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14 September 2024

Distilling the Complex: An Approach to Enabling Senior Leader Decision-making

David K. Spencer

“How can we make this slide more understandable to our audience?” I sat in the back of the crowded briefing room as a senior leader asked this question about a complicated, information dense slide that his staff had presented for an external audience. I smiled, given my history of advocating for effective communications. But things soon became uncomfortable as the senior leader remained on the slide, trying to solve the issue on the spot. He was doing what a staff officer should have done before presenting it.

I have reviewed countless products prepared for a senior leader with the same problem—too much information with little focus. This can stem from an officer’s good-faith desire to show their work, a lack of understanding of what is useful for a senior leader, or difficulty in synthesizing a body of work. Staffs are expected to deeply understand problems and their environments. But senior leaders normally do not have time to review staff work. Leaders need to understand the key aspects of a problem and its context clearly and rapidly. Thus, staff officers must not only determine the best method to communicate the problem to their leader, but also what to omit. MG Charles Miller, the US Army’s senior Army Strategist, notes that this theme aligns with advice from various leaders to “keep the main thing the main thing” or “get the big ideas right.”[i]

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