You don't need to work so hard to help your colleagues.

Often, when a colleague asks you to answer a question about your strategy, project, department, or other area of work, your first instinct can be to craft a bespoke answer to the question. This can often involve making a new document, diagram, or even a whole slide deck!

Stop.

You can avoid doing so much work.

Instead, consider how you might develop an evergreen canonical document, slide deck, or diagram that would answer the question (and probably many other questions) that you can use over and over each time someone asks the same or similar question.

The wonderful advantage of this approach is not just saving your time and effort. It also gives your colleagues who might keep circling around the same topics the confidence that there is one consistent plan that is always in effect and driving all decisions (and if there isn't - there SHOULD be).

By showing them the same diagram each time, their visual memory is triggered and they can think "Oh thaaaat's right - I've seen this before, and the answer is obvious and consistent each time I ask".

I always like to have these kinds of diagrams and documents laying around (to name just a few).

1 x product strategy deck (including principles, assumptions etc).

1 x product stack diagram

1 x roadmap

1 x problem/persona description/diagram

1 x org chart

And so on...

Stop doing so much work.

Stop making up your answers on the fly.

Stop re-formulating your information over and over.

Take advantage of reusable documents and your audience's visual memory to engender more confidence and deliver better, more consistent results.