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Agile Comms
Table of contents
What is Agile Comms?
Agile Comms is a card from the Team Tactics deck by Pip Decks.
People at work are, by default, busy. Carefully craft your message to respect their time and win their attention.
“Here’s the essential information you have to know. If you want more detail, you can find it at this location. Readers have a choice about if, and when, they bother to read the detail.”, Giles Turnbull
Try running Communication Matrix before to work out the essentials. Works well with Write In Plain English.
When to use Agile Comms
- Team members frequently miss important updates or details.
- Communication overload leading to decreased productivity.
- Difficulty in maintaining alignment during rapid growth or scaling.
- High levels of micromanagement due to lack of clear communication.
- Frequent misunderstandings or misinterpretations of tasks and goals.
How to use Agile Comms
Be considerate of people’s time by using these three layers of communication:
- The Lure: subject of an email, a tweet or a direct message.
- Context: body text of your email, a blog, a presentation.
- Detail: email attachment, link to another website.
- Craft The Lure. Why should people read your message? Like a good billboard advertisement, it makes people want to learn more. A good lure does not give away the full answer up front. Ask a provocative question that people simply must know the answer to!
- Distil the Context. Give the reader just enough information for them to know the basics. Like a good book summary or a trailer for a film.
- Finally, focus on the Detail, this will have the full context; every detail, every document, every date. Make it an optional part of the communication, not the main focus.
Tips:
- Collect things to show, not tell, take screenshots, photos, sketches and notes. Include them to create a visual story.
- Write your first draft quickly, it’ll reveal big issues to fix.
- Keep each update about one main point.
