Message Strategy

Once you have determined your goals as a communicator and analyzed your audience, you must also think about how you want to organize your message for the communication.  As writing professional Barbara  Minto2 has figure out, the two most important  ways to composition  a message are: (1) direct approach  and (2) indirect approach.

The direct approach follows the old pronouncement, "tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them again." Most communications experts have the same opinion that the direct approach is preferable in business because of the prominence on competence and the bottom-line direction of managers.  Moreover, the spectators prefer a more direct approach in business. Thus you should use the direct approach whenever probable.

The indirect approach, which requires you to build your disagreement  or get to the main point last, however, may be suitable when communicating bad news, when industry with an analytical or academic audience, or when trying to create attention within your audience. Remember that this approach is harder to understand and takes longer for the spectators to process.

Despite agreement between experts that the direct approach is best, most people in business still tend to communicate in an indirect way.  This is the inheritance of years of preparation by English teachers who are inclined to focus on narrative derived from literature and from a lack of strategic philosophy. Several studies have shown that millions of dollars a year are wasted in trying to decode circuitous messages in business.