I don’t think the author is proposing all communication should be in this style. When you’re telling a story, sure, it’s fine to keep people in suspense. But is suspense a tool you should use to communicate to a loved one when you’ve been in an accident?
Some work communications are more like the former and some are more like the latter. But most of us default to the narrative/suspenseful style 95% of the time.
But we should be more deliberate, and in some settings use the inverted pyramid structure to eliminate suspense from our communication.
Kind of. I thought the original advice from the author's boss at the top of the article (order of "punchline" with no adjectives, then current status, then next steps, then explanation) is great advice. The problem with the author's telling of his son's story is he basically completely left out step 4, the explanation.
I think the value in the original advice is not that any of the steps is more important than the other, but doing them in that order ensures you don't try to sugarcoat or obfuscate the actual thing that happened: it forces the team to clearly acknowledge the facts without bias.
But yeah, just telling the story without explanation is missing a big part of the detail to actually understand what happened.
Felt strongly enough about this that I actually took the time up write an actual literal paper letter (or maybe an email, don't remember... but paper letter , stamp, walk 20 miles uphill to post office works better for dramatic effect ) back in 2004 to ask the question.
The question was asked in the magazine and the answer by Mr. Kapur was published in the magazine.... but my google-fu cannot find the answer he had posted back then...
Unfortunately, I don't remember the answer so the cliffhanger continues.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2567061/no-bull-approa...
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2567290/no-more-bull.a...
Would it hurt to communicate what happened? No, it adds important detail. Especially on a phone call, there’s much more bandwidth for explaining “I’m ok” without explicitly saying it through tone of voice. As a parent, the bull being dead is entirely irrelevant. So, “I hit a bull on the way home but I’m fine” would have done the trick without any annoying cliffhangers. Similarly for the author’s lack of explanation of what happened.
Either way, the delivery on the phone is not limited to the order of the clauses, it's also in the tone of voice. Saying "I hit a bull" while sobbing conveys something entirely different than calmly stating "I hit a bull." Over the phone the entirety of the message can be heard and the order matters less.