Don Spetner on the art of getting to the point
Succinctness and brevity are underappreciated in the practice of PR.
by Don Spetner26 March 2025
When I worked at Korn/Ferry, I led a search to find a chief comms officer for Microsoft. The role reported to the chief marketing officer, so I flew to Redmond, Washington, to meet with her and find out more about what they needed. She was whip smart, hyperefficient and didn’t mince words. We talked about the role, about the skill set they were looking for and the kind of experience they were seeking. Then I asked about her management style. I was specifically interested in what kinds of people she responded to well, and what turned her off. It was a series of questions I always asked, as they led to important filters for identifying and interviewing potential candidates.
When I probed the CMO on executive style that she most valued, she answered quickly and decisively.
“I want the people who report to me to do three things: Be smart, be brief and be gone.” She wasn’t kidding.
I thought of this CMO the other day when I was sitting in a Zoom call with the president of a large global company and one of her subordinates. This president was someone I particularly like to work with because she’s extremely direct and never wastes my time. I know from experience that meetings with her seldom last more than 30 minutes, and usually end early. My kind of meetings.
But her subordinate clearly had not picked up on this. Nor had he adopted the style preferred by the former Microsoft CMO. He belabored his points. He supplied far too much information. He told us how to build the watch instead of simply relaying what time it was. He was smart and knew his stuff, but he violated one of the oldest rules of dealing with senior management: He talked too much.
A while back, I gave a presentation on executive presence in which I displayed a line graph depicting how long a colleague might listen to a story about what your cat did last night. The listening time correlated directly to the colleague’s rank in the company. A subordinate would likely listen for as long you wanted to talk. A peer might only last five minutes before changing the subject or politely excusing himself or herself. Your boss might indulge you for a few minutes unless he or she were in a bad mood. And once you reached the C-suite, the patience for listening to a cat story dropped precipitously.
I came up with the idea after sitting through a meeting with my boss Eli Broad, the billionaire founder of Kaufman and Broad and SunAmerica. We were discussing an upcoming trip to New York when he asked a question regarding some legislation that I did not know the answer to. He quickly dialed our head of government relations. This guy knew his stuff, but he had a terrible habit of using a speakerphone and talking too much.
Eli got right to the point. “Bob,” he said, “what’s the status of HB 2011?” Bob said it didn’t look like the bill would pass, and then began to elaborate, going on and on with unessential, boring details. Eli grew angry and soon began shouting. “Bob. Bob. BOB!” But Bob couldn’t hear because he was blathering. Finally, Bob took a breath and Eli said, “Thank you. Bye.” And ended the call. Then he turned to me, still irritated.
“Listen,” he said. “When you have a call with an important person, you need to make an outline and stick to your points. Do you understand?” I did. In fact, I’ve never forgotten.
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