#166: Communicate like a bulldog; make it compact with a strong core

Good morning my dear friends

If you’d like some music for your Sunday, you’ll love the Ndlovu Youth Choir’s tribute to Zanzibar-born Farrokh Bulsara (some of you may know him as Freddie Mercury) and this interplay between Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko and French cellist Vincent Segal does more for global understanding than any UN meeting.

If you need some brightness, take a quick visit to this kelp forest off the Falkland Islands and if you like that, you may enjoy reading my reflections on our visit to Lekkerwater Beach Lodge.

Thank you for all your messages after last week’s letter about could you or should you. I was happy to know that it was so useful.

In amazing serendipity, well serendipity is always amazing but the amazing can stay for today, MD of The Hardy Boys, Taweni Gondwe Xaba, wrote this comment that encapsulates the power of could.

/ strategy

In Stories That Stick, I introduced Chip and Dan Heath’s work on sticky communication.

You’ll remember that their research shows that these six principles – simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories – make messages stickier.

And, what makes a message simple? It must be compact and core.

They reflect “…the idea of compactness is uncontroversial. Rarely will you get advice to make your communications lengthy and convoluted, unless you write interest-rate disclosures for a credit card company. We know that sentences are better than paragraphs. Two bullet points are better than five. Easy words are better than hard words. It’s a bandwidth issue: The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be.”

It’s a bandwidth issue. That is a powerful image. We are all overwhelmed by messages, choices, content, and people us wanting to go one way or the other.

If we reduce the bandwidth people need to hear our message, we increase the likelihood of our message landing. Reduce the bandwidth. Simple.

Quick segue…Netflix’s Innovation Cycle includes a step they call ‘farming for dissent’ or ‘socialising the idea’. Simply put, speak to people about what you’re proposing and get their input. Said differently, by having those conversation, you reduce the amount of bandwidth they need to use in the ultimate decision-making process, making your and their lives easier (You can read more about Netflix’s approach in these letters).

Back to Chip and Dan…we know that compact is important to reduce bandwidth demands and the message must have a core.

They quote Cervantes who described proverbs as “short sentences drawn from long experience.” In other words, a powerful core.

They give this example – “Take the English-language proverb: “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” What’s the core? The core is a warning against giving up a sure thing for something speculative.”

Parables are similar – relatively short stories that have a strong core. We remember them.

Think about the meetings that you have coming up this week, what messages do you want to land? Write them down. Is the core clear? What bandwidth will your audience need to agree with you? What could you do (remember last week’s letter) to make it clearer and more compact?

// self

I encourage all my clients to read. Leaders are readers (see, core and compact 😉).

Indeed, I go further, drawing on master strategist Jim Collins dictum that to be a better leader, read fewer management books.

It is not that they are unimportant, but they’re only part of the whole story. If you’re a leader, you’re leading people in the world, it is useful to understand the full complexity of both.

In a recent Paris Review interview, best-selling author Ali Smith puts it like this “Fiction tells you by making up the truth, what really is true.”

Reading fiction immerses you in relationships and dialogue and peoples’ internal worlds, it makes you both a better human and a better leader.

Fiction brings alive the history and culture of a people far more effectively than the facts can ever do. To work with people, you must know their history and their culture. We all arrive in the present carrying the stories of generations. Good leaders know that and know them.

I’d love to know what books have expanded your life…

/// soul

In last week’s letter, I told you that Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀’s A Spell of Good Things ended with little hope. Booker Prize winner Eleanor Catton’s Birnam Wood does the same (quick aside, Catton was 28 when she won the Booker. The youngest person ever to do so).

Birnam Wood tells the story of a group of environmental activists beguiled by a billionaire whose generosity covers even more profit-making. As they’re seduced, a former member expelled from the group, tracks ‘the real story’ in parallel – his investigative ardour fuelled in part by principle, in part by thwarted passion. Our motives are rarely simple.

In a fantastic NYT review, Dwight Garner observes that “Catton’s novel takes place, as do all novels in 2023, under skies thrice poisoned — by greenhouse gasses, by crisscrossing drones and by a moon we’ve littered with golf balls”. It is little wonder that the novels of 2023 have no hope. As I said last week, perhaps this is the message we need to hear.

As Adébáyọ̀’s characters struggle in a context imprisoned by corruption, so too do Catton’s. However, the corruption Catton conjures is far more insidious. It hides behind the meritocracy of awards for national service, lavish donations, large-scale land ownership, and billions made. It is a corruption of soul and community but is simultaneously celebrated on front pages and in fawning profiles.

Whilst never preaching, Birnam Wood forces us to confront our world and does so in an intelligent fun, fast-paced way. If you’ve got nothing planned for the day, grab a copy, snuggle into winter, and disappear into the pages. It is the kind of book you can do that with.

Catton takes us to possibilities that we would rather not know and yet, like Adébáyọ̀, these are truths that are there. They have happened and will happen.

To have hope we must know this and act.

I hope that your week takes you closer to your core and you discover more coulds than than shoulds.

Best wishes

Karl

PS: A Spell of Good Things was a gift from my parents and Roxanne bought me Birnam Wood. Both were part of clever gifts. My parents collaborated with the curators at The Book Lounge to build a collection of books about being human, including the Jean Giono classic The Man Who Planted Trees Roxanne created a journey of fast-paced books for a winter’s weekend, starting with Lucy Foley’s snacky The Guest List and ended with Birnam Wood’s provocation, I added Liz Nugent’s Strange Sally Diamond and Deon Meyer’s The Dark Flood and spent a weekend on the couch. Lucky me!