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1. Communicating with Senior Executives about Your Project:
How to Get Them to Listen to You
If you’re leading a process improvement project, chances
are you’ll need to communicate with a senior executive
about some aspect of your work. Whether it’s a presentation
to a group of leaders or a one-on-one meeting, how do you
get executives to listen to you?
You’ll have a better chance of success if you:
1. Understand what’s different about communicating with executives
2. Adapt your communications to take those differences into account
What’s different about communicating with executives?
Ever find yourself watching in dismay as an executive went directly to the final slide in
your process improvement project presentation deck? You were about to reveal the
mystery of the root cause…and the executive interrupted to ask about hard versus soft
savings.
If so, you’re not alone. Variations of this experience are surprisingly common among
Lean Six Sigma Belts. The executive has to leave before you’ve made your key point.
You arrive for your meeting to learn that you have only 10 minutes, not 30. And so on.
Obviously, every leader has different preferences and interests. But two aspects of the
executive role make communicating with these leaders different:
 Time: The amount of time/attention they can spend on a single issue is extremely
limited
 Focus: They must focus on the financials
You know this already! But do you communicate accordingly? It’s easy to take it
personally, but better to stay neutral and focus your energy on adapting your
communications approach.
Adapting your communications to senior executives
This five step approach to adapting your communications will help you get and keep
executive attention.
1. Clarify and validate your communication objective(s)
What, exactly, are you trying to achieve with your communication? If you can’t
answer that question — or if the answer is “I want to keep the executive informed”
— it’s time for further thought.
What do you want the executive to do with the information you provide? Approve
resources? Agree to fund process improvements? Help you get buy-in from
another leader? Change a policy? Recognize you at bonus time for your excellent
performance?

2. If you don’t know what your objective is, you’ll never achieve it. Worse, you’ll be
wasting both your and the executive’s time. That will make him/her less inclined to
listen to you in the future.
2. Identify the executive’s communication objective(s)
You know what you want…but what does the executive want?
Worst case, nothing. The executive may have no interest in hearing from you. If
so, you might want to wait to communicate until you can identify how it would
benefit the executive.
Best case, the executive does want something. You just need to know what that
is. Then you can make your communication focus on it rather than something
else. One executive might need to know the cost of your proposed process
improvements. Another might want to learn the short-term effect on production
schedules. Yet another wants to hear about savings for this fiscal year.
How do you figure this out? Ask! If you can’t ask the executive, ask others.
Consider any past experience with the executive. Learn more about the
executive’s specific goals vis-à-vis the initiative/project. Do some investigation! If
all else fails, start with (and test) the hypothesis that the executive wants to know
about resource requirements, return on investment, and the like.
3. Understand how the executive wants you to communicate with him/her
Most of us have preferences for how we get information. In-person, phone, or e-
mail? Details or highlights? Reasons or bottom line only? Big picture before
specifics, or vice versa? Text, pictures, or spreadsheets? Blackberry or laptop?
Morning, noon, or night?
Again, you find this out by asking the executive, asking others, etc. If you have
absolutely nothing to go on, assume a preference for the least time-consuming
and most focused approach and work from there.
4. Craft a message that meets your and the executive’s objectives; deliver it in
a way appropriate to that executive
You want the executive’s approval for your implementation plan. The executive
wants to know the financial effect on operations of two alternative implementation
schedules. You learn that the executive prefers face-to-face meetings and likes a
“one slide” presentation approach. He’s known for asking pointed questions about
spreadsheet data and hates wasting time.
Before the meeting, you reconfirm logistics (and available time) with the
executive’s assistant. You forward your detailed spread sheet “in case he wants
to look at it in advance.” You put information about the alternative schedules on
the first slide of your deck: the spreadsheet, one bullet point summarizing your
conclusion, another stating what you need from the executive. You have four
other slides of financial detail “in reserve.”

3. At the meeting, you don’t spend any time on what a great job the team did. The
words DMAIC, Kaizen, cell, etc. never pass your lips. You say nothing about your
search for root causes. You focus on the numbers, you use extra slides only if
necessary, you finish in less time than allotted…and you get your approval.
If such an approach feels uncomfortable or incomplete, that’s natural. (And of
course this is just an example.) But one of the biggest mistakes Lean Six Sigma
Belts make in communicating about their process improvement projects is
confusing what they find interesting/important with what the audience cares
about. If you want executives to listen to you, you must adapt to their objectives
and styles. Don’t expect them to adapt to yours.
5. Reflect, assess, adjust
Take a tip from the U.S. Army and try its After Action Review (AAR) process. This
is a simple but powerful approach to learning and improving. It involves reflecting
on an action to ensure understanding of what actually happened (vs. what should
have happened), why it happened, and what could be done differently to get a
better result the next time.
After you communicate with a senior executive, do your own AAR. You presented
just the bottom line and basic calculations, and your resource request was
approved? You now have good information on how to communicate with that
executive. If instead you got the third degree about how you derived your
numbers, you know to have that detail ready the next time. Did you plan to be
crisp and focused, but found yourself tangled up in the data and cut off early?
Now you know your plan was good, but that you need more practice in sticking to
it.
Summing Up Communicating with Senior Executives
The key to good communications — with anyone — is to know your goal, know your
audience, and adapt accordingly. (If you want to continuously improve, add some
reflection.) Communicating with senior executives is no different in this regard. But it’s
important to consider their time constraints and typical interest in the financial
implications of your project. If you approach them with this in mind, and with clarity
around your own communication objective(s), you have an excellent chance of getting
them to listen to you. Good luck!
First published on Six Sigma IQ.
About Mary Federico
Mary Federico is an independent NYC-based consultant who specializes
in helping organizations get better results from their Process Excellence
initiatives through the use of organizational behavior principles and
techniques. She has taught influence skills to hundreds of Belts across
the globe and helped many initiative leaders with change management
and communications challenges. Federico is the author of two Rath &
Strong Pocket Guides and numerous articles.

4. She can be reached at mary.federico@obstrategies.com and on LinkedIn.
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