AI on Comms: Rule of thumb for communication in MSD programmes

Somebody smarter than us once said, “good communication is like a fart – silent or loud – if it doesn’t get noticed, you’ve failed.” Effective communication is an underappreciated and underdeveloped skill set for the MSD professional, often relegated to a communications team to develop formal, public-facing (i.e. funder-facing) outputs. But MSD professionals simply can’t do their jobs without putting the right words in the right order. From speaking with businesses about potential opportunities, to households about their sanitation habits, to troubleshooting tricky partnerships, to describing to a funder just erm, uhh, what exactly is the ‘systemic change’ you’ve been ‘facilitating’ for the last three years.

Comms matters. It can’t be siloed to one part of the team. But the comms struggle is real. So, let’s ask our AI friend, OMG, how we can avoid simply blowing a lot of hot air with our MSD communications.

OMG, what are some rules of thumb for effective communications for an MSD professional?

OMG: Know What They Care About

• Funders: Impact interests them – whether in numbers or stories. Ideally both. But don’t forget that funders are also interested in their host country government’s agenda – help them connect this work to that agenda.
• Businesses: Talk profit, reduced risk, market share, reliable supply chains, not inclusive facilitation, systemic change, or sector transformation.
• Local communities: Make it about their lives: better access, fair prices, fewer losses, dependable incomes.
• Rule: Tailor your pitch or prepare to watch eyes glaze over.

Hmm, TBH, I’m not sure I’m getting my money’s worth for my paid subscription, OMG. Targeting your communications to your audience is Comms 101, isn’t it?  With many of these communication skills, the problem isn’t that the humble MSD professional doesn’t know what good comms versus bad comms is, it’s that they forget to translate their internal MSD-ese into what matters for their audience.

Linked to knowing what they care about, is knowing what you care about. What’s the point of your comms? Is it to build a relationship, inform somebody of an opportunity or try to influence them to do something different? Why you’re communicating is equally as important as tailoring your message to whom you’re communicating with.

OMG: Talk Like a Human Being

• Skip the jargon. If your message sounds like it was written by a committee, no one will remember it. Be conversational and clear.
• Rule: If your audience has to Google half the words you say, you’ve lost them.

Hard yes, OMG. Although this hurts coming from a non-human. One of the lessons of effective communication in MSD programmes is to avoid using many of the words we MSD nerds associate with your average MSD programme. Functions and facilitation are all fine and good, but experience suggests the more we use everyday language, the better people will understand WTF we’re trying to do.

But OMG, shouldn’t we recognise that impenetrable comms lies deep within the DNA of the development industry as a whole? It’s not just an MSD problem, right? Aren’t we swimming against a tide of bloviation?

OMG: Indeed. Development organisations are notorious for jargon-laden, impenetrable prose.

Here’s a gem from the world of development-speak:

“The programme seeks to operationalise an ecosystemic, demand-driven approach to sustainable livelihoods by facilitating multi-sectoral stakeholder engagements, fostering enabling environments, and embedding locally contextualised capacity-building interventions to drive systemic impact at scale.”

Translation: We’re trying to help people make a living by working with different groups and teaching useful skills.

And great choice of word, my human friend. Bloviation refers to verbose, inflated speech or writing that is long-winded and pompous but ultimately says little of substance. It’s often used to describe political or bureaucratic language that sounds impressive but lacks clarity or meaningful content. Perfectly suited to much of development-sector jargon!

Keep It Short

• People have no patience for a 20-minute explanation of how your program works. Give them the highlights, then answer questions if they’re curious.
• Rule: Brevity wins. If you can’t explain it in a sentence, you don’t understand it.

A tip close to our heart, OMG. Rarely does somebody ask for a longer explanation of things. In fact, being able to explain something succinctly and clearly is a rule of thumb for how well you understand something. The depth of your expertise is not measured by the length of your sentences. It’s not the size of your knowledge, but what you do with it. It takes effort to communicate effectively. A quote, variously attributed to Cicero, Pascal and Twain springs to mind: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

But as any MSD professional understands, knowing how to communicate effectively is only a part of the puzzle. You’ve got to have a reason (ahem, an incentive) to be clear and concise. The hard truth is that sometimes people use confusing, lengthy communications on purpose. It could be that they don’t have anything of substance to say so are hiding under the comfort blanket of wholesome development words. Who can argue with gender-transformative, climate-resilient inclusive anything? Or it could be because they’re being paid by the word to develop a bid that ticks all of the development jargon boxes.

The point is, MSD practitioners need to recognise that communication isn’t just a soft skill — it’s the skill that can make or break their work. MSD is not just about thinking and acting differently, OMG, it’s also about communicating differently. Whether you’re persuading a business, explaining systemic change to a funder or keeping your team from confusing itself with word salads, your comms must be practical, relatable and understood by your audience. Good communication needs to connect. Talk like a human, keep it short and simple, bring it to life.

We always try to take the pulse of what’s happening in the systemsphere. OMG’s uncle, Al Gorithm, fills our feeds with what the latest systems thinkers have posted on Medium. And we’ve noticed an uptick in systemic, well, everything. What does this tell us? Are we collectively getting more systemic? Is that a good thing? Or is everybody just taking the (syste)Mick?

OMG, why are our socials so full of systemfluencers these days?

OMG: Systems are like Hansel in Zoolander – just so hot right now.

via GIPHY

In international development, the misuse of the term systemic is rife, often due to a desire to sound strategic and sophisticated or to invoke structural critique without clarity. But now that everyone’s using the term, is there a risk that we choke on our own jargon monoxide? For example, “Governance for Systemic and Transformational Change” – who wouldn’t want some of that… but what does it really mean?

You’re becoming cynical, OMG. Maybe you need a holiday. Lots of things are systemic. Poverty, inequality, the failure of the England men’s football team to win a World Cup since 1966. In recent weeks, we saw ‘systemic’ related to climate change, impact investing, gender norms and regulatory reforms. Humour us, OMG. We have always pushed for more systemic thinking and action, so what’s the downside of more people identifying as systems thinkers, doers and funders?

OMG: Labels are easy. ‘Systemwashing’ is becoming a thing. Like greenwashing, it’s a branding exercise that cloaks business as usual in the language of progressive change. By putting a splash of systems dressing on your development word salad, your proposal gets funded or your post gets all liked up. But in many cases, while poverty is framed as a systemic problem, the proposed solutions look strikingly conventional and un-systemic. Like planting kitchen gardens. Or training ten women to sew. You can’t fix a poisoned water supply with a life coach.

Hmm, sage words from the nepo-bot. But with an uncle who said he invented the internet, we’d expect nothing less. Because we can be so wobbly about what systemic even means, there is a risk of putting systemic lipstick on a direct delivery pig. And now you have made us think about it, there’s another downside to overusing the S word. If a problem is systemic, then of course it’s complex, intractable and not your fault if your soggy solution doesn’t work. It’s not you, it’s the system. You’re inoculated against critique. A handy get-out-of-jail-free card, right?

OMG: And you called me cynical…? But you have a point. Calling something systemic can be a convenient sleight of hand: a way to shift blame from individuals to structures. And it’s a way to sound serious while dodging specifics.

 ‘Systemsplaining’ is the development industry’s version of mansplaining. Real-world problems are cloaked in jargon-laden explanations of systems thinking, with superficial insights wrapped up in performative complexity, sprinkled with recycled buzzwords and infused with a dose of intellectual superiority – but little in the way of practicable actions. Instead of the comforting vagueness of the system-washer, with the systemsplainer you get the awestruck sense that this guy really knows his sh*t because you can’t understand him: “But slash-and-burn farming is just a visible symptom of deeper landscape-level governance deficits. We need to convene a multi-stakeholder platform to align incentives across the socio-ecological nexus.”

So, what’s the alternative, OMG? If we’ve oversystemed everything, how do we Make Systemic Meaningful Again?

OMG: The answer isn’t more systemic thinking, it’s better. Less diagram porn, more awkward conversations. Less bloviation, more action. Systemic used to mean we were prepared to go deep and seek clarity. Now it’s often just a vibe, like slapping ‘artisanal’ on a jar of mayonnaise. And it’s supposed to be about guiding our actions, to be more effective. So, if you’re gonna say the system’s broken, then act like it. Stay empirical. Demystify. Take risks. Make change happen.

Hard hitting, OMG. Quality over quantity, crunchiness over sogginess, perspiration over aspiration. But we still learn things in the real world that you don’t pick up on in the virtual one. A powerful way to reclaim the essence of a systems approach is to deploy the Fight Club mantra: the first rule of a systemic approach is that we don’t talk about a systemic approach. If we’re all suffering from system fatigue, let’s reclaim systems by not talking about them at all. Rather, use your common sense and common words to fight the systemic fight.

OMG: Indeed. There’s another type of creature out there, stealthier and more elusive: the systemseeker. They tend to be well camouflaged so they are easy to miss. They are grounded and pragmatic. They talk the language of the sectors they work in and the partners they work with. A systemic approach is part of their DNA – their software – and not their business card or LinkedIn profile. They make it mean something to the right people, not all things to all people. They work on specifics, put boundaries around systems, make sense of messiness, add value to their partners, get stuff done.

It’s a jungle out there so if you want more help in spotting (or avoiding) systemwashers and systemsplainers, check out this field guide to system species.
And then take a look in the mirror: are you a washer, a ‘splainer or a seeker?