Concept
The communication playbook
A communication playbook is one page per format you use, message, one-to-one, hard conversation, presentation, with the same four slots on each: the core message in one sentence, the opener, the structure and the ask. It is filled in before the event, not during it.
The Communicate Better road ends here because every tool on it is a step that gets skipped under pressure unless it has a place to live. The message page holds the subject line rule, the ask in line one, one ask per message and the two-minute test. The one-to-one page holds question, listen, reflect, reply. The hard-conversation page holds the mutual purpose and contrasting sentence, the third-story opening, facts then story, the four steps and your own contribution. The presentation page holds the one sentence, sixty seconds of story, three things, data as evidence and the ask. After a month the questions become reflexes and the pages become unnecessary, which is the point.
A real-life example
A team lead's four pages after twelve days: the message page has cut her director's meeting questions to zero, the hard-conversation page carried a one-to-one with a senior developer, and the one-to-one page turned out to be what her team had asked for in every retrospective.
How to use it
- 1Write one page per format with four slots: core message, opener, structure, ask.
- 2Fill the slots before the event, never during.
- 3After a month, notice which page you use most; that is where your work happens.