From: http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/

Question 1:

My boss says I need to “get to the bottom line” faster and clarify my message. What do you suggest?

As a leader, you must be skilled at conveying messages clearly, effectively and quickly. Your superiors gain confidence in you when you can demonstrate a command of both the details (the “how”) and bottom-line impact (the “what”) of the issue at hand.

The challenge is to provide your boss with information in the correct order: Tell the WHAT first; then, if needed or asked, explain HOW you got there.

A short story will illustrate my point: My dad, Dr. Charles DeMarco, once served as chief of medicine for a large multi-national company. He had an excellent reputation for ensuring the company’s safety, health and environmental issues were handled correctly and quickly. During a company-wide business review, he was supposed to give the CEO a three-hour update on a critical issue. Previous presentations had run long and the CEO was out of time, so he asked Dad, “Could you shorten up your presentation so we can wrap up the day?”

“Sure,” Dad replied. “Would you like the 30-second, 3-minute, or 30-minute version?”

Not surprisingly, the CEO asked for the 30-second version. With a grave look on his face, Dad said slowly, “Well, it will cost you $50 million dollars to fix, plus legal fees.”

The CEO paused, glanced at the other executives in the room, and said, “Okay folks, looks like we’d better listen to Charlie’s three-hour presentation.”

To “get to the bottom line,” remember this maxim: First tell the time, then build the clock.

You’re probably experiencing resistance from your boss because you provide too many details (“clock-building”) without getting to the point (“telling the time”).

The paradox is this: Your superior will give you more time when he trusts that you’re prepared to be brief. To get back on track, start communicating the WHATs — the essential or need-to-know items — first. Then, explain HOW you arrived at the WHAT only if further clarification can be achieved through the details.

Done correctly, this technique results in clear, concise messages that make it easy for listeners to focus, understand and engage with you.

Question 2:

I have been urging my boss to pursue several new market opportunities, but I’m facing resistance. He grumbles about regulations and risk, but I think he would rather just play it safe, stick to his budget, and get his bonus when all is said and done. It feels wrong and I don’t know what to do about it.

Answer:

Risk aversion, or the fear of failure, is an insidious disease to the health of a business.

Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final; failure is not fatal.”

In business, experiencing your first failure quickly is essential to cultivating ingenuity, learning and growth. The secret to experiencing failure is deciding when, where and how severely it occurs. The best teams fail early, fail small and fail often.

Why do you suppose this rather provocative statement is true? Good leaders provide drills and practice sessions for their teams when it’s safe to fail to prepare them for overcoming obstacles along the way to success when it’s time to perform:

• Failing early means you can correct it before others notice. Anearly failure means you won’t fail late, when others can see it and there is no time to recover.
• Failing small means the impact can be dealt with. This allows you to adjust before you fail big, when the failure generates significant harm.
• Failing often means making little, correctable failures that teach important lessons. As a result, you won’t fail once when it matters and costs the most.

Before judging your boss as too self-serving, seek to understand the rules and regulations that could be driving his risk aversion — regardless of his desire for a bonus. Today’s regulations are complex and exist for reasons beyond your control. Based on these outside factors, is your boss’s aversion to risk real or distorted? In other words, is it an over-reaction, or simply an excuse to wallow in the status quo while collecting a bonus?

If your boss habitually refuses to take action that could negatively impact his bonus in the short term, he is neglecting his obligations to employees, customers, owners and the community as a whole.

My advice is to start small. Take the initiative to improve one thing you know will translate directly to the bottom line, and without raising too many hackles. Lead a project to eliminate some wasteful activities. Or, identify a bureaucratic process that can be simplified. Exercise initiative. Your example will be noticed even by the risk averse cynics.

Good leadership at all levels takes effort, and a willingness to take reasonable risks and experience the right kind of failure…so long as it occurs early, often and small.