“The best executive communication starts with ‘Situation.’ The nickname for this is SCQA, or the Pyramid Principle.
The best executive communication starts with the state of affairs. It’s fact-based, unambiguous. It’s totally not controversial. No matter what side of an issue or a hard choice you’re on, you should be able to read the situation and go, ‘That pretty much sums it up.’ Whether you’re on one side or another of an issue, it doesn’t matter. You should read the situation and agree to it. Agree that’s fair.
The next thing that comes out is the complication. A crisp, short statement about what has changed or what’s making things harder. What’s changed, what’s making things harder? The question, the ‘Q,’ falls automatically out of ‘S’ and ‘C’ and it’s almost always ‘What should we do?’ You can save yourself a lot of anxiety if you’re trying to practice this. If you get hung up on ‘Q,’ it’s almost always ‘What should we do?’
‘Answer,’ ‘A,’ answer first at the top of a pyramid. Pyramid-shape your evidence underneath it, and it has to resolve the complication 100%. […] Every conversation in [your] life is an opportunity to SCQA. Friends, loved ones, pets, conversations at the deli counter, everything.”
