Most communication fails because it answers a question no one is asking. Reading the room comes before writing the line.
Communication is a social act before it is a technical one. The instinct in most organisations is to start with the message — what we want to say, what we need to land, what the deck demands.
The cultural, political, behavioural and commercial conditions around a message are not the backdrop. They are the message.
“If you cannot describe the room, you cannot speak to it.”
We start every engagement by mapping the room. Who is in it. What they are tired of hearing. What they are quietly waiting for.
