Say that again?

Alternate title:  Decoding an encrypted message requires a key.   You have to be the key.

If you've ever had anyone recently say "Say that again?" or any equivalent phrase, this blog post is specifically for you.   Before I start talking more about risk analysis, I thought I better touch on a basic skill that many of us don't have or we aren't as good as we think.   Communication.

Let's face it, getting your point across to someone who doesn't understand your world can be tough.   Add to that the experience you lack about their world and it's a recipe for misunderstanding with a side of frustration.   Figuring out how to cut through the haze is a critical skill, particularly for the riskjuggler.   We've already covered the challenge we face simply getting the people on the bandwagon.   Add the confusing words we use to the mix and we have to learn this skill well or we're going to get stuck on a career plateau talking to ourselves.

To be honest, when I found myself on that plateau, I was fortunate enough to have a strong mentor who was patient and willing to help me find opportunities to communicate with wider and wider audiences.   You'll want to look for one of these as they are invaluable to your upward mobility.  He shared some valuable structural skills that have worked well for presenting to and convincing my peers and seniors.   Since I've heard these echoed somewhat in Robert Pozen's "Extreme Productivity", I'm going to share them with you to save you from some of the tougher lessons I've learned.

There are 3 key areas to cover in any presentation whether you're trying to just describe a situation or actually want a decision from the listener.

- Background - If the listener hasn't got any clue about your topic and intent from the first sentence, then they're going to be spending a lot of time cutting through their confusion.   If they're patient, they'll wait a bit and hope you get to the point.   If they aren't, they'll cut you off.
- Impact - "Why does it matter?"  This needs to be the focus of your second sentence.   You have to address this so the listener will even care about what you're seeing.   If you don't grab their interest, they're likely to multi-task and lose key bits of your message which will lead to repetition and frustration somewhere along the line.
- Needs - "What do you need from me?"  This has to be the third sentence.   Think of how busy you are.   How far into an email do you read before you decide to either file it in bin 13, set a reminder/flag or take immediate action?   Because they're so busy, most execs will only read down 2 or three lines.

Now let's apply this to presenting messages about risk.   This is getting pretty long already so I'll just hit the high points.   These should be addressed in the body of your message as you restate the 3 points above.

- Background
   - Context - Frame the issue for the listener, not for yourself.
- Affected assets - Show them the scope of the conversation.  Cover the most relevant assets, systems, people, customers, etc.from the listener's perspective.
- Most likely threats/causes - What is making this a problem for us?
   - Past impacts - Has this threat every successfully caused an impact to us?  To someone else?   Keep the message tight and don't exaggerate or guess.  And by all means, avoid FUD wherever possible.
- Future impacts
   - What do we know will happen IF the potential event becomes a reality?
   - What are the events that might happen and what are the probabilities of the most likely possibilities?
- Resource needs - This is the point where it's critical to claim your ignorance while still attempting to be accurate and precise.
   - What will it take to address the single event IF it happens?
   - What will it take to keep it from happening again?
- Decision - If you need a decision, keep it simple and give options.  FYI, this is particularly true with Compliance driven issues as many execs feel like the rules and regs take away their freedom of choice.  So make sure you are open to the compensating control discussions so you aren't seen as the stick in the mud when you propose your solution.

I hope you now see some methods to communicate more effectively and an example of doing so in order to persuade you to do some self-examination and monitoring of your future chatter.   It could mean life and death for your career so I hope you will consider my thoughts and even share other lessons you've learned here.   This is one of the most common failings in our technology focused career so we all could benefit from getting back every possible minute we might lose to misunderstandings and frustration.