The Lego Challenge

Let me tell you about a really interesting article that I read some time ago. It was about a Lego model, very similar to this one:

The model has a pretty unstable roof which puts the monkey in danger as it’s supported by only one brick in one corner.

Now, the researchers in that article asked people for their ideas on how to improve the stability of the roof.

Many of them had the idea of including a column at the front right or adding supporting bricks between the building and the roof.

Surprisingly few of them had the idea of removing something – like the single brick directly under the roof.

When you do that, you’ll achieve a very solid structure.

The researchers derived an interesting observation which they supported with more experiments. It seems that when we’re faced with solving a problem, we’re biased to add things rather than remove things.

And isn’t the same true for our communication?

I mean, when people don’t get what we mean, we often tend to include another argument, a metaphor, an anecdote, maybe a visual, or a table, throw more stats at them …

Rather than to take a step back, evaluate the structure, and ask ourselves, so which story has the best potential of resonating the most with our audience? Or which is the strongest argument?

And then really focus on that one.

Tweak it.
Refine it.

Until it’s razor sharp.
And crystal clear.

How would you have fixed the structure?

How do you approach this in your communication?

PS: In the meantime, researchers have added a little more nuance to these findings in a new article.