When a McKinsey partner, a critical thinking educator, and a Stanford methodology all refer to the same thinking principle, I know I have to pay attention. That principle translates into a two-step process that takes vague, blurry thoughts and turns them into coherent and clear ideas. So let's get to it.
**Step number one**: The number one reason I see smart, brilliant people getting stuck with frameworks, structured thinking, and articulation is that they skip step number one, which is unstructured articulation. It sounds counterintuitive, but the first step is taking those fuzzy, vague thoughts and turning them into words—translating them into something we can understand. Forget about hierarchies, conciseness, and clarity—all of that doesn't matter because step number one is just figuring out what is even in my head.
Since thoughts are just electric signals passing through our neurons, we don't even know what we're thinking half the time. So, step number one really is about translating those signals into words that we ourselves can understand first. Put another way: If you don't know what you're thinking, no amount of structure, frameworks, and logic can help get your point across because your thoughts are still in electric signal form.
So how do you translate signals into words? I use the method taught by a McKinsey partner, which is to set a timer for one minute and just write down what's on your mind. For example, I used to do a lot of data analysis and research presentations for executives—so the thoughts that go through my mind in that one minute are: How much detail should I include?
What are the key points? What do the executives care about? How much context should I give?
What if I'm missing something critical? Are my conclusions even strong enough to drive decision-making? One minute goes by fast, but once you do that, you'll see this simple journaling exercise does a few things.
**Number one**: I know what I'm actually thinking because before I start thinking about needing to present, I just feel an overwhelming sense of confusion that I can't even articulate. But by writing things down, I realize, "Okay, I'm worried about context. These are the things I think are the key points, but I don't even know if they're going to resonate with the executives.
" So I can really see, "What am I actually thinking? What is causing all this confusion in the first place? " **Number two**: I can think deeper.
All of those superficial-level thoughts are cluttering my mind, but now I have them on paper, so I can decide, "Okay, out of these, which ones do I want to work on? Which ones do I have deeper thoughts about? " and really work through that.
**Number three**: This helps me think fast on my feet. One minute goes by in a flash, so having that time constraint really helps me focus and do that translation as quickly as possible, which is invaluable when you're thinking on your feet, answering questions, or talking on the go. Now, just a side note: One minute is quite fast.
This is the management consulting way, and if it doesn't work for your context, that's all right. In the critical thinking book I mentioned earlier, they talk about free writing, which is ten minutes long. Again, not that long, but it gives you some more space to work through the thoughts in your head.
Alternatively, you can take the Stanford design thinking approach, where, when you diverge and think, you give yourself one minute, five minutes, just to get all the ideas out, and you want to repeat step one: This process of setting a time constraint and listing out what you're thinking, translating the thoughts as many times as you need. Going back to my example of how to present the findings of the research, one of my questions was, "How do I know what the executives care about? " Let's take that and go one more minute on this.
Okay, I think what they really care about is making a good decision. So, all I have to do is present both sides of the argument and give them my recommendation. What is my recommendation?
I think it's to proceed because of X, Y, Z. Then, within that one minute, I can list out, "What is it that I'm really thinking about? What is it in my argument that I want to present?
" Now I'm going deeper with these ideas. I am thinking faster on my feet because then we're going to move to step two, which is structured articulation. This boils down to three things: simplify, prioritize, and structure.
If you've seen this video before, this is the base logic of framework thinking. We're going to take the mumble jumble we've created in step one and put it through some structure, using frameworks for analysis. One of my go-tos is, "Okay, now I have all these ideas.
Let's put them through the pyramid principle. What is my answer? My answer is we should go ahead.
What are my three supporting arguments? One, two, and three. " Then I put all the details I was worrying about earlier at the very end.
So that's one way of using a structure to organize everything I've been thinking about in my head. Alternatively, we could use another structure: the what, why, and so what. I talked about it in this video here.
The what is, "We should proceed. " The why is, "Here are my three supporting arguments and their details. " And the so what is, "This aligns with our strategy," or, "This aligns with our growth goals," "This aligns with how we want to position ourselves," and "We make it relevant.
" How do I know which structure to choose? Well, this comes down to what the audience cares about. Think of step one as you and your thoughts being the focus—I'm just trying to pull out as much as I know.
In step two, it is about the other person we're talking to. Out of all these things, I know what I should pick to share with them. Of course, there are frameworks to help you figure out what they care about.
One of the frameworks I like to use is a two-step process. First, start with gap analysis. For the other person, what is their current state and what is their desired future state?
What is the gap? I want to identify the gap. For my project, it's probably some sort of revenue.
Revenue is here; we want to grow it—let's say 20% in the next five years. How do we get there? That's the gap.
Then, focusing on the gap, one of the frameworks we can use is the awareness framework, which has five stages. **Number one** is unaware. The executives might think, "With our current products and services, we will grow our revenue because we're doing so well.
" They don't realize, "Hey, maybe we can only grow at 5%, and we're missing a 15% gap. " If that’s the case, I would focus my presentation on highlighting the problem. **Stage two** is problem aware.
They know, "Okay, we're not going to get to that 20% revenue uplift with just what we have," but they don't know the solution. So, "What are we going to do about it? " If that's the case, I will focus my time on highlighting what the solution needs to be.
They already know the problem; we quickly agree on the problem and move on to the solution. **The third stage** is solution aware. They know there's a problem, they know there's a solution, but they don't know the plan to get there.
If that's the case, I focus my talk around the plan: "Right, we need to identify the right product; here's how we're going to do it, and then here is the timeline for launching something like that. " If they're in **stage four**, which is plan aware, then I want to focus my presentation on "How do we take action? Here are all the resources we need in terms of budget, team, and timeline.
" I really lay those things out and don't spend too much time talking about everything beforehand—I just need to reach an agreement. So there you have it: Go from brain fog to clear articulation. It's just two steps.
If you want to go deeper into the process of articulating your thoughts and getting your point across, check out the link below for my courses and cohorts, and I'll see you in the next video. Bye!
