Bottom line: In business writing and communication, less is more. Start with your conclusion first, and only provide extra context as needed, for more efficiency and clarity in your writing.
Designers have to juggle a lot of work with a lot of stakeholders.
Concise and to-the-point communication can be the difference between the success or failure of these efforts, and a big efficiency boon.
This isn't a default skillset for many designers though.
There are several existing precedents in other fields that can help bridge the gap.
These precedents came to similar conclusions: focus on summing up your conclusion first.
Only after the conclusion should we elaborate on additional points.
This approach has a lot in common with an existing design pattern: progressive disclosure.
Lessons learned
Story-time! I used to have a boss named Steve (Hi Steve! Look at me now!). Steve was the CEO of the company and this was the very first design job in which I reported to a CEO. I used to have 1:1s in Steve’s office and he used to ask me questions about how design was doing at the company. I used to tell him everything. I was very transparent. I pride myself on being earnest and frank. But ‘everything’ might have been all too much.
I often would get to the end (of my surely relevant but verbose monologue) and sum up the key points I intended to make. My conclusion was quite clear, concise and informative. And then Steve would ask some version of why I didn't just start there. He only wanted my conclusion. That’s it. And he wanted the option to dig into the details, if he needed. Why? He was busy; and he trusted me. He didn't need everything. Steve only needed the key details.
I like storytelling. And I thought I was a pretty good storyteller. Maybe I am. But business communication is a different kind of story than I was used to. My drawn out narrative arcs would often dilute my point in a business environment. That was a lesson that I would struggle with (I still do sometimes) but have continued to work on at every job since. It has been one of the most valuable growth exercises of my career. It may help you too.
Existing precedents
Steve’s request for me to share my conclusion first was not as novel of a concept as it felt to me at the time. There are several longstanding frameworks I have learned which aim to do just that. And they have a lot in common.
BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front
Kabir Sehgal once wrote for the Harvard Business Review: “In the military, a poorly formatted email may be the difference between mission accomplished and mission failure.” Clear communication is a strategic advantage in a military context. From this he describes how he learned, while on active duty, how to structure emails more effectively. One of the approaches to doing so was know as 'BLUF,' or putting the 'Bottom Line Up Front.'
BLUF is what it sounds like: putting your conclusion up front (remember Steve?), followed by your background and context. A fictional example in a Design context might look like this if you were promoting a designer on your team:
Bottom Line: We are promoting Jessica to our head of Consumer Design, effective immediately.
Background:
Jessica joined us 2 years ago as a Checkout Design Manager.
She has grown at a rapid pace since then, increasing her scope to supporting our Checkout, Discovery and Risk teams for the last 6 months.
Through this, she has built a strong track record of successful design initiatives, helping increase our CR by 1.9mm and increasing initiations a whopping 112%.
While she has already been stepping into this function organically, we are excited to formalize it and look forward to her continued impact on our team.
If you have any questions about this change or are interested in more context, I will make myself available on request.
BLUF is not unique to the military though. It has appeared in remarkably similar forms in several other settings.
Minto Pyramid
Another example of the BLUF approach is the Minto Pyramid. The Minto Pyramid says to state your conclusion first. Then follow it up with key arguments, or any additional information. Sound familiar?
I first discovered this on the 'thinking tools and frameworks' website untools (side note: if you don’t know untools it is awesome and you probably should!). Following the paper trail, it seems that the idea comes from The Pyramid Principle developed at McKinsey by Barbara Minto. It was used to help consultants structure their thinking and make their client communications more effective. Presumably it has since been transported to businesses all over the world through their consultant's work.
Inverted Pyramid
But wait, there’s more! In journalism a similar idea developed around the ‘inverted pyramid.’ According to the Nielsen Norman group:
“In journalism, the inverted pyramid refers to a story structure where the most important information (or what might even be considered the conclusion) is presented first. The who, what, when, where and why appear at the start of a story, followed by supporting details and background information.”
Well, that sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it? Ironically, in this version, the pyramid metaphor is inverted despite having much the same message.
A unique angle that the UX research and consulting firm brings to the subject is how this type of communication may be perfectly suited for the web. Why? Well, “users don’t read carefully online…[they] scroll, but only when they think that the content they want or need will appear on that page.”
While an interesting modern take, we could go further back in time and closer to the origins of the concept. Here, according to Purdue University: “The inverted pyramid structure is the product of an old media technology—the telegraph. When news outlets would telegraph information over the wires, it made sense to use the inverted pyramid because the most vital information in the story was transmitted first. In the event of a lost connection, whoever received the story could still print the essential facts.”
Progressive disclosure
This walk through history had me thinking. All this stuff about showing the essential information first, and revealing further details later, isn't that different than a pattern we already adopted in design: progressive disclosure.
As the Nielsen Norman Group describes the concept: “Initially, show users only a few of the most important options...Disclose these secondary features only if a user asks for them, meaning that most users can proceed with their tasks without worrying about this added complexity.”
Said another way, you show the most important options and then progressively disclose more information, only if needed. Otherwise, the user doesn't need to concern themselves with the extra mental overhead. An example of this might be an overflow menu or a 'see more' link with collapsable content. In writing, starting with a conclusion and only revealing key points later is a way of using progressive disclosure.
Bottom line
In an attempt to follow my own advice, I already stated my bottom line at the start of this article:
In business writing and communication, less is more. Start with your conclusion first, and only provide extra context as needed, for more efficiency and clarity in your writing.
People are busy. We get a myriad of Slack messages and emails throughout our workday. Most of us, especially our senior leaders, don’t have time to read every message in full detail. Often they are better off getting the tl;dr (too long didn’t read), a variation on the subject I see every day. So, if you got to the end of this, I’m proud of you. But, if not, hopefully you still got the point. And that is the point.
Keep it clear ya’ll!