by Cam Barber
Question 3: WHY would they think or do this?
Now provide supporting evidence for your claim. List the reasons WHY your audience will think or do what you suggest. In our example, you’re telling the board that ‘the project is behind but there are good reasons for this and we have them under control’…
“…Opportunities were identified to make the new products 50% more profitable, but taking advantage of these opportunities has slowed things down”.
This addresses a ‘good reason’.
“…To reduce risk, we have taken a little longer to finalise the financial structure of the project; we have that now and the project is looking more valuable than it did initially”.
This addresses both a ‘good reason’ and gives an example of ‘under control’. And below addresses ‘under control’ as well.
“…While there has been a development delay, we have been able to lock in a reliable timeline for production and are looking at a launch in October this year.”
You might have 2 WHY points, or you might find 10 WHY points. This 3rd question is a bit of a brainstorm of reasons to support the WHAT claim you made in question 2. Don’t use too many though. Prioritise and choose 2, 3 or 4 supporting points. You want a tight message statement. Now, let’s put it all together…
Finalising your Message Statement
Now you’ve answered the 3 questions - ‘WHO’, ‘WHAT’ and ‘WHY’. Your Message Statement will come together by combining the ‘WHAT’ and ‘WHY’ answers. The message should be written in the exact words that you will say to your audience. This might mean that the combination of the ‘WHAT’ and ‘WHY’ answers will need to be given a bit of polish. Let’s try this with our board of directors presentation example.
WHAT:
“The project is behind, but there are good reasons for this and we have them under control. For example…”
WHY:
“…Opportunities were found to make the new products 50% more profitable, but taking advantage of these opportunities has slowed things down”.
“…To reduce risk, we have taken a little longer to finalise the financial structure of the project; we have that now and the project is looking more valuable than it did initially”.
“…While there has been a development delay, we have been able to lock in a reliable timeline for production and are looking at a launch in October this year”.
Now, this Message Statement is acceptable. It covers the important points in less than 30 seconds. However, to make it more vivid - clear and memorable - we could tweak it and make it shorter. For example:
Message Statement:
“The project is behind because opportunities were found to make the new products 50% more profitable, and taking advantage of these opportunities caused a delay. However, the delays are under control: we have been able to lock in a reliable timeline for production and an October launch.”
This version of the Message Statement only takes 15 seconds to say. Why don’t you test it out loud yourself now. Imagine you’re wrapping up your presentation, so you might start with the words:
“So, just to wrap up… The project is behind because opportunities were found to make the new products 50% more profitable, and taking advantage of these opportunities caused a delay. However, the delays are under control - we’ve been able to lock in a reliable timeline for production and an October launch.”
Does it contain most of the crucial information? Yes. Does it feel like an appropriate end to a professional presentation? Yes. Is it short enough to be remembered, recalled and repeated by the listeners? Probably - depending on the real situation in this imaginary organisation with these imaginary board members.
Now, you are the speaker, so you will decide on the precise wording for yourself. This process focuses your thinking and gives you the flexibility to reword the Message Statement. For example, a rewording might be:
“This project will successfully provide the range of new products we need. It is behind schedule because we identified the chance to increase profitability by a further 50%, and decided to invest the time to pursue that opportunity. We are on track for a successful launch in October this year, in time for Christmas.”
4 Message Statement tips
1. Be specific.
The ‘so what?’ test is great to make sure your wording is clear and specific: Imagine a person in your audience stands up and shouts, “So what?” or “Who cares?” when they hear your message. This is an excellent way to attack your message to ensure it’s vivid. Stay away from vague terms and generic language if possible. If you can’t think of specifics, think harder.
2. State the obvious.
A lot of people worry about offending the audience by being too ‘basic’. In my experience, failing to state the basic facts is a bigger problem.
3. Don’t neglect the negatives.
Consider the negatives as well as the positives. It’s natural to focus solely on positives, but it’s a trap. Failing to address perceived flaws ignores areas where the audience is looking to be convinced. And, looking objectively at the negatives can help you anticipate crucial questions. By integrating the answers to potential negatives, you inspire more confidence in your ideas.
4. A Message Statement is not usually a question.
Don’t end with a question like: ‘How could you not agree?’ or ‘What more can I say!?’ or ‘Why would you waste this opportunity?’. Questions don’t close the loop on your idea - they open it. And may focus the audience’s mind on the reasons not to think or do what you suggest. Sure, there are exceptions. Branding messages like ‘Got milk?’ have worked well to get people thinking about drinking more milk (with a multi million dollar budget and repetition over decades), but a question implies the need for an answer. It’s open to interpretation, so if you don’t provide one the audience will. And it may not be the answer you want.
Recap of the Message Statement stage
Your Message Statement is drawn from the results of three questions:
1. WHO are you talking to?
2. WHAT do you want them to think or do?
3. WHY would they think or do this?
Combine the answers to questions 2 and 3 into a rough draft of your Message Statement. Then, polish. Out loud.
THE MAGIC OF CHUNKING
Structure underpins many great speeches. Remember Joe, the executive at Paramount Pictures in the example at the start of this book? The thing we haven’t talked about yet was the lynchpin to the success of his presentation: the ‘Chunk Structure’.
When we started working on his presentation he had a deck of 80 slides (and growing) and was overwhelmed with all the content. So, we set the slides aside and created a Message Statement to guide us (which was, in a nutshell, that his team had a solid plan to promote the new Tom Cruise movie). Then I hit Joe with an ultimatum: “Everything you want to talk about has to fit under 2, 3 or 4 headings. No more. Got it?”
“Mmm, ok then”, he said. Then I asked firmly,
“So, how many headings do you need, and what will they be called?”
It’s this simple question that drives the creation of a well-structured presentation. He chose 3 ‘headings’ that reflected the 3 main stages of the plan - a 3 chunk structure.
Each ‘chunk’ can be thought of as a mini-presentation (within the main presentation) with its own beginning and end. So, the essence of the chunk structure is this: Identify a small number of themes/categories/sections; each has a heading which helps you decide what information goes where. It’s a simple, reliable and fast way of sorting ideas and identifying takeaway points. Some of my clients call it the ‘Magic Structure’ because it helps pull all their ideas together so easily.
But first, let’s look at why the chunking principle is so powerful.
Chunking is all round us
The human mind craves structure. Ideas and information are more memorable and easier to absorb when they are arranged using patterns or structure
s. There are many ways we do this, however the simple concept of chunks and chunking is the most universal. Chunking is all around us. It’s one of the main ways we make sense of the world. Here are just a few examples: books have chapters, which are broken into paragraphs, which are broken into sentences. Imagine trying to read a book that was just one long paragraph.
Computers sort files and documents into folders (so do actual, physical filing cabinets). Science and biology would be impossible to teach without ‘scientific classification’. For example, biological classification groups all living things into a hierarchy that includes Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. Which is basically chunks and sub-chunks.
Every hierarchy is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) in which the items are represented as being ‘above’, ‘below’, or ‘at the same level as’ one another. The segmentation of information is found everywhere. It’s all chunks, man!
Smart marketers break product offerings into chunks in the form of options. ‘You have three choices: regular, large and extra-large’. We feel better about our decisions when we can focus on 2 or 3 options.
The mind loves chunks
The mind just loves chunks. They allow the mind to feel like it can manage the information, because it’s defined, not open-ended. And it gives us something to look forward to, for example, ‘What number are we up to in the countdown?!’ When I worked in radio, we discovered through research, that countdowns were a surefire way of keeping people listening:
• The ‘top 10 rock songs’
• The ‘top 20 guitar songs’
• The ‘top 15 love songs from the 80s’
• ‘Celebrity X’s top 5 songs’
• The ‘top 6 rock guitar love songs from 1992’, etc, etc.
In fact, we kept scouring the research to see when listeners would get sick of lists and countdowns - and they never did! This helped us to create number 1 radio stations across the country.
Books and articles that state the number of things they’ll cover in the title, make their information easier to digest. The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is quite a fat, detailed book, but its title and corresponding structure make it more digestible, memorable and repeatable.
Notice how tempting it is for you to read an article with the “Top 5 reasons why…”. Notice how many of those lists we see. The reason is simple – they are hard for the human mind to resist. Examples of chunking are everywhere, simply because the human mind becomes overwhelmed without them. We need chunks! You may not be aware of it, but we all use variations on the chunking principle to make sense of the world. Have you seen this kind of example…
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg.
The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to rscheearch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Such a cdonition is arppoipately cllaed Typoglycemia.
Amzanig huh? Yuo awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!
Notice the 3rd to last sentence, ‘…the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole’. The start and the end of a chunk, or anything, are the clearest ‘hooks’ in the mind. So, put the first letter and the last letter in the right place and the mind can make sense of gibberish. In the same way, getting the start and the end of your speech right will help your audience make sense of all the boring rubbish in the middle. Well, hopefully it’s not full of boring rubbish, but there is truth to the relative importance of the start and end of a speech. More tips on mastering the start and end of your speech later.
You can’t recall a phone number without chunks
Write down your phone number now. You can do it on the margin right here… Read it out loud. Go on, read it out loud for real, it will help me make a point that will make you a better communicator.
Did you pause at some point while you were speaking or did every number have the same timing and inflection? We all pause at some point to allow the separation of the sections. So, why does a phone number have spaces after 3 or 4 digits? Computers don’t need them. In fact, computers don’t like them - the spaces, dashes, dots and parenthesis used in phone numbers can confuse database software. It’s us humans who need to segment the numbers.
Now, read it out loud again, but change the place where you pause. In other words, change the chunking format. If your number is, say, 714-390-8302, read it out loud as 71-439-083-02.
How does it sound?! Has anyone ever said your phone number to you using a different chunking format? What happens to your brain when they do? It doesn’t work properly! Your brain won’t recognise it because it remembers the chunks, more than the individual digits. This is an important thing to understand. And a powerful tool to use when you communicate. When we don’t give the mind the structure it needs our brain becomes overwhelmed and skips a beat.
So, the answer to the title question above, ‘Can you recall your own phone number?’ is, ‘only if it’s chunked the way I like it!’ This gives you a hint at the leverage of chunking when you communicate. If you don’t structure your information well, there’s less chance your audience will recall it.
‘I chunk, therefore I can think’
Philosopher Rene Descartes distilled the essence of his philosophical enquiries into the statement,
‘I think, therefore I am’.
For practical purposes, he might have said,
‘I chunk, therefore I can think’.
My first exposure to chunking was in Tom Peters’ book In Search Of Excellence in the mid 1980s. I met him once and thanked him for the chunking idea that I ‘stole’ from him. He smiled and said, “You’re welcome, I stole it from someone else of course.”
I found that the study of the ‘chunking’ principle began with a research paper published by George A. Miller at Harvard University back in 1956. In his paper, The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information, Miller showed that the human mind needs to use ‘a process of organising or grouping the input into familiar units or chunks’.
He found the maximum number of things the human mind could remember or work with was between 5 and 9. However, to recall more than 5 things requires a structure or memory device of some kind.
There is more recent research that demonstrates that 5 things is the upper limit - but you don’t need the research to know it. Ask yourself: ‘How many things can I remember without writing them down or using a memory device?’ What’s your answer? For most people its 4 or 5.
Can you remember all the names of the 7 dwarfs? Most people can’t do this on the spot, because 7 things is too many things to recall without a structure. I’ve asked the 7-dwarf-question to thousands of people at seminars and conferences - and even those who confidently put up their hands, begin to stumble around 5 dwarf names. However, there is usually no problem remembering the names of the 3 stooges.
What’s the best design for a phone number?
Let’s go back to phone numbers. Interestingly, Miller’s research was used to design the current U.S. phone number. That’s right, in the 1960s a group of people sat around a table and *designed* the best format for a phone number, for the Bell Telephone Company.
The situation was this: there was a massive increase in the number of phones in use and a major upgrade of the telephone exchanges was taking place. There was a need for a format that would allow hundreds of millions of numbers, but still be easy to remember. Bell Telephone knew that if people couldn’t easily remember phone numbers, 2 things would happen: 1) they were likely to make fewer calls - resulting in less revenue and 2) there would be more wrong numbers and greater frustration.
The format they came up with has b
een a great success. 7 digits, broken into 2 chunks, e.g. 123 4567.
A total of 7, broken in to 2 chunks of less than 5.
And the fact that the first and second chunks are different - the first chunk has 3 numbers and the second chunk has 4 - also makes them easier to remember.
You might be thinking, ‘Hang on Cam, there are actually more than 7 digits in a phone number’. Yes, that’s true, e.g. (456) 123 4567. But can you also see that placing extra digits in (parentheses), signifies to the mind they are clearly a separate chunk, making the longer number easier to process, remember and recall.
It’s amazing how our ability to recall information is boosted when it is chunked. We can recall 10 or 15 numbers in a Chunk Structure - compared to 3 or 4 numbers without a Chunk Structure.
A 300% increase!
My brother lives in London so I need to dial 16 or 17 digits to call him (depending on which country I call from). However, I can remember all these digits because I know the chunking format:
• [3 digits to get out of the country]
• [2 digits to get into England]
• [4 digit area code]
• [7 digit number in 2 chunks] Easy!
Oh, it’s a different category? I’m happy to pay more!
Organisations chunk their products and services to have more options to raise prices. And we buy it! For example; 30 years ago there were 2 possible fees for a phone call. A fixed fee for the call and a fee per minute. Now we have the wonders of: connection fees, account-keeping fees, monthly line rental, fee-per-minute and flagfall (the person who thought of ‘flagfall’ should go down in history as a sage. This was the idea of a new fee for the receiver answering your call, while at the same time the fee-per-minute begins. Genius!).