Concise communication in government is not a writing problem. It is a thinking problem.
The expert’s instinct
There’s a moment that happens in most government meetings. Someone who knows their subject exceptionally well is asked a direct question: “What’s your recommendation?” “What are the key risks?” “What do you think?”
They answer completely. The context. The caveats. The assumptions. The history. The dependencies. And somewhere in the middle of it, the room stops listening. Not because the answer is wrong. Because it didn’t arrive in a form they could use:
- Ask a business analyst for a summary of requirements and they’ll walk you through the stakeholder discussions behind them.
- Ask an enterprise architect for the key risk and they’ll start with system dependencies.
- Ask a policy adviser for their view and they’ll outline the full policy landscape before landing a recommendation.
This isn’t hesitation. It’s a responsibility.
Experts know how much sits behind a ‘simple’ answer. They know what can go wrong if context is lost. They know that incomplete explanations can lead to poor decisions.
So, they default to completeness. The problem is that their audience does not have the same constraint. In a meeting, under time pressure and with competing demands for attention, completeness is not what gets heard. Clarity is.
What the listener actually needs
When someone asks a direct question, they are not asking for your working, they are asking for your conclusion. With just enough reasoning to support it. In most cases: Headline first. Explanation second.
Not the other way around.
Because when the conclusion comes last, the listener has to assemble the argument in real time. And most people simply won’t do that under pressure. They’ll form an interpretation from whatever they heard first.
Why do the most capable people struggle most
This pattern is most visible in expert roles: analysts, architects, policy professionals and technical leads. The people with the deepest knowledge often find it hardest to communicate clearly in the moment.
Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge. Once you fully understand something, it becomes difficult to remember what it felt like not to know it. You lose sight of the cognitive effort your explanation requires from someone else.
This is not a communication failure in the usual sense. It is a by-product of expertise itself. And it explains why the most knowledgeable people are often told they need to be ‘more concise’.
The fix: brevity and structure
A common response is to shorten answers. Fewer words. Less detail. Briefer responses.
That helps, but only at the surface level. Because you can be brief and still unclear, three sentences can still bury the point.
The real issue is not how much you say, it’s what you choose to say first.
Structure under pressure
What changes performance is not simply speaking more concisely, but structuring your thinking so that the conclusion comes first – reliably, under pressure, without preparation.
This is where many experts struggle. Not because they lack knowledge, but because they have not had to organise their thoughts for real-time delivery. Being able to Think on Your Feet® is the skill of doing exactly that:
- Forming a clear conclusion quickly.
- Selecting only the supporting information that matters.
- Delivering both in a way that others can follow immediately.
It is not about simplifying expertise. It is about making expertise usable.
If you’ve ever been told your communication needs to be more concise or walked out of a meeting wishing your answer had landed more cleanly, the fix is learnable. Think on Your Feet® is a practical programme for structuring real-time communication, available through Government Campus and directly with Indigo. Learn more →
What this series is about: Over the next few weeks, we’ll explore why over-explaining is so common in government and professional roles, why it disproportionately affects subject-matter experts, and what a more structured approach looks like in practice.
We’ll look at the moments where it matters most:
- The impromptu question in a meeting.
- The verbal briefing under pressure.
- The decision point where someone turns to you and says, “What do you think?”
And we’ll look at how to respond in a way that holds attention and gets the point across.
