James Lukaszewski — (Crisis Management Guru)
Author, Why Should the Boss Listen to You? The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor

This talk is about how communicators or IROs can get a seat at the mythic “table”. Essentially, how can you become a trusted advisor to the senior exec?

Well, getting the boss to listen to you apparently starts with getting into the mindset of leaders. What’s wrong with your own (communicator’s) mindset? Well, communicators think that saving the world (or whatever the problem is) as a “communications problem” with a communications solution. Leaders see communications as a small part of a solution, not THE solution.

As a matter of fact, leaders don’t want you to provide the solution, that’s their job. They are the ones who will synthesize strategy, who synthesize solutions. Consequently, you need to provide them options, from which THEY will choose a solution.

To understand them, then, pay attention to what leaders read and think about. Good places to start: Harvard Business Review, or books about leadership and strategy such as “From the Gut” by Jack Welch, Good to Great, John Cotter’s books, etc.

James suggests, if you want to be a trusted adviser:

1) Provide advice on the spot, bosses work in real time (like outside advisors). They don’t want you to get back to them with an idea tomorrow.

2) Bosses also like to hear from multiple voices. A communicators reaction to this might be: “why does he talk to me, and then talk to 19 other people? What am I, chopped liver?” Bosses like to take advantage of all the expertise at their disposal. James observes leaders rely on other experts in the company 75% of the time, the rest they “make up as they go along”.

3) Your job is to help them with “what to do next”.
Communicators think they provide “solutions”. Your boss wants ingredients to choose from, to craft their own solutions. So, “what is the next incremental step we can take” is the main thing to think about. It’s their bus, you don’t get to drive it.

4) Tell them things they don’t already know. The higher up the manager, the less they suffer fools. The higher up they go, the better communicators they think they are. (This is why they’re deaf when you talk). So talk about other things than just communication issues. Ask yourself: “Is what I’m about to say important?”

Many communicators suffer from the “face time delusion” — we measure our success by the time we spend in the proximity of the boss. The real question is: am I ready to provide something that matters to the boss?

5) Are you a person of tomorrow, or a person of yesterday?
Strategy is about what you’re going to do tomorrow and beyond. Do you (communicators) study the great strategies or strategists? You should. Many are military-related.

Managers job: to accomplish the business objectives. Leaders job: to decide where the company is going next. Can’t have a strategy without a destination. (“If you don’t have a destination any map will do”).

James’ definition of “Strategy”:
“Strategy is mental energy, that is verbally injected into a company to move the company forward”.

Greatest energy is on display when folks are talking about what is going to happen. James emphasizes verbal energy, such as is contained in “The Pitch”. He points out that the pitch is how we make things happen. It’s not done on paper — it’s done verbally with verbal skills. It’s how things get done.

Write to Time
If you only rely on written things, better get your verbal skills better! We speak at 150 words a minute. Write to time. This will lead to more concise documents. From this we derive the 3-minute drill, or 6 Step Process, for giving advice.

So here’s the 6 Step Process.
This is the template you should follow when dealing with an issue or opportunity with your boss.

1) Explanation — 60 words discussing Why this is on the agenda, what it’s about. Introduce what you’re going to talk about, if necessary, also introduce yourself.

2) Analysis – 60 words on what’s the urgency, problem, or threat.

3) Goal step – 60 words on describing the end point. The boss may immediately agree to it without further explanation or disagree with it and so negate the need to continue. If they don’t agree it is the correct destination then there’s no point in planning the trip.

4) Options step – This is the most important step. Take 150 words — 1 full minute. Here you provide 3 options for action or decision. Bosses like options, so they can make the solution.

Here are three principal solution approaches:
- Doing Nothing (0% solution);
- Doing Something (100% solution); and
- Doing Something More (125% solution).

Offering 3 options will keep you in the game, keep you at the table. You also won’t “Die by Question” (get torpedoed by an issue from a particular stakeholder on a particular suggestion). You get to stay in the room.

Coming up with three options will also force you to think outside your particular box. So you’ll have to consider other areas: leadership, things about other parts of the business, and so forth. This is good.

5) Recommendation step — 60 words. Be ready to recommend the option you think the company should take.

6) “Justification” step — 60 words. Be ready to defend your recommendation.

Follow this approach and they will hold up meetings for you. “Julie always has a bunch of ideas.”

“This approach will change your life. It will make you more important.”

End meetings on time
You won’t get more done with a meeting that runs longer than planned — have another meeting if you need to.

Be a “tomorrow” person
People ask: what about studying the past to know about the future? Best approach as far as historical study: pattern analysis. Pattern recognition allow us to “know a lot by knowing a little”. A trusted advisor should understand the past in terms of what will happen in the future.

This also happens to give us “evidence” when we’re giving advice. “The situations have played out for companies such as (name) in the past is that!” As leaders do things by process, and have been trained to be process thinkers, they are somewhat at odds with a communicators more organic means of coming up with an idea. The boss wants to know “where’s the process, where’s the evidence?”

The six step approach provides the process they need to get to the solution.

James says, when you give advice you’ll be wrong about half the time using pattern recognition, but without, you’ll be wrong 75% of the time.

Everything is pattern oriented. Recognize the pattern, it helps you predict the future. This is what matters to bosses. So this is the mindset you need to understand to matter to them.

Lessons ” key concepts”
- Understand leadership
- Talk to time, write to time
- Come up with options (make yourself do it) — essential

- Follow the 6-step process

Mr. Lukaszewski is a terrific speaker, the kind you feel you can totally trust as having the wisdom and experience to support what he is saying — good pick CIRI!

For more on James visit his website.