What would you say is the most important business skill?
It varies by person, but in my experience at a consulting firm, I feel that "starting with the conclusion" is a top candidate.
This is no exaggeration. It's the very first item in the book What First-Year Consultants Learn, and similar advice appears in almost every business skill book. Nowadays, "start with the conclusion" has become a standard business convention.
In my case, when I joined the company, my direct supervisor immediately demanded this of me. For example, it went like this:
Me: "Excuse me, I have something to discuss..."
Boss: "What is it?"
Me: "I was explaining the regulations at the client's office, and a question came up regarding Article 2. They asked, 'What is the difference between a purpose and a goal?' so I answered like this..."
Boss: "Adachi-san, conclusion first."
Me: "Oh, sorry! Uh... please wait a moment... Is it correct that 'the difference between purpose and goal is qualitative vs. quantitative'?"
Boss: "No. That explanation is wrong. Is that what you told the client?"
Me: "Eh? I thought it was the difference between qualitative and quantitative... but when I look up 'goal' in the glossary..."
Boss: "Adachi-san, the conclusion."
Me: "I-I'm sorry. Yes, that is how I explained it."
Boss: "So, what are you going to do?"
Me: "I suppose a correction is necessary. I need to figure out what kind of setting is needed to re-explain the difference..."
Boss: "Conclusion first."
Me: "Y-Yes! ...Uh... I will report the correction to the client. It's hard to bring up, so I'd like your advice."
Boss: "Understood."
In this way, there were times when I was told "What's the conclusion?" multiple times in a single conversation.
My boss would calmly say it without getting angry, but I often felt like I was wasting his time and being a nuisance.
In that sense, I am grateful to the boss who patiently stuck with my training.
Not even one in ten people can "start with the conclusion" without training
However, after I became a manager myself, I began to think that my boss probably couldn't afford to get angry every time.
That's because there are so few people who can "start with the conclusion."
Intuitively, not even one in ten people can accurately start with the conclusion without any training. Perhaps "starting with the conclusion" is different from the innate human thought pattern.
Naturally, we probably tend to "speak in the order events occurred."
Therefore, it's like swimming; it's okay if you can't do it from the start. Getting angry at someone and asking "Why can't you swim!" won't make them swim. You have to patiently give advice and repeat training until they can.
What I did for those who struggle to start with the conclusion
Naturally, just as some people are bad at swimming, many people never seem to learn how to start with the conclusion.
For example, one new consultant was a pleasant young man, but he really struggled with this. No matter how many times I pointed it out, he couldn't break the habit of starting with "events" rather than the conclusion.
So, based on my experience, I observed why he couldn't do it.
1. You can't start with the conclusion when you want to make excuses
The first thing I discovered was the fact that when people want to make an "excuse," they cannot start with the conclusion.
Take the conversation at the beginning, for example.
When I gave the wrong explanation to the client and my boss asked, "Is that what you told them?", I couldn't start with the conclusion "I did." I started with an excuse.
Of course, this is the worst choice, as making excuses is more likely to make the situation worse. However, it's not uncommon for excuses to slip out to avoid an immediate unpleasant event.
Therefore, the "speaker" must strive to be frank, and the "receiver" must create a situation where they "do not get angry or yell."
This is almost identical to how much "psychological safety" can be created through mutual effort.
So, when receiving reports as a manager, I focused all my energy on "not scaring the other person."
2. You can't start with the conclusion when rushed
Secondly, when rushed for an answer, people often fail to start with the conclusion.
For example, people who have developed the habit of "consulting the boss anyway because they don't know what they don't know" cannot answer immediately when asked "What is the problem?"
So, they try to explain just the current situation to get the boss to understand somehow. But it's usually incoherent, so to the boss, it looks like they aren't starting with the conclusion.
However, the boss must never rush them by saying "Hurry up and say it." They came to the boss because their ability to summarize is low to begin with. Rushing them creates a vicious cycle where it becomes even harder for them to come for advice.
So, what to do? What my boss did is a good reference.
When my boss asked "What's the conclusion?" and I struggled to state the consultation content, he would slowly take out paper and a pencil from his desk and start summarizing my story (sometimes he'd go to the whiteboard).
I could speak with peace of mind, and my boss would summarize it into text and diagrams. In short, it was like being consulted by the boss. After this happened a few times, he eventually handed me the paper and said, "Try summarizing what you want to say."
When I showed him the summary, he would interview me using it and then correct the paper. This was repeated, and eventually, I started summarizing things on paper myself before going to the boss.
This effect killed two birds with one stone. It allowed for "consulting with subordinates" and "training the skills consultants need at client sites" at the same time. Naturally, after becoming a manager, I imitated my boss and provided this to my subordinates.
3. You can't start with the conclusion unless it becomes a habit
Thirdly, "starting with the conclusion" is a type of habit, so it won't be executed unless it's ingrained.
Newcomers don't have that habit, so some kind of mechanism was needed to create it. My boss's idea was to make "To start with the conclusion..." a mandatory opening phrase.
You start every time by saying, "To start with the conclusion..."
Because of this system, even people who couldn't do it would start with that phrase, making the Japanese spoken in the office quite interesting. However, when this habit spread, two interesting things happened.
First, if someone said "To start with the conclusion..." but didn't actually start with it, they would realize it themselves: "Oh, sorry! I'm not starting with the conclusion, am I?"
Second, some subordinates started saying, "I'm intentionally not starting with the conclusion, but..."
My boss allowed that freedom, but once the phrase became a habit, a self-check effect kicked in.
These three are the reasons why "starting with the conclusion" is difficult, and the actual countermeasures that were taken. All three are certainly effective.
That said, in the end, the most important point might have been that the boss recognized that "it takes time for everyone to be able to do it."
In other words, "starting with the conclusion" strongly reflects a "corporate culture" where what needs to be said must be said frankly. Without forming that culture, it would probably be difficult to make it stick just by imitating the surface level.
