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during my time at mckinsey i helped in designing the training programs for the new consultants in these training programs communication was always one of the most important skills it was common feedback of all the senior consultants and all the partners that the number one topic where young consultants need training on and where they need to be developed by the training programs is how to communicate effectively how to say the things in the right way one of the most fundamental concepts that we taught in these training programs is the concept of top-down communication in this video i'm going to talk about what top-down communication is we are jointly going to work through one exercise that i trust will really teach you how top-down communication works so by watching this video i trust that you will build a very important skill set that will hugely benefit you not only if you work in consulting but pretty much in every other role in a professional context and probably even in your private life as well welcome to another coffee break with me here on my channel firm learning if you're new here with this channel i want to help you to become successful in the first years in your career but now without further ado let's jump into it i will teach you how to talk like a consultant and this video will be structured in two parts first i'm going to talk about what top down communication actually is and then second we're going to do an exercise together to really help you ingrain this principle in your head so what is top-down communication and if you read all the books and articles about that you will find out that there are lots of definitions many people claiming different things to be top-down communication so i really want to simplify it for you so in my experience what this really comes down to is two things namely first in your communication to focus on the results to focus on the content to only focus on the things that really matter to your audience and second always starting your communication with the key message with the key result that you want to communicate to your audience when people talk about top-down communication they often also use the word pyramid principle the reason why you talk about a pyramid where you have a pyramid structure is because you need to imagine and structure in your head all the different facts information all the details that you want to talk about in a pyramidal form so at the bottom there are all the underlying arguments there are the details but then based on this fundament you then draw some conclusions you then draw some results and then on the very top is the key message that you really want to share and that you really want to talk about and the main error that many people do is not starting with this result with this key message but rather starting with all the individual details with all the little arguments that then your whole case is composed of and then only in the very end to then draw the conclusion from it so they pretty much turn the pyramid around and this for many different reasons is not considered effective communication and if you want to learn more about that i talked a lot about this in my first video in communication skills i will link it somewhere above here for you if you want to check it out so that this clarifies what top-down communication is but now to make it even more tangible for you let's deep dive into a practical example and this was an exercise that we did a lot with young consultants that we used a lot at mckinsey to train consultants in the organization and you can imagine the overall setting to be something like this you as a consultant sitting in the team room just minding your business doing your work and then suddenly the ceo of the company or another senior client of the company or maybe even a partner is walking into your team room and asking you hey heinrich how is it going where do we stand what's the current status and this is a question that hits many people kind of off guard because you were just in the middle of something completely adds and now you're required to in front of a senior person really concisely briefly and to the point answering such a question of where you stand with a specific task so now let's jump into this exercise and let's imagine you finding yourself in such a situation and the context is as follows and i'm reading from the slide here so you are working on a market entry study and the objective of the study is to assess market entry opportunities for a new product line so the client asks you to work on that and of course you could easily also be just the internal team so not necessarily consultant but an employee of the company working on this specific task and now in order to do that you conducted interviews with lots of different internal and external experts to learn more about this topic you analyze lots of data you work with different departments with the finance department with the marketing department probably the preliminary result the first indication that you have is that the market entry in france would be a good fit and you're basing this result just based on all these interviews that you conducted and all these data analysis that you did and now indeed the ceo walks in and asks you to give a project summary he says hey how is it going you work on the market entry project right what is the status on that and now the question is how do you answer to that and now i just want to take you a moment and ideally just grab a pen grab a piece of paper and just jot down a couple of thoughts on how you would reply to that and of course if you want you can just briefly pause the video to do that okay so i hope you did just exactly that and now i want to guide you through two examples so two examples of potential answers and then let's briefly discuss what is going well working well with this example and maybe what isn't so much let's start with example number one as a potential answer that somebody could have given and this answer goes as follows so the last weeks we have been very busy on the project first i talked to tom from finance to get the market data however when looking at the numbers we realize that marketing has the better numbers with the new marketing data set together with interviews we conducted we were able to get a good overview of the different market opportunities at the moment it looks like france would be a good fit for our project though this is still working progress so this could be an answer and from my experience this is an answer that many people would give in such a situation so let's just dissect it a bit what is special what is characteristic about this answer and this answer consists of now stating all the different steps that you did all the different steps that you did to come to this conclusion you're saying okay first i did that then i did this then i talked to this guy then i talked to that guy so lots of work that i put in i crunched all these numbers and in the end there is a specific result that we have now and of course now if you look into this this is something that you would not consider top-down communication okay guys this is not top-down communication but it's the opposite it's bottom-up communication because you start by giving all the details by giving all the nitty-gritty facts and steps and arguments this is communication that is based on the process it's based on the things that you did but not so much about the result and in a business setting in most cases you want to avoid communicate like that and the main reason is that frankly the ceo won't care the ceo will not care to whom you talk to whose data set you analyzed these are all just details that in most cases are just not of interest but instead he will just trust you that if you tell him something of course you will have done the research of course you will have done the analysis but in general this is just not the answer that c-level executives of companies are interested in let's contrast this now with a second example of how such a question could have been answered and again let me just read it out for you so here an answer i could go like this our current hypothesis is that france would be the best fit for our project this is based on three reasons first our consumer research shows that french consumers will appreciate offering second the competitive landscape in france is not yet developed we will be the first with this offering third our logistics and distribution capabilities are well set up to serve the french market and now again let's first dissect this what is special about this answer so first this answer now doesn't talk at all about the little steps in between that you talk to get to a result instead this answer starts by giving the result it starts by sharing your current hypothesis and so pretty much if the ceo would need now to leave the meeting just after a couple of seconds if you now would have a phone call popping up on his phone and he won't be able to not continue listening to you he already just with the first sentences of your answer he would already know the result he would already know what your hypothesis is and of course now if you would have the time to continue listening to you he would not only have the answer but you also would be able to hear the top three reasons that you based your conclusion that you base your answer on and this of course now is information that the ceo other senior eleven executives in the corporation will be interested in this is a type of communication that is top down it focuses on the content of the results that you work but not on the process this is exactly what top-down communication is all about and i would always encourage you to communicate your results in this fashion so why is it so difficult for many people to on the spot embrace this top down communication skill and just communicate in that way and probably this is for three reasons first it's just the natural way to talk about it to use this bottom-up approach right it's just the order of how you did the things first you did this then this then this and this so this is just the natural way of how you tell something but of course still it's not the best way so only because this is your first impulse take a second take a step back and just reflect the second reason why i believe many people rather use bottom up than top down communication is because it really stresses all the work that you did it shows all your sweat all the things all the long hours or the mental energy that you put into a task but the ceo will not care how long you worked last night or how smart you were by coming up with the idea of now hitting up the marketing guy this is not what will interest the senior level guys they will care about the results so don't bore them with the process don't try to impress them with the long hours that you worked and the third reason is that people are messy in the head right people for themselves often do not have it crystal clear why they are recommending something what the underlying reasons are when you come up with a conclusion with the recommendation so make sure just also for the quality of the thinking for the quality of your documents that it's always crystal clear for yourself just to start with what really the result is that you want to put out there and what also the main underlying arguments are that are supporting your conclusions so i hope this video helped you to understand what top down communication is all about if you have any more questions on this topic leave me a comment below in the comment section and i will do my very best to answer every single comment that you have if you want to learn even more about this type of professional communication i have a book that i can really recommend you the book is called the pyramid principle logic and writing and thinking it is written by barbara minto she is an ex mckinsey employee herself and this book is one of the best sellers in professional communication if you want to check it out i included a link to the book below in the video description i can highly recommend it and now if you want to do me a little favor if you took any value out of this video please hit the like button this really helps me with the youtube algorithm and of course if you want to see even more content from me please subscribe to this channel for more content i release at least one video every saturday if you want to see even more content from me i also have an instagram channel where i post content almost every day my handle is firm learning if you want to read even more from me i also have an email mailing list with even more regular content on these topics you can find a sign up link to the mailing list below in the video description thank you for watching guys i very much appreciate your time hope you're enjoying a weekend and talk to you soon again next saturday