Start with the one thing your audience will remember
Palkhivala's annual Budget speeches at Bombay's Brabourne Stadium drew crowds that cricket matches would envy. People stood for hours to hear a lawyer dissect finance bills. He never opened with definitions or disclaimers. He opened with the single consequence that mattered most to the person in the last row of the stands. Every speech was built around one central claim, stated early and plainly, and everything else was evidence for it.Chanakya wrote in the Arthashastra that a minister who cannot state his counsel in one sentence has not understood the problem. Palkhivala understood this instinctively. Before preparing any explanation of a complicated thing, write down the one sentence your audience should leave with. If you cannot write it, you are not ready to speak.The practical test: after drafting any presentation or report, cover everything except the opening paragraph. If that paragraph does not contain your central claim in plain words, restructure before you do anything else.
