My 3 Business Pet Peeves

I’m on this long international flight and the entertainment system is rebooting, will be a while before it’s up and running again. So, it’s a great opportunity for me to share my pet peeves regarding business communication. These are from my high-tech career, not at any specific company. Here goes.

Answer the question!

A question is asked. The person answering goes around the world a few times and at the end may or may not answer the question.

For example:

Q: Are we on schedule?

A: Well, the sky is blue and snow is cold. Today in history, George Washington was born. And this year is the year of the rat. … <2-mins later> We are behind schedule by 2-days.

A better answer would be:

We are behind schedule by 2-days. And the sky is blue and snow is cold. Today in history …

Answer the question directly — right upfront — then go around the world as much as you’d like (though you’ll probably get cut-off). I’ve seen numerous cases of the round-the-world answering happening in meetings and the person asking the question (usually the boss) gets frustrated and angry.

If you have bad news to convey, then get it out right away. You may get slammed due to the bad news you’re going to share, but that slamming is nothing compared to the grief you’ll get when the boss gets more unhappy due to you not answering his/her question right away.

By the way, this is not limited only to verbal communication, it applies to written communication also.

I just got an email from the CEO of a startup I invested a little bit of money many years ago. The email was to let investors know that he’s closing up the company, its gone under. But if you read everything except the last paragraph of his email, you’d never know this. Most of the long email was about all the great things they’ve done.

As I read it, I got more and more excited — they were going to tell me about this fabulous buy-out offer the got, I was going to make so much money I could go retire in Hawaii!

Then the sledgehammer came down in the last paragraph. We dissolved the company, your investment is worthless. Of course I was angry that I lost my money; my anger was even greater due to them leading me on in their email.

It would have been better if they they told me in the first paragraph that they were closing down. Then the rest of the email could be devoted to the good fight they fought and lost.

Ask a checking question

After you’ve answered the question, follow-up by asking a checking question “Did I answer your question?”

You’ll be surprised how many times you’ll get back a “No, you didn’t”.

Asking the checking question enables you to re-engage with the questioner, to try again to answer their question.

Or course, all questions asked of you aren’t of the same importance — don’t feel obligated to always ask the checking question. You’ll have to decide when to ask it. Often the time required to fully answer someone’s question may not be worth the meeting time that will be consumed. Or the person asking it is just trying to show off their perceived superiority, you don’t want to encourage them.

You’re not paid by the number of characters in PowerPoint presentations!

Ever seen presentations where the font is so small you need a magnifying glass to read, you need to zoom to 500X?

Too often some people seem to compete in how small of a font size they can use in their presentations. It’s like the vision chart at the eye doctor — they always go for last (smallest font size) line.

By the time I’ve read the entire slide (3-days later), I’ve missed the point they’re trying to make (there is just too much text) and I’ve not paid attention to anything they’ve said.

People, you’re not getting paid by the number of characters in PPTs!

Less is more. Increase the font size, don’t go below 20 or 18. And have lots of white space on the slide.

I was taught that the content on a slide is the main items you want to convey, what you shouldn’t miss. The audience should be listening to you present, they shouldn’t be straining their eyes to read unreadable content!

I’ve seen some awesome presenters, where they went through an hour long meeting presenting only 2 or 3 slides. These were some of the most productive meetings I’ve ever attended for I spent most of my time listening to and understanding them, not reading slides with too much text.

Hope these ideas help you. Good luck!

Sunil