Sometimes you have to explain something that’s genuinely complex, maybe a new business idea, a technical process, a decision that affects the whole company … and whenever you try to leave something out, it’s immediately incomplete.
It feels like there’s no way to simplify without losing meaning.
So, what do you do? Leave it in and hope people will tolerate it? Or cut it and leave out the difficult parts even if it costs meaning?
That’s exactly what most people get completely wrong about complexity.
They think simplicity is the opposite of complexity.
They think something is either simple or complex.
So if the subject is complex, the talk has to be complex too.
But that’s not true. In more than 2 decades of helping people on exactly these kind of topics, the solution was almost never to choose either/or.
Instead we used what I now call the shop window method.
Think of a shop with a huge warehouse behind it. You wouldn’t put the entire warehouse in the shop window.
Every feature.
Every detail.
Every nuance.
Every caveat.
Because nobody walks into a shop where the window is a confusing and cluttered mess. They walk in because a specific thing in the neatly arranged window caught their eye and made them want to see more.
Then, once they are inside, you can show them around. Every detail is still there. Every nuance is still there. The complexity is intact. But this time, you gave them a reason to enter it. They want to hear about it.
Your message is a shop window, not the warehouse.
And therefore, the question I prefer to ask is not what to leave out. It’s this: What can I put in the window that makes them want to come inside?
Because simplicity is not the opposite of complexity. It’s the prerequisite. It’s how we enter it. It allows others to engage with it.
The scary bit is that you could be wrong. Putting one thing forward means betting that this is the thing that matters, and being visibly wrong if it isn’t.
A full window can never be wrong.
Only ignored.
Which, if you think about the last dozen or so presentations you’ve heard, is the usual outcome. People simply walk by the crowded, cluttered windows of those talks.
Of course, the solution is not to build a bigger window. It’s to know what makes people walk in. What’s the thing that will make them curious to hear more from you?
That’s what belongs in the window.
Keep lighting the path,
Michael
PS: If you want my help turning your message into a shop window that invites your audience in, consider a 1:1 Clarity Lab.
