Relevance Archive - Page 4 of 20 - The Art of Communicating

The double-edged “yes”

Hidden within every “yes”, there’s an implicit “no”.

Steve Jobs famously said that he was as proud of the things he hasn’t done as he is about those he did do. For him, saying “no” to many ideas meant that he had more time to focus on the things that deeply mattered to him and that he really did say “yes” to.

It’s an insight we tend to forget. Saying “yes” to one thing means saying “no” to all the things you could be doing instead of the thing you said “yes” to.

Saying “yes” often feels like the most harmonious response. Whether it’s agreeing to a colleague’s project proposal, accepting a social invitation, or undertaking a new responsibility, a “yes” can carry a world of positivity and opportunity.

But every choice has an opportunity cost. Each time we say “yes” to one endeavor, we are (consciously or unconsciously) saying “no” to another. Agreeing to work late on a project means declining the family dinner. Accepting an invitation for dinner with Tom means we can’t go out with Tim. These implicit “nos” often go unrecognized, but they have a profound impact on our time, priorities, and overall well-being.

Every “yes” is not just an acceptance, but also a decline of alternative possibilities. But is that what you really want?

Getting awareness of this duality allows us to be more deliberate in our choices and ensure that when we do say “yes”, it’s to the things that align most closely with our values and objectives.

Embracing “no” is not about becoming negative or closed-off. Rather, it’s about recognizing the interconnected nature of our decisions and the implicit trade-offs within them. It’s about making the unconscious conscious and empowering ourselves to choose with greater clarity.

How do you choose?

The chaos around us

The tricky thing about distractions is that they don’t always present themselves as such. In many cases, they come disguised as opportunities. A new job offer, a side project, or a shiny new tool can all seem like positive turns to take. Yet, when looked at from the perspective of our core objectives and values, it often becomes evident that these are divergences rather than enhancements.

Add to that the constant ping of social media notifications, the allure of new ideas, or the changing tides of opportunity and responsibility, and it almost feels like the Universe is conspiring to destroy clarity as soon as we arrive at it. A merciless endeavor on the Universe’s part that requires an equally merciless endeavor on our part to maintain focus and alignment with our goals.

Being able to clearly articulate the goals – and ideally, being able to explain them to others – can be an important step in refusing to allow the Universe to divert us from our path.

While we can’t control all that happens around us, we can control our reaction to it. We can decide to say “no” to opportunities when they are not aligned with our objectives or values. And we can strive to stay in control irrespective of the chaos around us.

Stop scrolling

Watch someone flick through TikTok reels and you’ll see a repeating pattern:

Lame! -> Flick
Lame! -> Flick
Lame! -> Flick
Oh, what’s that!? -> Stop scrolling !!

Only to discover – usually in a matter of 2-3 seconds – that it’s still kind of lame. So: flick again to continue the loop:

Lame! -> Flick
Lame! -> Flick
Oh, what’s that!? -> Stop scrolling !!

And this time, it’s actually kind of interesting. And before they’ve even noticed it, they’ve watched the reel for 40 seconds.

It’s a very simple principle:

Get their attention
Spark their interest
Only then dive deeper

With presentations it’s much the same, albeit on a very different time scale.

Someone starts their PowerPoint, you think: “Lame!” and tune out to switch your attention to planning your evening.

Another one starts their PowerPoint, you think: “Lame!” and tune out to switch your attention to improving your tennis swing.

Another one starts their presentation, you think: “Oh, what’s that!?” but they land on a generic agenda slide and you go “No, still kind of lame!”

It’s the same principle:

Get their attention
Spark their interest
Only then dive deeper

Your audience’s tolerance to dive deep – and therefore your impact – is limited before you’ve established attention and interest.

Keep lighting the path!

Addressing objections

A great way to improve your communication is to listen to your customer-facing teams, such as sales, tech support, or social media managers. If you have a system in place to collect all the objections that customers tell your teams, you can address each of them in your communication.

The obvious way to do this is to find (or come up with) ways to convince your audience that these objections are kind of untrue or don’t matter that much (or that it wasn’t your fault).

A much more unusual way is to use the collection of objections as a filter and embrace some of the objections to separate who your service is for and who it’s not for.

That way you can strengthen your communication for those who it is for.

In a way, rather than arguing why your are right and those who complain are wrong you acknowledge that both might be right and then you use it to reinforce the message for those who agree with you.

No!

In elementary sales school you learn that a prospect’s “no” is short for “not enough information”.

And so, whole armies of salesforces bombard their prospects with ever more info when the prospect has already tuned out and started to feel annoyed.

A better way is to consider the possibility that your customers are actually, you know, smart and that they might actually know what they want and need.

Sure, sometimes a “no” means that you haven’t explained it well enough or that a crucial detail was missing. But other times, a “no” really does mean “no”.

If it’s the latter, rather than adding more detail you might want to consider fixing the product or finding a better match. Only if if’s the former will tweaking your communication have an impact.

(It helps, of course, to become good at distinguishing the two.)

What customers want

Many failed products are built on what the makers think people should want. Successful products deliver on what people actually want or need (if not both).

Meta’s virtual reality products are built around what they think people should want: an artificial metaverse that looks kind of childish and that enables experiences that no-one has asked for. They try to conquer the world by creating something entirely new in the hopes that people would want that.

On Monday, Apple has unveiled their take on headsets. They chose not to create something entirely new. They built an (arguably) better way to experience the things that people already know. At the core, their headset is a way superior display compared to any other display that we used before. On that display, we can do the things that we already do, browsing the web, watching movies, enjoying family photos or collaborating with colleagues; most of these things seem to work better than on traditional displays. Movies will be more immersive, screens for our work will feel bigger etc.

Instead of creating something entirely new, the Vision Pro looks like it is about doing the things that we already love to do with the apps we already love to use, but better. That’s literally their pitch: “So you can do the things you love in ways never before possible.”

Apple doesn’t make customers want something entirely new. It tries to sell customers on a better way to get what they already want.

Subtract and amplify

When a story doesn’t work, the default approach is to add more information. Explain it in greater detail. Come up with more reasons for why the approach you’re promoting is so obviously the right thing to do.

While lack of information was actually never the problem.

Quite the opposite: Your audience felt already overwhelmed or confused (and maybe both). It already was too much information so that they couldn’t figure out what’s the point, really.

Instead of adding to the confusion, great communicators ask: What’s the essence of the story? And how can I amplify that?

Subtracting the non-essential and amplifying the essential is how leaders light the path.

Who is “us”?

This week, I’m asking one simple but important question each day for you to ponder (on your own or with your team):

When a customer reads your “about us” page, would they come to the conclusion that they are included in “us”?

It’s how you say what you say

There’s this never ending battle between two camps:

In the left corner we have team WOW who insists that it’s mainly how you say something because crappy ideas beat brilliant ideas when they are communicated better. (Which, indeed, frequently happens.)

In the right corner we have team AHA who insists that it’s mainly what you say because there’s no “how” without a “what”. (Which is true but also the reason for why team AHA frequently loses.)

Great communicators don’t really care for this battle, though. It’s obviously pointless to have a relevant message when your audience can’t see the relevance. It’s just as pointless (but more profitable) to have a message that’s awesome but which the product can’t deliver on.

Therefore it’s both. It’s how we say what we say. We need highly relevant messages (the what) that resonate deeply (the how).

Work rigorously towards this goal and results will follow.

Getting from here to there

A simple truth: If you care for what you do, there’s always going to be more interesting things to say than you’ve got time to say them.

That’s why it’s a bad idea to start your preparation by collecting all the info. It will almost inevitably be too much info.

A better way is to start with the gap between where your audience is coming from and where you want to lead them and then to bridge that gap step by step:

What’s the first step they need to take in order to get from here to there? (Not the the first dozen or even the first five steps but THE first step.)

And then what’s the second?

And then the third?

And sooner than you think you’ll have led them there. More importantly, I bet you’ll discover that you didn’t even need all the info from the beginning of this post to lead them there. A couple of key steps were sufficient to take them there. It’s basically a shift from what I want them to know towards what they need to know.

The beauty of it is this: Some of your audience will have enjoyed that journey so much that they’ll ask you to take them on an extended tour that explores the side roads and branches, too. When they ask “tell me more”, you’re in a much better position to give them the rest of your info.

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