Journalists have a very specific writing style. Newspaper articles rarely have a storyline, or a narrative curve. Instead, they make their most significant statement right in the title, and the first sentence of the first paragraph. As we proceed reading, we are gradually unfolding the issue at hand, finding out more circumstantial details about the discussed event. The myth holds that the reason for this style of writing was that, in the early days of journal editing, paragraphs and news sections which did not fit the page were simply trimmed. Hence, in order not to risk missing the point of a story due to a literal cut to the article, journalists got straight to the point.
Similar conditions have led business people, and consultants especially, to adapt their way of communicating, not only on paper, but even in direct conversations. Just as space is a scarce commodity on a title page, personal time and attention is a similarly limited resource for high-performing consultants. Conforming to these conditions, many analysts make an efficiency trim by adopting the top-to-bottom structure in their writing and speech. This might seem disturbing at first: should we really optimise our language for business efficiency? The answer for many is a resounding YES. Since consultants delegate tasks and draw conclusions on projects using little else than mere conversation, interpersonal communication is essentially the consultant’s most indispensable tool. Hence, it makes sense for the consultant to subject their communication to economic rationalisation.
So, what is top-to-bottom communication? It is essentially a deductive argument turned upside down. Statements always start with the synthesis, that is the conclusion we have drawn from a series of arguments. Following that, we start unboxing the synthesis, by sharing the actual arguments which led to our initial statement in the first place. A graph of a top-to-bottom structured message should look like a pyramid, with a clear statement or call to action at the top, and multiple supporting arguments diverging downwards. These diverging branches come to an abrupt end always at a different point: whenever the person we were communicating with has had enough. This way, if our client or colleagues have a limited amount of time, we can still make a logically coherent argument, while only sacrificing depth and detail, but never our general point.
A typical top-to-bottom email might look like this:
Dear Jeff,
I would like you to finish off your data analysis project a day earlier, because
- our client confronted an unexpected new challenge, which we need your help with ASAP,
- we will refresh our corporate software system on Friday, and
- this task is already advanced enough compared to other aspects of the project.
I am sorry for any inconvenience this might cause you. I hope you will understand.
Consulting firms are increasingly looking for candidates who are instinctually or habitually familiar with this mode of communication. A common way of assessing such an ability is a classic roleplay. Imagine that you find yourself in an elevator with the client company’s CEO who, although being visibly in a hurry, asks your opinion about an important professional topic. This is a typical scenario where you must adopt top-to-bottom communication to make your point, before the CEO quits the elevator, probably with a bad impression of you. The language of presentations is also moving in this direction with the proliferation of action titles and executive summaries, which clearly communicate the author’s main point. These types of slide decks are especially fit for distribution throughout a major company. Since each slide makes sense individually, each person can simply focus on the ones related to their work at hand.
Bence Borbély is a Hungarian first-year History and Politics student at the University of Cambridge whose professional fields of interest are management consultancy, public policy-making, politics and international relations.
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