The power of ten minutes!

Here's something I keep hearing.

"Hey James, this presentation would have been really good if only I'd had more time"! That old chestnut - leaders telling me they don't have time to prepare properly before important conversations. Before the board update. Before the difficult one-to-one. Before the moment that actually matters.

And I believe them. I do.

Because I can also see their calendars. Back-to-back meetings. Hour-long sessions that could have been thirty minutes. Accepting invitations to meetings when a polite no thanks, just send me the actions afterwards. And so on...

They're not lazy. They're drowning. And the cruel irony is that the very busyness stealing their time is being generated by all the unclear, under-prepared communication that came before.

The meeting that needed a follow-up meeting. The decision that nobody felt clear enough to make. The email chain that went to fourteen people because the original message wasn't direct enough to land with one.

Unclear communication creates more meetings. More meetings leave no time to prepare. And round and round it goes.

What ten minutes actually changes!

A few years ago, before a high-stakes investor call, a client of mine, a CEO had eight minutes between two back-to-back meetings. He used to sprint through those gaps checking emails, messages and more. That day, I was with him we used that time differently.

We answered three questions. What is the one thing I need them to grasp? What concern will they have that I need to be prepared for? And what do I want them to do when it's over.

Or in my super simple language: What - So what - Now what!

Eight minutes. That's all.

He told me afterwards that it was the best version of that conversation he'd ever had. Not because of what he knew. He always knew the content. But because for the first time, he knew what he was going to deliver before he walked in the door.

Preparation isn't about memorising more. It's about being clear on your intention before the moment arrives, so the moment doesn't just happen to you.

Most people walk into important conversations cold. They know the subject matter. They know the data. What they haven't decided is what they want to shift in the person sitting across from them. So they present. They inform. They update. And they leave having moved nothing.

The goal of preparation isn't perfection. It's presence. Knowing what you're there to do frees you to actually do it.

What does this mean for you?

I'm not asking you to block out an hour. I'm suggesting ten minutes before the conversations that count.

Cancel the meeting that didn't need to be an hour. Decline the one you don't need to be in. Protect that thinking space, not to scroll, not to reply to the thing in your inbox, but to ask yourself: what is the purpose of this next thing?

Because here's the truth. Your people aren't just waiting for information from you. They're waiting to feel the clarity of someone who has thought about what they're going to say before they say it.

That's rare. And they will remember it.

The leaders cutting through right now aren't the ones with the fullest diaries. They're the ones who, even briefly, stopped before the door and had absolute clarity as to what comes next.

Busyness will always try to fill that gap.

So, if you had ten minutes before your next important conversation, not to prepare more content, but to get clear on what you actually want to happen, what action would you take?

Start there. Remarkable communicators are rarely the most polished. They're usually just the most intentional.