founder and CEO of Sheffield Marketing Partners, which specializes in message and narrative development, who is also a recognized expert in Narrative Mapping, a technique that helps clients achieve a clearer and more concise message
Long story short: BRIEF will help you gain the muscle you need to eliminate wasteful words and stand out from the rest. Be better. Be brief.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Chapter 1
Why Brevity Is Vital
Get to the Point or Pay the Price
- General dismissal: A field-grade Army officer uses a series of PowerPoint slides to deliver a brief to his superiors on a recommended strategic course of action. He watches his presentation unravel as a high-ranking general obsessed with details spends the entire time feverishly highlighting every single typographical error on the handout. The officer lost his audience in the minutiae.
- A rising star stalls: A brilliant young woman who looks as if she is right out of Central Casting—bright, talented, and attractive—is widely recognized by senior leadership as the future go-to person. Her fatal flaw is well known, however: she cannot close big deals because she cannot shut up. Her motormouth bars her from any client-facing assignments.
- Done deal comes undone: After closing a $500,000 contract with a new client, a sales executive is shocked to discover that his overenthusiastic support person has followed up with the client and explained all the reasons why he thinks they've purchased way more technology than they need. The verbal misstep drops the deal by $200,000.
- 98-pager delivered: A vice president of communications who's frantically looking for a simple, one-page product summary for a big press release discovers that the best her organization can deliver is a mega PowerPoint file with nearly 100 slides. It chokes her e-mail inbox and kills the story.
- Hero's story overlooked: A police detective takes the initiative to recognize a fellow officer's generosity and impact with disabled athletes by pitching his feel-good story to a major magazine. A reporter speaks to the detective, who unfortunately cannot quickly sum up his pitch and rambles on. The reporter becomes too confused and doesn't run the story.
- Luncheon leaves a bad taste: Three hundred busy executives attend a fundraiser for a nonprofit organization during their busy workweek. The keynote speaker is slotted 20 minutes after the meal. He blows far beyond the allotted time, and after nearly an hour, the room is half empty and the feel-good charity loses its appeal.
Executive—Interrupted
Who's Responsible for Adapting When the Message Is Not Being Heard?
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Preface
- Part One: Awareness: Heightened Awareness in a World Begging for BRIEF
- Part Two: Discipline: How to Gain Discipline to Be Clear and Concise
- Part Three: Decisiveness: Gaining the Decisiveness to Know When and Where to Be Brief
- Part Four: Being BRIEF Summary and Action Plan
- Resources
- About the Author
- Index
- End User License Agreement