Definitely, Maybe Agile
Definitely, Maybe Agile
Ep. 127: Mastering Executive Communication
Need help communicating Agile and DevOps to Executives? This episode of Definitely Maybe Agile is for you! Peter Maddison and David Sharrock unpack the challenges of getting leadership on board with new ways of working. Learn best practices for clear, concise communication, tailoring your message to your company culture, and effectively socializing agile and DevOps initiatives.
This week's takeaways:
- Prepare like a pro and "socialize" your ideas beforehand.
- Keep it short, clear, and data-driven.
- Adapt your language to the audience.
Join the conversation and share your insights with us at feedback@definitelymaybeagile.com – your input could shape our next big topic. Tune in, and let's take this journey towards exceptional executive communication together.
Welcome to Definitely Maybe Agile, the podcast where Peter Maddison and David Sharrock discuss the complexities of adopting new ways of working at scale. Peter, great to see you again. Hello, dave, you see, you got there ahead of me this time and you see it. We've had a lot of feedback that I've always found so energetic at the start of these things.
Dave:I'm learning from you. I'm learning from you Right, bring the energy. I'm learning from you A topic for today. I think we were looking through some of the topics that we've covered, and I'm really actually very excited about this. This is something that we're bumping into quite a bit. Talking to executives communicating with us. Take a look, yes, isn't?
Peter:it fun. Yeah, it's one of the things I find interesting is, I mean, you can Google articles on this all over the place and yet people still seem to do a pretty poor job of it. Some very recent examples I have, which I'll be happy to share, where people have done some really, really bad jobs of preparing something that's going to the top of a fairly large company and then wondering why they got the response that they did.
Dave:Yeah, Well, I think you used a very I mean a really important word in that, which is preparing for this, and I think sometimes we get buried in our day-to-day work and a meeting comes up and we suddenly find ourselves under the spotlight, if you like, in front of an audience that maybe we should have prepared for. So perhaps the first thing is prepare be ready for it.
Peter:Yeah, as we were prepping for this, I wrote down and he says be careful here. Be dragon, you got to watch out for these things when you know you're going to be walking into a tough conversation and this doesn't just go for communicating to executives you know you're going to be walking into a tough conversation. Prepare for it, think about it.
Dave:Yeah, I thought of it, you know. Map some scenarios that you can imagine yourself walking through. Imagine what's going to happen when things go well. Imagine the questions that might come in. That will just feel like sticks in the spokes. That will just suddenly stop the communication and definitely think about what can happen if things aren't going well.
Peter:Yes, because one of the things that you'll learn is, of course, that somebody will want to be how should I put this? Play the smartass and then come up with something that you haven't thought of and totally derail your entire argument because you missed something out. So, the more prepared you can be, the better, I think.
Dave:when I think about this because I'm sort of in two minds about the idea of socializing content before you get that I think it's super important to share the deck, whatever material you might be using as a focus, ahead of time, not because there's an expectation that it will get read, but so that those who feel they need to can prepare if they need to. But I think the idea of socializing material beforehand is something I really struggle with a little bit because, on the one hand, I don't think you should have to socialize things. You shouldn't have to get buy-in and feedback before you go into a particular environment with a set of individuals there. However, I would say that whenever that hasn't happened, I wished it had.
Dave:And whenever it has happened. It was generally beneficial.
Peter:Yeah, I would agree. I've always found and seen that going and having especially at very high levels within organizations where people have got a lot of accountabilities and they've got a lot of things that they're overseeing spending the time to go and prep and meet with the people one-on-one who are going to be there, so that they've got a chance to really truly understand this can be beneficial Somewhat. I think, where you're sort of nudging out there a little, it comes down to organizational culture. Like if there's a culture where you are not allowed to turn up to a meeting unprepared and you must read whatever documentation is sent to you before the meeting, as in some organizations then you could just send them the deck, but in other organizations they need a little bit more hand-holding, I would say.
Dave:Oh, there are organizations where people do not ever want to be made to look bad because there's a word that's used incorrectly, right? You know, one recent conversation we had, we just used the wrong word to describe the name of some initiatives and that lost us 10 or 15 minutes in that discussion. Now we had socialized it with all of you know, direct reports, people involved, but one key individual expected to see a particular wording for an initiative, did not see that and that derailed the conversation. So that was nothing to do with politics or anything to do with that. It was familiarity with the subject material expecting to see one thing, seeing something different. So that sort of socialization is just a great way of just cleaning up and dotting the I's and crossing the T's on the material.
Peter:Yes, yeah, and it doesn't. I mean, depending on the length and the nature and the context of the meeting, it doesn't have to be overly onerous, but it can be quite valuable. And I mean there's. I mean to go along with that is ensuring that you've shared or set the agenda and that everybody is clear about what's going to happen and that's been well communicated ahead of time, because otherwise that can also derail things. I mean, at the end of the day, whether the agenda gets followed. If it's overly complex, it's another matter entirely. But having one and having shared it will also encourage people to pay attention and show up, which is a good thing.
Dave:And I think one of the other things that comes with that is being very simple and clear about what you are there to get. So whether it even makes it into the agenda, for example, we're here to make a decision on A or B, options A or option B of whatever initiative it might be, but, however you look at it, being very clear about what you're there effectively to ask for, so you're walking away with a decision, with funding, with support, whatever it is, rather than what often happens is you go through a conversation and then there's this pause and it's not clear what's going to happen, and then very often you lose all of that time while people talk about things which really aren't material to where you're trying to get to.
Peter:Yeah, and I think some of that comes to how you structure what it is that you're presenting, and I think this is something that I mean I've got some recent examples of how I was working with an organization where we were trying to help them with some of these executive presentation. When they first showed it to us, it was just a screenshot of spreadsheet and tiny little writing on a slide and it and it's like you can't be putting like I wouldn't put that in front of anybody level of that. It's like it's unreadable and nobody wants to go through that amount of detail. Like let's break it down into. Like what are the? What are the major activities, themes that need to occur? Like what are the major things, so that we don't have all that details.
Peter:And then, most importantly, next bit, like hey, here's, here's what's happening, because this was more of an update. But and then the next part of that needs to be what do you need from them? Like, yeah, it's like tell, tell me, like they really want to hear. Like tell me what you need for me. Like why are we? Why? Why are you here? Like what are you asking for?
Dave:Is it money? Well, and I just wanted to pull out one of the things you're talking about Excel and so on. And that brings us to numbers, right, One of the what my experience with a lot of executives is they are very, very numerate, if you're. So we can very quickly get through a lot of conversation by putting very clear numbers, quantitative assessments of where things are, so that we can cut to the chase and just go straight in. If they buy into whatever it is, a business case, some sort of current state of where things are they buy into, that we can move on relatively quickly. So giving the numbers rather than words that we're then going to talk to is a really rapid way of communicating. I mean, that's what is a lot of information in data.
Peter:Yes, yeah, and, and the more visual you can make it better. Yeah, I mean, this is your, your classic graph with the line going down on it or up, hopefully, and I'd actually talk.
Dave:I mean, this is a little bit around the comment or the story I was telling earlier on about getting the wording wrong, but the using the language. So I mean we're a great example is we spend a lot of time talking about agile, DevOps and so on.
Dave:Actually we don't spend a lot of time talking about agile and DevOps when we're working with a client probably won't hear those words at all because nowadays they're kind of implicit. They don't need to see them in a conversation. They're going to use their language around their initiatives, around their way of describing what agility looks like in their organizations. So getting that wording right just helps make people feel and that's that whole mirroring thing of when people feel that we understand them because we're reflecting back to them the language they are using.
Peter:Yeah, and people have a problem. They might say I have a problem with quality, or the last two releases failed and it costs us this amount of money. They're not going to say, well, I need to install agile here. Oh, they might, but it's not really the language. It's not what they mean either. It's not that they want to install agile, they want to solve the pain point. That's underlying that, and the closer you can get to that, the better you can help.
Dave:Yeah, for sure. I think another one to look for is the feedback. So what I've sometimes seen is I think there's two things. One is when comments and feedback and questions comes in, what can sometimes happen as we try and defend what's on the slide or we get caught in an adversarial conversation when we could take an option and not a different view, which is effectively just say that's great feedback, thank you very much. We'll come back another time. So take it as feedback rather than immediately feeling we have to defend, prove them wrong, which is never a good move necessarily. I mean there's a whole bunch of things, but when you're getting feedback is avoiding that feeling you have to immediately respond to it, then and then.
Peter:Yes, yeah, they're like giving people time to absorb, calm down. It's like, because some people can't be challenged poorly and suck, that there is now obviously done with them as much a plon as you possibly can manage right.
Dave:Well, and I was going to say it's not. Some people take feedback poorly. We all do. We all get pushed into our fight or flight if somebody challenges us some way, and so we want to recognize that and not necessarily keep pushing that particular button, but find some way of taking that as feedback and building on it so we can come back later on and get to the point. I think this also touches on things like details. Right, you need the details at your fingertips so you can drill down as necessary. You don't need them, and maybe in appendix it's not always right then and there, but you need to have them at your fingertips. But you also don't have to show them to try and prove something is wrong. That's something that we can kind of put to one side, yeah they're there if you're asked for them.
Peter:It's good to have them and just in case, and to the other point there, keeping the first part short and sweet, right. That's the so like. Your presentation should be ideally no more than three to four slides at most, and that's including the title page. That's usually my guidance. Everything else goes into the appendix. Obviously there is depends on what you're presenting and what your intent is of what you're doing, but typically you want to keep it as short as you possibly can and remove a lot of the fluff and focus on like here's the information I need to communicate. Here is what I need from you.
Dave:Yeah, and I think I'm just thinking about a recent presentation that we made and walking into that particular conversation there was, we felt we'd understood, we had an ally on the other side of the table in terms of the messaging that we were going through.
Dave:And it was really interesting because and we did have an ally there were definitely, you know, we talked it through with them, we knew what was going on. They were very happy with what we were going through. But what was really interesting is, every time we kind of looked at the ally, thinking they'll be smiling or they'll be like open posture or whatever it is, none of that was happening and there was a real danger if we kept looking for that, we were going to get this like off the tracks of the communication. So one of the key things that, especially at high stakes presentations, is the body language that you're reading, that you're seeing, that, the kind of feedback cues that we are used to getting, that, say, you know, when we speak at conferences, right, you're used to getting certain sort of cues as to, okay, they're understanding where we're going, and so on.
Dave:You mean the audience laughs at your jokes, but vaguely, I would hope they're. At least they get off their phones, maybe, but what's interesting in the sort of high stakes presentations is those things are often actually missing or misleading.
Peter:Yeah, no they. Then because people play their cards close to their chest or they they're worried about the political capital they might have to spend if they speak up, or they're uncertain about something, and it speaks a lot to the culture of the organization that they feel uncomfortable being able to speak up.
Dave:Yeah, yeah, I mean so what happened in the particular case I was thinking of was none of that, but it was. They wanted to see the feedback from everyone else, unimpacted, unaffected by how they felt about it. Yeah, so I mean, it would be nice to know that ahead of time, but even so, I mean that's not. You know, that's one of the things that I think I definitely learned. There have been certain situations where I've you know, we've gone through that conversation. You get to the end you think, wow, that was a really tough. You know, no feedback, the questions were curtailed and at the end of it, all of a sudden somebody's going. That was just fantastic, exactly what we needed, brilliant, loved it.
Peter:Where do I?
Dave:sign. Yeah, yeah, so so I think it's. It's one of the more difficult environments to try and get you know, be able to read the room and get the feedback.
Peter:Yeah indeed, so how should we?
Dave:sum all this up. I mean concisely with numbers.
Peter:Exactly Over one. So in a simple ask for our audience there, you go.
Dave:You know I'm thinking over. I was almost going to say, yeah, we should pause it there. That was pretty much the summary, I think, if I think, of like two or three things that really struck home in our conversation. One of them is I'm socializing ahead of time and the conversation, the preparation, plus socializing ahead of time. I think that that rarely does you harm.
Peter:Yeah, and walking in prepared comes across much, much better as well. So it's like, well, I can see you put all this stuff together. It's all the wrong stuff, but at least you put something together.
Dave:I think a second piece of it is sort of it's almost like summarized under being respectful of people's time, right, so very short, concise, use data and numbers to be able to get your point across more quickly, or visuals, and also being very clear about what the ask is, so that we know when we've got there and we can say, actually we don't need any more of your time. Thank you, that was what we needed, we can move on. I think is really valued by the people in the room. They appreciate that, rather than something where they're trying to a soup that they're trying to pull out what the value is or what the decision is.
Peter:Yeah, I think the other one and you were touching on there with the socialization is remembering to use their language. It's the like picking up on how they talk. I like the way you put that together around making sure that the words that you're using are the words that is how they would describe things. So that's that understanding of the common language in the organization. I think that's it for today and if you would like to reach out, you can subscribe and you can find us feedback@ definitelymaybeagile. com and love to hear from you. So until next time, until next time, bye. You've been listening to Definitely, Maybe Agile podcast, where your hosts, Peter Maddison and David Sharrock, focus on the art and science of digital agile and DevOps at scale.
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