when tension is high, get to the point
“Don’t waste my time…just get to the point!”
In our experience, messages are the most effective, memorable, and persuasive when they can be presented in a narrative format—one that leverages the familiar structures of storytelling that human beings have commonly used to communicate for thousands of years.
There are many different ways of describing these structures. We often use the “narrative arc,” which as a model is simple enough to be applied broadly, but sophisticated enough to be effective. It describes how tension rises and falls over the course of a story:
In a business setting, this means that we often start by establishing the context, stakes, and prior understanding of the situation; then, we heighten the tension by revealing the interesting things that our investigation uncovered; and finally, when the cognitive gap between what we thought we knew and what have learned is at its greatest, we offer recommendations and specific next steps to resolve this conflict.
Recently, however, a friend and colleague of mine pushed back on this approach.
“When we present to leadership,” she said, “they explicitly say that they don’t want information delivered that way. Usually, the only reason they’re in the meeting is to hear the results of a specific analysis, or study, and they say they don’t want to ‘waste time’ on the ramp up. You have to jump into the results and the recommendation right away.”
All of our communications should incorporate the needs and preferences of our audiences. In this case, the audience has said, in no uncertain terms, that they DO NOT want us to go through this whole narrative process. Does that mean the concept of building around the narrative arc is flawed?
Far from it.
The visual we use to describe the narrative arc structure depicts each section as roughly the same size, but in practice we can expand or contract each part as appropriate for our specific communication. If everyone in the room is new to the project, you may spend more time on the plot. If the resolution is “we need to have a discussion and come up with potential solutions,” that discussion may compose the bulk of the meeting, and so the ending will be comparatively larger.
Therefore, it’s critical to know before the meeting begins whether or not your audience is already on that narrative arc. When you walk into the room to present, anyone who isn’t brand new to the investigation already knows the plot and the rising action; they’re high up on that tension axis of our graph already, before you even say a word. In this situation, get to the new insights, the analytic results, and the recommendation as quickly as you can.
Here are some questions you can ask as you decide whether you need to start at the very beginning of your narrative, or can if you pick up from the middle of the story, where everybody left off.
Is your audience unfamiliar with the background material? Only the very beginning of the narrative arc is “plot”—context, background, level-setting, and so on. If a meeting is called expressly to discuss the results of a specific investigation or analysis, then the plot is already established. In that case you can limit the amount of time you spend on that part of the story.
You may still find value in including an abbreviated recap of the plot (like the “Previously on…” clip at the beginning of an episode of a serialized TV series) as a quick refresher, or in case a handful of attendees didn’t have the full context coming into the meeting.
Were there any prior analyses performed? Those would certainly be germane to the issue. For someone who was unfamiliar with the situation, the readout from those analyses would be part of the rising action—we’d establish the plot first, and then begin building tension using those first insights. Conversely, someone who’d been involved in the project from day one would already be aware of those interim analyses, and would already be feeling that tension.
Has someone else in the meeting already provided context? We might like to have full control over the agenda when we present, but we often don’t have the whole time to ourselves, and have to wait our turn until other people have delivered their briefings. If someone who presents before you talks about the context of the project, you’re probably better off not going over the same ground—even if it means leaving out part of your pre-planned narrative. Everyone appreciates it when you’re considerate of their time. Don’t rehash things that have already been discussed (regardless of how seamlessly your version would have flowed into the remainder of your planned remarks).
The goal of using the narrative arc is to spur engagement, attention, and long-term memory. If the guidance you receive from your audience is, “Don’t waste my time, skip to the results,” it likely means that they are already informed, engaged, and anxious.
In that situation, rather than discarding the use of a story structure entirely, simply accept that your audience has, in essence, already read the first few chapters on their own. Focus instead, as you deliver the outcome of the analysis and your recommendation, on using the latter stages of the narrative arc to lead them through the climactic reveal and the inspirational conclusion.