We have all been in meetings or calls where a problem gets discussed endlessly, with most of the conversation being about ‘setting the context.’
How often have you found yourself drifting off mentally in the middle of a call, only to catch yourself and wonder, “When will he get to the point?”
This is low ROI communication.
How do you improve the ROI of your communication?
By inverting the sequence.
For instance, if you want to give a report about a problem, the solution you implemented and the results achieved, a low ROI communication will look like this:
- Describing the context of the problem – 20 min
- Describing the solution you implemented – 10 min
- Describing the results – 5 min
As far as your team and your boss is concerned, the meat of the problem is the results.
But in this case, you are not getting to it until half an hour into the conversation.
Low ROI.
Now, how do you turn this into a high ROI conversation?
By introducing the results first. This will hook your audience, who will then be interested to know more.
- Describing the results – 5 min
- Describing the solution you implemented – 10 min
- Describing the context of the problem – 20 min