What are your first thoughts when you see an email that could fill an 8x11 page?  How closely do you read the content of the email?  How well do you retain the information when you are managing the 5 other communication channels at the same time (text, work voicemail, work phone calls, personal email, personal voicemail, Twitter, Facebook, etc)?

I don't know about you, but I cringe.  Think about it from the perspective of the senior executive who you are communicating with.  She or he is probably managing a minimum of 300 work emails a day.  How much time do you think this individual has to read your email really closely?  A few seconds at most.  If it is does immediately clear what the purpose of the message is, delete...next message.

Here is a three-step process for writing a concise message for senior audiences. 
<div><strong>1.  Define your purpose for communication.  </strong>The first thing to do in developing the purpose statement is to determine why you are writing.  An easy way to do this is to determine if you are informing or persuading.  Basically, the purpose of any message can be boiled down to are you trying to tell something or sell something.  So be sure you are clear about this.</div>
<div><strong>2.  Determine What’s In It For Me (WIIFM and aka the audience).  </strong>This step involves thinking about a number of things from the perspective of your audience.  Usually, in any message, there is going to be one primary person for the message, so some considerations to think about are:</div>
<ul>
	<li>How much time do they have?   So it is best to keep it short.</li>
	<li>What is their attention span? </li>
	<li>What is their level of expertise on the topic? </li>
	<li>How much can they influence the outcome?</li>
	<li>What is their current level of support?</li>
</ul>
Tip:  The more senior, the more you need to keep it concise, short, and sweet.
<div><strong>3.  Develop content.  </strong>Draft the content of the message with the most important information first. </div>
<ul>
	<li>
<div>Put the conclusion first.    </div></li>
	<li>
<div>Next, put the evidence and/or details that you outlined as the body.  Use bullets to differentiate one detail from another</div></li>
	<li>
<div>Thirdly, end with next steps.  What is the action you want your audience to take.  This should be explicit.</div></li>
	<li>
<div>Finally, simplify.  Use simple sentence structure.  Don’t put dependent clauses at the beginning of the sentence.  Eliminate unnecessary details. </div></li>
</ul>
Using these steps will enhance your communication skills and your overall performance.  You can even leverage these three steps for speaking because usually you are writing before speaking for a presentation.  

Keep me posted of your success.  I look forward to connecting with you.