“Less is More” may sound like a 70’s advertisement for a Volkswagen Beetle, but it really is the key to success for communicators who are speaking to live audiences or the news media. By “less” I don’t mean shorter or being more concise. “Less” means fewer message points.
The rule of thumb I use is this: try to communicate three message points in a media interview; five message points if it is a speech or presentation. If you try to communicate more than this (unless you are in a classroom with highly motivated students) you will fail.
If you doubt this then take this test:
1 – Write down every message point you remember from any one person you saw on the evening news last night.
2 – Write down every message point you remember from the best speaker you’ve seen in the last month.
It’s not easy, is it?
Here’s where the system breaks down in real life: Executives are harried and they don’t want to take the time to scrutinize their 60 message points and put them in priority, so they just dump all 60 points. Or, executives are afraid of looking “dumb” or “unprepared” so they attempt to show everyone how smart they are by covering 60 points.
Here’s the problem: It’s easy to “cover” 60 points in 20-30 minutes, but it’s impossible to “communicate” 60 points in that amount of time.
One of the most time consuming things I do in every presenting course I conduct with clients is have them brainstorm on all of their message points and then narrow them down to either three or five final points. Occasionally, this can be done in 5 minutes. The average amount of time is one hour. For one particular disorganized politician, I once had to spend 5 hours getting him to narrow his messages down to three.
But this is a critically important step—no matter how long it takes, take as much time as you need. Because if you don’t narrow your message down to the most essential points, you will not be effective in communicating anything. You can have perfect diction, great hand motions, fantastic eye contact and all the rest, but if you try to cover 60, 30 or even 20 message points, you will fail if you haven’t put your messages in priority and then eliminated any that don’t make your top five or three.
I know it takes time to prioritize your points and eliminate all but the top handful, but if you don’t take the time to do it, your audience won’t take the time to remember anything you say.
