One message
Decide the single sentence you want people to walk out with, and cut everything that doesn't serve it.
BEFORE YOU WRITE A WORD
Two questions come first
Who is listening? What do they already know, what do they care about, what worries them? What should they think, feel or do afterwards? A decision, a change of mind, a first step. Answer both before you open a slide or write a line. Every later choice in the talk, from the opening to the examples, is measured against them.
Sara: "My teammates and our manager. They're busy and a bit tired of meetings. Afterwards I want them to agree to try a Monday planning meeting."
A topic is not a message
Topic
"Weekly planning." A label for what you'll talk about. Nobody can agree or disagree with it, and nobody knows what to do after hearing it.
Message
"A 20-minute shared planning meeting on Mondays will stop us doing the same work twice." A full sentence with a point of view. Someone could argue with it, which is exactly what makes it worth saying.
Check yourself
Which of these is a key message rather than a topic?
- Team planning
- Meetings in 2026
- A 20-minute Monday planning meeting will stop us doing the same work twice
- Some thoughts on how we work
Show the answer
A 20-minute Monday planning meeting will stop us doing the same work twice
Yes. It's a full sentence, it takes a position, and it tells the room what would change. The others are titles.
Key message
The one sentence you want your audience to remember and act on after the talk. It has a subject, a verb and a point of view, and it answers the second of the two questions: what should they think, feel or do afterwards? Everything else in the talk is there to support it.
Reza's toast: "My sister makes every room she walks into kinder, and Arash is lucky to walk beside her."
Check yourself
Before writing any part of a talk, which two questions should you answer?
- How long should it be, and how many slides do I need?
- Who is listening, and what should they think, feel or do afterwards?
- What's my best joke, and where do I put it?
- What did I do this quarter, and in what order did I do it?
Show the answer
Who is listening, and what should they think, feel or do afterwards?
Right. Audience and purpose come first. Length, slides and jokes are decided later, in their service.
TWO QUICK TESTS
One breath, then "so what?"
The one-breath test (also called the elevator test): say your message out loud in one breath, roughly 10 to 15 seconds. If you can't, you don't know your point yet. The "so what?" test: read the sentence as a listener and ask "so what?". If the sentence doesn't already answer that, sharpen it until it does.
"We should talk about planning." So what? "We keep duplicating work." So what? "A 20-minute Monday meeting would stop it." Now there's an answer.
Sara sharpens her message, one "so what?" at a time.
Draft 1: "Planning."
-> so what?
Draft 2: "Our planning could be better."
-> so what?
Draft 3: "We keep doing the same work twice."
-> so what?
Draft 4: "A 20-minute shared planning meeting on
Mondays will stop us doing the same
work twice."Draft 4 passes both tests:
- said aloud in one breath: about 6 seconds
- "so what?" is answered: less duplicated work, and howEach round adds either the stakes (what goes wrong now) or the ask (what to do about it). A message usually needs both.
Check yourself
Sara has a great chart showing how much the office spends on coffee each month. People would find it fun. It doesn't support her message about Monday planning. What should she do?
- Keep it as a warm-up, since people will enjoy it
- Cut it and save it for another time
- Put it at the end so it doesn't get in the way
- Squeeze it onto the same slide as her main point
Show the answer
Cut it and save it for another time
Yes. It's interesting but off-message, so it costs attention and gives nothing back. Into the parking lot it goes.
Same message, different evidence
For her manager
Lead with time and cost: two people spent about eight hours each on the same report last month. The meeting costs 20 minutes a week.
For her teammates
Lead with less rework and fewer surprises: no more finding out on Thursday that someone else already did your task. The message itself doesn't change.
Check yourself
Match each listener to the evidence Sara should lead with
Show the answer
- Her manager → Hours lost to duplicated work, against 20 minutes a week
- Her teammates → No more discovering your task was already done
- A new hire on the team → What the meeting looks like, step by step
- A team lead who might copy the idea → How it went after the first four Mondays
From blank page to one message
- Know the audience
Who is listening, what they know, what they care about.
- Write the one sentence
A full sentence with a point of view. Check it with the one-breath and "so what?" tests.
- Pick the support
The facts, examples and stories that make this audience believe this sentence.
- Cut the rest
Anything that doesn't serve the sentence goes to the parking lot.
Check yourself
Which order gets Sara from a blank page to a focused talk?
- Pick the support → write the sentence → know the audience → cut the rest
- Know the audience → write the one sentence → pick the support → cut the rest
- Write the slides → find a message in them → know the audience → cut the rest
- Cut the rest → know the audience → pick the support → write the sentence
Show the answer
Know the audience → write the one sentence → pick the support → cut the rest
Right. The sentence depends on the audience, the support depends on the sentence, and you can only cut once you know what the support is for.
Lesson recap
- People keep one or two ideas from a talk at best, so choose the one on purpose.
- Start with two questions: who is listening, and what should they think, feel or do afterwards?
- A key message is one full sentence with a point of view, not a topic: "A 20-minute Monday planning meeting will stop us doing the same work twice."
- Test it: say it in one breath (roughly 10-15 seconds) and make sure it answers "so what?".
- Everything must support the message. Cut interesting but off-message material, and tailor the evidence to the audience, not the message.