You will produce a tested core message and audience profile for a real talk.
Arjun is a data analyst at a private healthcare group. In six weeks he has to present his team's findings on missed appointments to the clinic managers' monthly meeting. He has a folder of charts, a vague sense of what he wants to say, and a habit of starting with the slides and hoping the point turns up on the way.
This exercise stops that habit. You will write a core message and an audience profile for a real talk, then test the message on two people before you build anything else. It takes about twenty minutes, plus the time it takes to catch two colleagues.
Pick a talk you will actually give in the next two months. A team update, a project review, a proposal to your manager, a client briefing or a session at an industry event all count. A real talk matters because every later module in this course builds on what you write today, and because you will be more honest about a room you will actually face.
If nothing is scheduled, choose an update you give regularly, or a proposal you have been meaning to make. Arjun chose the clinic managers' meeting.
Write one sentence, under 20 words, with a claim someone could disagree with. Use the tests from lesson 1.1, Say one thing your audience will remember: it has a verb, it makes a claim rather than naming a topic, and you can say it in one breath.
Arjun's first attempt was "Missed appointments analysis, January to June". That is a topic. His second was "Missed appointments are a problem we should address." That has a verb but no one would disagree with it. His third was "Sending a reminder two days before, not one, would cut missed appointments at our busiest clinics." Someone could argue with that, which is the point.
Count the words. Arjun's third version has 16.
Answer the four questions from lesson 1.2, Who is listening and what do they need, in full sentences. One way to lay it out is a two-column table, with the question on the left and your answer on the right.
Who is in the room: seven clinic managers, the operations director who chairs, and one person from the patient service team. What they already know: they see missed appointments every day, but not the pattern across clinics or by day of the week. What worries them: more work for front-desk staff, and patients complaining about too many messages. What I want them to do: agree to trial the earlier reminder at two clinics for three months.
Then read the core message again with the profile beside it. Arjun noticed that his message said nothing about front-desk workload, which was the managers' main worry. He did not change the message, but he made a note that his second point had to answer it.
Find two people. Ideally one is like your audience and one is not: a colleague who knows the subject, and a friend or family member who does not. Read your message aloud once. Do not explain it, add context or show slides. Then ask: "In your own words, what am I going to argue?"
Write down what each person says, word for word if you can. Most people skip this, and it is the most useful step in the module. You know what you meant. The test tells you what you said.
Arjun's colleague in the analytics team said, "You want to change the reminder timing." Close enough. His sister, a teacher, said, "Clinics should send more reminders." That was not what he meant. He was proposing a different timing, not an extra message, and the managers' worry about patients getting too many messages would have landed straight on that misunderstanding.
When someone's version differs from yours, look first at your own wording. Find the gap. Which word led them off? In Arjun's case it was "reminder", which people heard as "another reminder".
His fourth version: "Moving our one reminder from one day before to two days before would cut missed appointments." He tested it on his sister again. She said, "Send the same reminder a day earlier." That matched.
Keep going until both people say back something you would sign. It usually takes two or three rounds. If it takes more than four, you may have two messages in one sentence, and you should pick one.
You are finished when you have three things on one page. At the top is your final core message, under 20 words. Under it sits your four-question profile. At the bottom, write each tester's version next to the wording they heard, round by round, so you can see how the sentence changed.
Arjun's page had four versions of the message, two testers' replies to the last two, and a note on the managers' worry. That page became the top of his outline in module 2.
Your own page is next. Pick your two testers before you start writing, so the test happens today and not in some vague later week.
Write the message and profile, test the message on two people, and note their versions next to your final wording.
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