How to communicate
In an LLM-infused world
Always lead with your conclusion first.
Next, follow with a strong intuitive case: Your audience might already agree with you in which case you’ve saved them a lot of context.
Then, present the facts, but do so in the following order:
Present the inputs to your research
Working at a startup that’s building and growing at an unfathomable pace, I’m personally experiencing tremendous context overwhelm on a daily basis. My unread slack messages has hit the pagination limit: it stops counting after 99+. Never have I appreciated a well formulated message or spared conversation more than I do now.
Present the observations/validation
The inputs and methodology are the first basis to agree on. In 1610, when Galileo discovered mountains on the moon, his fellow scientists disputed the accuracy of his telescope which rendered his observation moot in their eyes. If the audience is not sold on the research inputs, the remainder of the argument is irrelevant. If they agree with the inputs and approach, your research results hold weight and can be evaluated. Where I work, these results are seldom the deciding factor between agreement or disagreement. However, the observations are the most context-heavy and tempting pieces of information to share. Usually in a pile of LLM slop text or uncurated CSV. These get fed straight into another LLM and the game of token-printing telephone continues.
Finally, always leave an artifact. With today’s multimodal LLMs, the medium doesn’t matter all that much (text, voice recording, hand written notes—all suffice). An artifact provides a mildly costly backup to rederive the core insight or conclusion from. It can be refined (hopefully into a format that follows these guidelines)—a lost memory cannot.
Memory also works to clear this deep context as quickly as possible, while keeping onto the conclusions. Enough to free my brain for one more slack message to zoom by like an opposing car on a highway. Good communication minimizes the amount of context shared while achieving the goal of the communication. Unless your goal is to put your audience to sleep or make them want to pull their hair out.
Make no mistake, this is not an easy skill to learn or apply. Sometimes a message takes me far longer to compose, because I anticipate the skepticism that the conclusion may evoke. As in this article, it is at times apt to express the concept in layers of context. This form of communication is aimed at persuasion and airtight defensibility. It reduces the need for my audience to request more detail, wasting valuable back and forth cycles. Of course, there’s no perfect stopping point for providing context; a good target is to provide enough information to determine if a longer discussion is required. In some respects, this communication skill is the essence of corporate proficiency. Minimize shared context; maximize agreement.