“Give me three slides.”
“Give me bullet points.”
“Tell me again, what was the message you wanted me to give? Let’s have a meeting to discuss that. Please send your takeaway.”
“It’s essential to communicate your idea in the purest form. So simple people can get it.”
“You make things too complicated. Break it down for the audience. Then break it up for accessibility. Give it to me in PowerPoint, but keep it to 3 slides.”
“I got the message. Now I need the detail. Not too much. But enough. So let’s have an online meeting to discuss the slides. Keep it to 15 minutes. That will give us enough time for Q&A, which should take 15 minutes. Total of 30 minutes. Ok?”
“The topic is cybersecurity. That’s complicated. Boil it down for everyone. Try this: “It’s a culture, not tools.”
“No one will read anything that does not fit on a phone screen.”
“The staff is too busy with other details to absorb your details. Give only high-level content and let them ask for more if they need it.”
With quotes like these, it’s little wonder that people find themselves struggling in the information age. This trend is leading us to the theory of secondary orality. With no content to guide them, oral culture becomes the new normal. Virtual meetings and digital workspaces are for productivity. Yet, it has become an excuse to reduce information for saving time. No one reads the agenda, so what’s the point of a meeting? To learn something and comment on the spot or demonstrate brilliant insight?
While I have never been a good writer, I am an excellent presenter. Providing information before a meeting has always served me well and highlights who reads the material. It also shows who is dependent on secondary orality. It is here most will have stopped reading this article and won’t research secondary orality. Which brings us back to bullet points.
- Research secondary orality
- Review how much reading you do on a daily basis
- Create a PowerPoint on why “short and sweet” is creating a post-literate culture
