Make Yourself Clear: Distill it Down

In a graduate school class, one exercise we do is taking the context of a complex situation and simplify it down in such a way that someone not familiar with business (or business-speak) can understand. This paragraph has a lot of information. We don't want them to focus on what the company did or plans to do. Simply put - what is going on? Our students came up with: Boeing may lose more than half of its skilled workforce to retirement by 2020.

The next part of the exercise is to identify the business objective: Boeing now needs to build a talent pipeline of skilled workers.

Next, we identify the strategy: By investing in community partnerships and development programs, Boeing can work with learners across the entire life continuum from K-12 students to executives.

Finally, we discuss the learning programs that were implemented.