Tag
Communication
7 posts.
Say It Back Before You Leave the Room
Structured Thinking · part 7
Notes preserve a conversation but never structure it. Compress a rambling brief into three named themes and say them out loud while it can still be corrected.
Precise Enough to Be Wrong
Structured Thinking · part 6
Precision is a resource, not a virtue. Decide how exact the answer needs to be before you start, or the deadline decides it for you at the worst moment.
Guess First, Then Try to Prove Yourself Wrong
Structured Thinking · part 5
Analysis with no hypothesis expands to fill the time and yields a folder, not an answer. Commit to a guess on day one, then spend the time killing it.
The Request Is Not the Problem
Structured Thinking · part 4
Most requests arrive as somebody's private guess at a solution. Reconstructing the real question behind one takes an hour, the cheapest hour in the project.
Nobody Knows Which Part of the Problem Is Theirs
Structured Thinking · part 3
Most people break a problem into the things they noticed. That is a list, and it tells you nothing about what to do first. Here is the one question that turns it into a tree.
Your Buckets Have a Hole In Them
Structured Thinking · part 2
Most problem breakdowns look organized and are secretly broken. MECE thinking is the two-part test that catches it: no overlap, no gaps.
The Answer Goes First
Structured Thinking · part 1
The Pyramid Principle says lead every email, deck, or update with the conclusion, then support it underneath. Here's why readers who scan need that order.