I received a notification today for a meeting of the board of a voluntary organisation. Saturday. 9.00 am. All good. Except for two fairly important details. 9.00 am in which time zone? And what time will the meeting finish?

Those are not minor details. Not when people are joining from several time zones and giving up their precious time on a Saturday.

So, I replied, asking for clarification. No problem, you might think. But now imagine a meeting with potentially 100 attendees.

If only half of them ask the same question, that is 50 people stopping what they are doing, writing an email, and then having to look out for a response. Even if only a quarter ask, that is still 25 unnecessary exchanges. But the bigger productivity cost may fall on the sender, whose inbox now fills with variations of exactly that same question.

A few seconds spent making the original message clearer could save a surprising amount of collective time.

That is why, before I send an important notification, I like to run through a simple Clarity Checklist, made up of the usual questions: Who? What? When? Where? What next? I don’t think there’s any surprise there.

The one that most people leave out is: What’s missing? In other words, have I anticipated the obvious follow-up questions?

Good communication means removing the avoidable questions that stand between the message and action. The productivity time lost whilst dealing with all those follow-up exchanges can have an important cost consequence in organisations.

Clarity saves time, and clearly saves money.  It is one of the principles at the heart of my HACKS Code: Humility, Authenticity, Clarity, Kindness and Sincerity.

So, whatever important notification you’re sending out, please, please, please – anticipate the obvious questions. That will tell you what is missing from your message.

I’ll be sharing more about my book, The HACKS Code, ahead of its launch. Contact me if you’d like to be notified when it goes live.