Speaker 1: Bottom line up front. This is a military communications principle that's designed to enforce speed and clarity in reports and emails. And it was the single most important lesson I learned back in junior year during my summer internship. As I navigated my first full-time job as a management consultant in New York, and my current role as a product marketer at a Fang tech company, this communications principle helped me build credibility with clients, colleagues, and managers regardless of my tenure. So in this video, I'm gonna share with you the one key benefit of improving your communication skills at work, give a concrete example of a situation where you can apply this principle right away, and how you can use a simple method to develop and refine this essential soft skill. Let's get started. Hi friends, welcome back to the channel. If you're new here, my name is Jeff, and as a product marketer working on four to five campaigns at any given time, I need to be very efficient in my communications with the sales, product, and marketing teams in order to keep myself sane. Bottom line up front now goes by many other names, top-down communication, the pyramid principle, but the core concept has stayed the same. It's a style of communication that prioritizes results and outcomes over the process and the steps you took to get there. And why is this style of communication so sought after in a work environment? Well, first of all, employers have consistently rated effective communication as the number one soft skill they look for in their employees because when there is a breakdown in communication, often efficiency, morale, and objectives can all suffer. But forget about those official employer surveys for a second, and just think back to the last time you worked with a colleague who provided you with the exact information you needed with just enough background for you to act upon. The reason you appreciate this teammate of yours is very simple. They have proven they're respectful of your time by providing you with only relevant information while leaving out all the needless fluff. Sort of like this entire channel if you think about it. There's a popular question often asked in the middle of consulting case interviews where the interviewer interrupts your analysis and says something like, hey, the senior partner just walked into the room and asked how the project's going. What do you say?

Speaker 2: So we have a meeting with the CEO tomorrow and she asked us to come in and let her know what we've learned so far.

Speaker 1: The idea, of course, is to see how well you can summarize all the information you have gathered so far and present them in an efficient way. Yes, it is easy to dismiss this scenario because it's not very likely to happen. So here's a more realistic and common situation instead. Let's say you're the marketing manager of the iMac portion of a recent Apple product launch event. Your director pings you while she is in a meeting with other senior stakeholders and she needs a quick status update. Here are two examples of how you can respond. Example one, hi Isbel, so we ran into some shipping issues and I had to get approval to pay an additional $10,000 for overnight FedEx and that took a while to sort out. I was also told by the AirTags team that they needed to go before us so there was nothing I could do about that. But I think overall, the creative agency is on track now that we have received the blue iMacs so you can review the final draft of the video by April 1st. Now contrast this with example two. Hi Isbel, overall, we're currently on schedule to have the final draft of the video for your review by April 1st. A few important updates. First, our shipping costs increased by $10,000 because we had to overnight the blue iMacs or they would have been late. Second, our slot got pushed back behind the AirTags announcement. I will need your help to escalate this issue if we want our original slot back. Finally, after review the final draft of the video, we can submit to the PR team for distribution. Breaking these two examples down, we can see that example one is very process oriented. You first did this, then that happened, then you get to go fix that. Oh, and finally, here's a result. Whereas example two adheres more to the bottom line about front principle by prioritizing the one thing that director cares most about. Yes, there was still additional context, but if your director only had a few seconds to skim your reply and respond to Tim Cook, she'll be able to confidently say the final draft of the iMac video can be reviewed by April 1st. While I have never been remotely close to having a meeting with Tim Cook, I have experienced these types of scenarios many times throughout my professional career. Let me know down in the comments if you have had similar experiences. So how do you develop this type of results driven communication? Well, practice makes perfect, and there's one method you can incorporate immediately into your daily lives. And that method is active listening. The next time you ask your teammate or colleague about a project they're working on, listen to how they present it to you, then summarize using the bottom line upfront principle. Let's take this very realistic example with Tesla and Elon Musk. Hi, Elon, how's the Tesla Roadster car coming along? Well, we finally have enough vibranium to make our wheels, but we haven't started production. We're going to decide on the color soon, probably black, white, and maybe red to get that MKBHD love. We're gonna get approval from the EPA, so all in all, we should be good to launch by the year 2050. Oh, okay, so the tentative launch date for the Tesla Roadster is 2050, because number one, we have yet to start production on the vibranium wheels. Number two, we still have yet to decide on the colors, and finally, we're pending approval from the EPA. Does that sound right? And the great thing about active listening is that you can practice by flipping it around. The next time someone asks you, hey, how's your day going? Instead of saying, I had back-to-back meetings this morning and had a huge presentation this afternoon, I was so busy preparing for that, I didn't get to eat lunch, and oh, I didn't even get to sleep well last night because I was so nervous about today. Take a second, gather your thoughts, and reply with something like, I'm having a pretty rough day. First, I had back-to-back meetings this morning and a big presentation this afternoon. Second, I didn't get to eat lunch because I was so busy, and finally, I didn't get much sleep last night because I was so anxious about today. So yeah, looking forward to the weekend already. Does this exercise sound ridiculous? Probably, but is it what management consultants and project managers do on a daily basis? In my experience, yeah, it might start off a bit awkward, but like anything else, the more you practice, the more natural this will feel. By adopting this bottom-line, upfront style of communication at work, you, by default, show that you're respectful of your colleagues' time, and consciously or unconsciously, they will appreciate you for it. Check out this video if you're interested to see how I take notes for work. See you on the next video, and in the meantime, have a great one.