Why your big message isn’t landing

Are you a list person?

I am.

Some might say a ‘compulsive’ list person. (Actually they do say it. And it’s my family. All the time.)

I have three lists for home tasks – ‘urgent’, ‘looming’ and ‘sometime’. (I need to come up with better names.)

I have countless lists for client work. For growing Email Attraction. For creative stuff.

But when I was in my twenties, I used to have one big list that looked a bit like this:

• Buy carrots

• Book restaurant for Saturday night

• End relationship

• Persuade boss to let me have a Blackberry

• Figure out what I want to do with my life

• Clean mould off bathroom ceiling

Unsurprisingly, it didn’t work. (The mould got sorted long before the boyfriend…But I did eventually get that Blackberry <fist pump>)

Big strategic stuff takes a different kind of thinking to smaller tactical tasks. When you smush them together everything feels equally unimportant. The big stuff gets lost.

And it’s like that in your communications too.

Don’t bury important or complex messages among minor asks – give them space so they’re noticed and taken seriously.

Don’t stick them at the end of a 500 word email about other stuff. Or last on a 15-item meeting agenda. Or hidden in a 50-slide deck.

Instead, clear the carrots. Let the big idea or ask stand out and have its moment.

That’s how you make big things happen.