Communicating effectively requires that communicators eliminate clutter and sharply define the core concept they want to get across. The payoff is a simple, memorable message. Here is a similar, but slightly different vantage point on that notion.
In this TED video, Simon Sinek introduces the Golden Circle (I’ve reproduced his drawing at right). He says most people and organizations start at the outside and work their way in – first describing what they do or make, and how they do it. Why they do what they do gets short shrift.
Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.
– Steve Jobs
Of all the smart and/or inspirational Steve Jobs quotes I’ve seen since his passing, this one might be my favorite. Jobs and Apple certainly mastered the art of making the complex simple. I have no idea what goes on inside an iPod or iPhone, but turning them on and making them do what they do is as easy as falling off a log (which I don’t think I’ve ever done, so the iPod is easier, in my experience).
My only contention with the quote would be the idea of “can be” where the quote applies to my profession. Achieving simplicity and clarity in communication is always harder than leaving things complex and muddled. You whittle away everything but the core message you’re trying to get across — and then you mold what’s left into a memorable creation.
To be memorable, a concept has to be simple, its meaning immediately grasped (one of my all time favorites is “Where’s the Beef?!”). If the idea requires lengthy explanation to achieve meaning — or an eighty-six page PowerPoint deck — the message has no chance of landing.
A colleague chided me a couple years ago for my determination to achieve simplicity in communicating our brand value proposition. “We need to accept that this concept is inherently complex,” she said. Others agreed and a complex approach carried the day. Not surprisingly, the initiative died for lack of support because no one was willing to sit through a lengthy explanation colored by many shades of nuance.
Most people say “Keep it simple.” That makes it sound easy.
You have to make it simple. That’s hard work worth doing, because simple is smart.
A friend of mine recently recounted a meeting he had with his management team. The team was considering how to communicate to company executives eye-opening findings from a project my friend and his team had undertaken. They set out to gauge employees’ reaction to a set of questions about the business, and learned that employees and leaders weren’t in sync on delivering a critical element of the company’s strategy.
One of the managers in the meeting said, “The problem we’re going to have to overcome is, no one asked us to do this.”
“I don’t think I heard another word the rest of the meeting,” my friend said. “I just kept hearing, ‘The problem is … no one asked us to do this …‘ I was struck dumb. Would our higher-ups really be more comfortable marching ahead without all of the information they needed to be successful? Or was it a matter of us being fearful about delivering potentially bad news (even if it would necessarily involve helping to develop a plan to keep the strategy on track)?”
Sad to say, the learnings from my friend’s project are gathering dust on a shelf.
Look around your work place and ask yourself: Is the fact that no one asks you to do something that could generate real value for the business (even if the effort gives rise to an unexpected result or a need to take a hard look in the mirror) a good thing … or a problem to be overcome?
If it’s the latter, you’re working for the wrong people.
I love these quotes, the first from the creator of IBM’s first corporate design program, the second from the company’s enlightened and beloved CEO from 1952-1971.
They speak to the importance of being smart and aligning everything you do to the business objectives you intend to achieve, and eliminating everything that doesn’t specifically and purposefully advance the objective.
Companies that understand this and do it well — IBM and Apple to name two — take their business to a new level and are truly worthy of others’ envy (check out this ad campaign from IBM, for example). Those that fail to achieve a level of corporate self-actualization risk foundering in brand chaos.
My assigned subject was “Employees As Ambassadors for Your Brand,” so I talked about how we approach the challenge of developing brand ambassadors at Best Buy. Brand ambassadors are employees who are passionate about the company for which they work; deliver a second-to-none experience for customers; and take personal responsibility for convincing customers to love the company and/or its product(s) and encouraging them to come back again and again and again.
At Best Buy, we believe employees need four key needs to be met in order to become brand ambassadors:
A few of us here at the old Best Buy put our heads together a while back and came up with an employee communications heirarchy along the lines of what Abraham Maslow did in his 1943 Theory of Human Motivation. You know Maslow’s Hierarchy, which plots people’s needs on a continuum beginning with food, water and air at the bottom, and moving up through safety, belonging and self-esteem to self-actualization (vitality, creativity and meaningfulness) at the very top. When one need is fulfilled, it no longer motivates and the next need takes its place.
We applied the concept behind Maslow’s work to organizational communications, and what employees need from the companies for which they work. The bulk of our effort was aimed at answering the question, “What do our employees need from us (as a corporate communications function)?” and evaluating our work to see how well (or not) we align – structurally and strategically – to our audiences’ needs and wants. Secondarily, it was instructive to really see that responsibility for the most foundational aspects of our employees’ communication needs fall outside our purview.
I really like this message.
A friend of mine recently recounted a meeting he had with his management team. The team was considering how to communicate to company executives eye-opening findings from a project my friend and his team had undertaken. They set out to gauge employees’ reaction to a set of questions about the business, and learned that employees and leaders weren’t in sync on delivering a critical element of the company’s strategy.
