#5 - Extract the Kernel to communicate better
Today we are featuring content about effective communication. Sticking to the main idea, corporate communication, good presentations and more.
🙏 Thanks to Sahil Bloom, Cory Sylvester, Tom Critchlow, Anthony Vicino and many others that made this possible.
Blogs / Articles
⚙️ Extract the kernel - Will Larson ( twitter.com/lethain ) talks about some of the communication challenges he found in execs and the rest of the team members.
Key takeaways - People focus on examples or get to answer the question in a literal way, before even thinking of the real core idea of the question.
Use cases
As an exec, know that this happens. Try to be more clear with your ideas.
As an employee who reports to someone else, extract the kernel of the idea and answer to the real important question.
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⚙️ Good Slides Reduce Complexity - Tom Critchlow shared very good insights on slides. Quick reminder: Conference presentations are different to corporate presentations.
Key takeaways
Conference presentations are meant to be informative and engaging. Corporate presentations are meant to present valuable information or ask for approval (by presenting data).
Every slide should say only one thing. And say it clearly.
The title is important as hell. Make it tell a story. A few examples
🟢 “Our Product Pages are 35% slower than “A competitor” and 50% than “B competitor”.
🔴 “Web Performance”
Use visuals to explain, not decorate
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⚙️ Content creators communicate. At Scale - Anthony Vicino did a great recap on some very important things he found about content creators.
If you know this, you’ll be able to communicate better to many others.
Key takeaways
Confidence, Not Ego - Listen a lot and communicate clearly. If you don’t know 100% about a topic, don’t try to teach.
A-Players Think Differently - They don't try to prove how much they know. Their goal is to extract as much knowledge from you as possible and they ask questions to better understand your position.
Iterations Matter More than Repetitions - It’s the becoming 1 percent better every day application.
The goal of communication is Influence and Connection.
Applied to corporate communication, key here is trying to communicate with clarity and always trying to modify and optimize every detail possible.
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Social
💻 The Feynman Technique and how to learn anything - Sahil Bloom helped us with a very popular technique in a clear way.
Key takeaways
Created by Richard Feynman (1918-1988) to avoid memorization process, it’s a four-step process.
Feynman observed that complexity and jargon are often used to mask a lack of deep understanding.
Be able to reduce jargon! Simplicity is key.
The complete Feynman technique
Choose a concept or topic - It needs to be something specific, not ‘maths’. Instead, equations.
Learn it for yourself - Gather information, look for the process and/or examples. Even teach it to someone else.
Return to the source material if you get stuck or if you are able to deepen your knowledge - If you are confident, keep pushing with that topic. Fill out gaps or try to deepen what you’ve learned. Practice it.
Simplify your explanations and create analogies - Truly understand the topic by simplifying things, creating analogies or changing the order. Try to create new examples with what you have.
Put it in practice. Now.
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💻 Communicate what you know and what you don’t - Cory Sylvester ( twitter.com/StorageDataDev ) brought us a clear idea.
Any thoughts here?
So that would be all for today. Thanks for reading. I’ll leave you with a quick NPS poll. Because what is not measured, cannot be improved.