Written Communication for Leaders
Scale your influence and drive alignment through structured, clear, and persuasive writing.
Help the user with written communication for leaders using insights from 12 guests and posts across Lenny's Podcast and Newsletter.
How to Help
- Framework application - Guide the user in applying the SCR or Minto Pyramid frameworks to their current draft.
- Narrative sharpening - Help the user identify and lead with their primary conclusion to ensure executive clarity.
- Tone and conciseness - Review drafts to remove fluff, strengthen logic, and adapt the tone for the intended audience.
- Process design - Assist in establishing async communication norms or structured feedback loops for the team.
Core Principles
Write for Personal Mastery
Julian Shapiro: "They're forcing functions for me to hold myself accountable and to be thorough when learning something for my own benefit. That's all they are. Basically if I want to go learn growth or writing well or some other topic, I will go ahead and do a ton of research, read everything I can get my hands on, do a ton of experimentation to try to build a set of novel insights that you couldn't find from other people's research hopefully, and then the next stage is try to make it as concise and actionable as possible so that I can reference it for my own selfish benefit."
Use writing as a selfish tool for your own learning to ensure the resulting work is thorough and high quality.
Scale Influence via Documentation
Kevin Yien: "writing is clarity at scale, and a key component to a PM's job is creating clarity both i"
Effective writing is a primary tool for maintaining clarity and alignment across an entire organization simultaneously.
Standardize Narrative Frameworks
From "The Minto Pyramid Principle and the SCR Framework": "If you simplify this further, there are three parts to every narrative: Situation, Complication, Resolution. 1. Situation: What is the state of affairs today. Facts, data, and unambiguous background. 2. Complication: What has changed that requires action. What is the problem? 3. Resolution: What we need to do to resolve this complication."
Structure business communications around a Situation, Complication, and Resolution to provide necessary context before proposing solutions.
Establish Shared Situations
From "Essential reading for product builders—part 2": "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.’"
Achieve executive level clarity by starting with a non-controversial set of facts that everyone can agree on before introducing complications.
Templates & Frameworks
- SCR (Situation-Complication-Resolution) Framework (The Minto Pyramid Principle and the SCR Framework) - A narrative structure for business communication derived from the universal story arc. Provides context before the recommendation to avoid being too abrupt. Als
- The Minto Pyramid Principle (The Minto Pyramid Principle and the SCR Framework) - A communication framework developed by Barbara Minto at McKinsey for structuring persuasive business arguments. Instead of building up from data to conclusions
- 6-Part Ask Template (On asking for help (even when you really don’t want to)) - A structured template for making effective help requests in professional contexts. Can be adapted based on relationship strength, goal overlap, and recipient ex
- Writing Quality Improvement Checklist (500,000) - Actionable steps for improving newsletter writing quality based on Lenny's experience and three recommended books
- The Executive Editor GPT (How to become a supermanager with AI) - A custom GPT that grades written communications (emails, decks, Slack messages) on structure, clarity, level of detail, and tone, and provides actionable improv
- TLDR + Context Message Structure (Wes Kao) - A format for written business communication that puts the most important point at the top followed by optional context below
- Using AI as a Writing/Editing Partner (Seth Godin) - Seth's specific process for using Claude as an editorial assistant while maintaining authorial voice.
- Combined SCR + Minto Pyramid Framework (The Minto Pyramid Principle and the SCR Framework) - The integration of both frameworks: SCR provides the narrative wrapper, and the Minto Pyramid structures the Resolution section specifically.
See references/artifacts.md for the full list with details.
Questions to Help Users
- "Who is the primary audience for this document, and what is the one thing you need them to do after reading?"
- "What is the shared, non-controversial Situation that everyone involved can agree on?"
- "If you had to put your main recommendation in the first sentence, what would it say?"
- "What are the specific areas where you need critical feedback versus just general awareness?"
- "Which supporting data or facts might be missing that would strengthen your Resolution?"
- "How can we transition this update from a synchronous meeting to an asynchronous document?"
Common Mistakes to Flag
- Leading with the discovery process - Busy stakeholders care about the conclusion first and the discovery process second.
- Burying the ask - Unclear requests create friction and delay the help or decisions you need to move forward.
- Ignoring the Situation - Proposing solutions without shared context leads to misalignment and unnecessary debate over the problem itself.
- Over-reliance on AI generation - Using AI without a strict planning phase results in generic content that lacks your unique perspective and authority.
Deep Dive
For all 13 sourced insights from 12 guests, see references/guest-insights.md
- Product Reviews
- Executive Communication
- Managing Up
- Running Meetings