Principles of Effective Briefing in Organizations
People spend a lot of time at work briefing their bosses (and conversely, briefing their employees). In government and business, over email and in person, briefing is hard, it’s a skill, and it’s a team sport.
Not all briefs are alike. Some are public and routine, some are public and impromptu; some are internal and routine, and some are internal and impromptu.
Likewise, not all information is alike. In the words of a former boss, leaders need three types of information: housekeeping, decision-making, and alarms. Three questions should be listed on every desk in every organization: “What do I know?” “Who needs to know?” “Have I told them?”
“You’d be surprised,” my former boss said, “Somewhere in the organization is all of the information you need, but it’s either not reported or it’s buried underneath other information.”
A briefer’s main job isn’t briefing – it’s information-gathering and reporting; collecting and verifying facts from the right sources; organizing information; and conveying essential elements to the right audience at the right time.
Truth is table stakes. You don’t get a seat at the table if you’re not a fair and honest broker of information across the organization. This principle is absolute. /7
Leaders respond to a credible messenger. A more complete version of this principle is: leaders respond to clear messages from a credible messenger who is first with the truth. The more people trust and respect the briefer, the farther the message carries and the more it sticks. Guarding credibility entails verifying facts, attributing sources, using clear language, and again, telling the truth. Even off-handed comments can damage credibility.
It’s not about the briefer. It’s about the content and delivery of information. Does the brief convey the intended information, and nothing more? Are the ideas resolved in a self-evident structure? Most of all, is the brief drawing attention to the ideas or to the briefer?
It’s not about the brief. Never confuse a brief with work, or an outcome, or an action. A brief is not an end in itself; it’s a method of communication. The point of communication is to educate, inform, and inspire action. For that reason, the briefing process is one part of a larger cycle of leadership within an organization. Specifically, a brief is a means to help a leader think – and to help the leader accomplish every part of the fundamental leadership cycle.
It’s about the mission. The brief must always complement and serve the fundamental leadership cycle in an organization. The goal is to establish a rhythm within the leadership cycle that helps the organization accomplish its mission. Indeed, helping an organization accomplish its mission is the only excuse for a briefing of any kind. A brief may be necessary to achieve consensus or to provide a rational basis for a decision, but a brief is always subordinate to the mission.
The best brief may be NO brief. A brief is not an end, it’s a means to an end – and often there’s a much more efficient means to the same end. Ideally the organization acts within the leader’s intent without a formal briefing, while keeping the leader informed. This is why it’s imperative to establish a rhythm within the leadership cycle and to be in such close synchronization that the brief anticipates the needs of the organization. Operating this way takes discipline, routine communication across all levels, and trust.
Briefing is a continuous process, not a discrete event. Briefing, at its best, is so routine that even in a crisis should feel normal, because the act of exchanging information has become second nature for the briefer and principal. That reality carries with it other principles, including establishing a trusted relationship with the principal over time; listening and recording information; disseminating the readout; following up at the appropriate time; and feeding information back to the principal.
Briefing in a first-class way is not an individual exercise; it takes building and empowering a team, fostering a culture of honest communication, and ensuring the flow of information throughout an organization.
In sum, the briefing process follows the same principles as the writing process, which itself is part of an even more important thinking and leadership process – an unremitting cycle of studying, thinking, and writing that helps clarify and order ideas. Like the writing process, the briefing process is painful and deliberate. With the exception of impromptu briefs, the process occurs well before the brief itself.