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You can’t delegate focus

This aspect is important. And that one, too. Also, don’t forget that other aspect. Oh, did I mention that this one over here is really important. You absolutely need to understand this.

And so, the website has given me about a dozen messages. All of which are important. Like really important.

But, really? Are they? Can they be? All of them?

Because let’s face it: I’m not going to take away a dozen messages. There’s just no way. I’m going to focus on the things that catch my attention and spark my interest the most (if the site’s lucky) or just leave if I can’t find any.

If you are unwilling to decide what’s most important, you’re essentially delegating that decision to your audience. It’s incredibly unlikely that they will agree with you that all of your messages are important. Like really important.

Our audience will focus. And we might not be too happy with their choice.

Focus is one of the tasks that we absolutely can’t delegate to our audience. Not if we care for our message. Not if it matters that they walk away with the right message. Rather than any message.

We just can’t risk that they take away the wrong things. And thus, we can’t delegate the decision to focus.

Let’s assume you’re having a smash hit product

Let’s assume that your communication works. You’ve made us see the brilliance of your product. People are buying from you, maybe in large numbers.

How does life look like for us? What’s different? Can you make me see that future? Can you make me see myself in that future?

Painting that picture might just be the story that you need to tell to actually convince us.

Surprisingly often, this story gets bypassed.

Surprisingly often, communicators stop at telling us about the the problems of the present. They offer us a solution and leave it to us to figure out how the solution works out for us: Here’s a problem … here’s a solution … now, please buy from us!

But what will I get? Will it be worth it? How will life look like with your solution? I might not be willing to figure it out myself if it’s too vague.

The desire for a better future is what creates the tension that’s required for action. The more tangible, the more tension.

Yet, make sure that it’s a true story. False stories destroy trust. True stories create it.

Fun or profound?

We watch movies to be entertained (mostly), but we don’t mind learning something in the process.

We listen to a presentation to learn something (mostly), but we don’t mind being entertained in the process.

Great novels don’t stop at being entertaining, they open our eyes to something profound we haven’t seen in quite that way before.

Likewise, great presentations don’t stop at making us discover a profound insight. They do so in an entertaining way.

It’s fun. And it’s profound.

Why choose only one?

Getting unstuck

If you could ask me one question about your communication, e.g. a question about something that’s holding you back. Or some aspect of lighting the path for your audience that you’ve never found a good answer to, yet … what would it be?

Well, here’s your chance. Head over to my new Q&A site to ask me that question and I might come back to it in one of the upcoming blog posts or podcasts episode to answer it.

So, what’s on your mind?

tb;dr

No! Most likely the reason why you didn’t bother to read the piece was not that it was too long but that it was too boring.

People have no issue with longform if they give a damn. People binge watch 5 episodes of Game of Thrones in a row and read books until late in the night. While skipping tweets and TikTok reels.

If someone has an issue sticking with a piece of communication, length is most likely not the issue.

It’s much more likely that either this piece is just not for you or that the creator of that piece didn’t care enough about who gives a damn and why.

So, for you: Who? And why?

And when it’s me, then draw me in. Step by step – at each step giving me a reason to care for this step.

What if it works?

“Let’s try this and see if it works.”

That’s the core of play. To try things that might work although we are not sure whether they actually do.

The core of work is often rather to avoid things that might not work. Let’s stick with what works although we are not sure whether there’s a different way of doing things.

In communication and the way we tell our story, play becomes the motor of business when we align our judgement with that of our audience.

The Matrix played with bullet time and turned it into a piece of culture. Red Bull uses extreme sports to carry their brand message and it’s now synonymous with the brand. Lawrence Lessig uses 20-30 slides per minute to tell his story and it spread his message widely because he spoke about creativity in a creative way.

What will you try this week?

Alex, the brilliant time waster

Alex is brilliant. Her words are often full of wisdom. In fact, I only know a handful of people who know as much about their field as she does.

Alex is also a huge time waster. Because her wisdom is usually the team’s to discover. Her thinking is dense. Her slides are packed with stuff that’s totally clear to her but not to her team. Her language is quite special with words that have a specific meaning to her but not to the team.

The sad part of the story is that this happens not only with brilliant minds like that of Alex but it is often the default even for people who are far less brilliant.

In fact, often we find ourselves to be ok with communication that lacks clarity. Somehow, it seems acceptable to have the team figure out what it all means. Rather than have one person invest the time to figure out how to speak with clarity, we have all the others invest the time to figure it out.

Great teams get stuff done more quickly because they have figured out how to speak with clarity (among other things, of course).

PS: Of course, Alex is not her real name.

The easiest way of getting to a “yes”

It’s a simple truth: The easiest way to get a decision maker to approve a decision is to offer something that they actually want. Of course, the obvious question is: What do you do when you need their approval for something that they don’t want?

Try empathy!

Why are they right to not want it? What do they want instead? How does what you want align to what they want? How could you modify the idea you want them to approve so that it also gets them what they want? How does your idea contribute to them getting what they really want?

It’s even better to ask these questions before you actually build your project, your product, your proposal. When you do, all you need to do with your pitch is to tell a true story about the thing you’ve built.

Play fast, but practice slowly

“In order to play fast, you gotta practice slowly.” That’s what my guitar teacher kept hammering on me. Each time I ignored his advice, I regretted it afterwards – bitterly.

What happens when you practice too fast too soon is that you practice with inaccuracies and turn them into muscle memory. Once in muscle memory, it’s super hard – and super frustrating – to get rid of sloppy technique. It took me way longer to get rid of sloppy muscle memory than it would have been to get to speed had I started slowly, but accurately.

As much as we’d like to get to speed by spreading our story fast and often, we’re likely to regret it if the story is sloppy and doesn’t quite nail it. Correcting the wrong story is way harder than spreading the right story. Even worse, once we’re used to using certain words and messages, they become second nature and it becomes increasingly hard to see better words and messages that truly nail it.

It pays to start a little slower, craft messages that truly nail it, practice telling them, refine them while we still run at a pace that allows for it, and then, when we’ve mastered our story, spread it wide and fast.

Spread the Word

Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz