Which dynamic best describes your organization’s approach to written communications?

Our reader poll today asks: Which dynamic best describes your organization’s approach to written communications?

• We focus purely on the message and don’t worry about the aesthetics around it. – 31%
• We balance our focus on the message while putting a lot of work into aesthetics. – 51%
  
• We focus mostly on aesthetics of the communication and worry less about message. – 18%

Form over function? 69% of you report putting substantial effort into the aesthetics of your presentations – sometimes to the detriment of the actual content or message (18%). This is an alarming response. Sure, you can make presentations look slick and beautiful with high-resolution photos, AI-generated images, and complex graphs but if your audience doesn’t walk away with a clear message, all that effort at creating an elevated design environment is wasted effort. You’ve wasted your time and theirs. Start with the message. Have a clear, concise action you want them to take and explain the benefit they’ll receive from doing so. They don’t care why the action benefits you. They want to understand the benefit to them. While this may leave less time for beautifying slides and making them “slick” it gets them to take action. While a visually “boring” presentation doesn’t seem cool, getting the audience to do what you want them to do is the coolest outcome you can hope for.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.