Message_Gap

I’ve been thinking about hats. I’m not one of those “hat-genic” people whose looks improve instantly with a topper.  No, I’m thinking about the figurative hats I wear as I go about my daily business.   Thinker, planner, connector, writer, coach, manager.  The roles seem to multiply with every new customer relationship.

Early in my consulting career I became a fan of Edward deBono and his six thinking hats.  It made sense, I thought, that we should shape our decisions from multiple perspectives.  And it seemed only smart to switch seats and doff someone else’s hat to encourage our brains to see the world through their eyes.

De Bono’s theory holds that a decision-making process will be made stronger when formed by the perspectives of an entire team. The hitch is team members must take turns wearing each of six hats:

1.    The White Hat is straight-forward.  It calls for information known or needed.
2.    The Red Hat is more emotional.  It signifies feelings, hunches and intuition.
3.    The Black Hat is stands firm in judgment.  It’s the devil’s advocate, always eager to note why something may not work.
4.    The Yellow Hat is cheerful, beaming with optimism.
5.    The Green Hat thrives on possibilities.  It’s the creative one, ready to explore new ideas.
6.    The Blue Hat is used to manage the thinking process.

Thankfully, Mr. DeBono understood that most of us want to wear all six hats.  We are in shades both optimistic and judgmental.  We can be both creative, yet accountable.  Simply by switching hats we can quickly change how we’re perceived.   Our contributions become richer and perhaps more accessible to a wider range of people.

brown for adventure!

Lately I’ve become enamored with the idea of wearing a hat when I write — something to inspire the adventurer in me.  My choice is a plaid hat with fake fur flaps the same color as my hair, causing most passersby to think my hair has been whacked off and subjected to electric shock.  It’s an odd take on a lumberjack theme with a touch of hip.  And when I’m wearing my fuzzy plaid hat I reminisce about the idyllic island where it was purchased.

I think Mr. DeBono would smile at the potential — a Brown Hat for Adventure.  Who knew?

Lately I’ve been obsessing about how to make a big story very small.  Specifically, I’m planning to shrink a mountain of information to three pages in an industry presentation. And use pictures not words to tell the story.

Ha! Good luck, you may think. Well, with my antennae up for a plausible approach, I’m inspired by people who’ve “been there, done that” in this mission of creating the incredible shrinking story.

An executive from Levi Strauss once shared a parable at the national conference of Business for Social Responsibility, now known as BSR.  Still early in its development, BSR was struggling to define its itself. Though the organization had a singular focus on making the world a better place through sustainable business practices, the needs of its constituency ranged widely. The little guys didn’t necessarily have the same agenda as the big corporations. Hearing a parable about a king who persists in having his messenger cut his life’s story in half, over and over, until it fits on one page was a worthy lesson for the task before the membership. (Years later, it’s interesting to see that BSR references itself only by its acronym — that’s taking shrinking to the extreme!)

And then I found a soulmate in Josh Silverman, President of Skype. He shared his career path in the New York Times article, “Learning in Business by Following the Heart.” Silverman’s first  job on Capitol Hill taught him a lesson or two in leadership communication:

In Washington, no matter how complex the issue, you have to boil it down to one page. That’s an invaluable skill for a leader.

The process of distillation isn’t easy. I recall one CEO telling me to “cut it in half” after presenting a positioning statement that was already half the length of every previous articulation of the company’s value proposition.

Done.  Two sentences. Now, back to those three pages I mentioned earlier.

The amazing pace of technology melding its way into our brains at work and play is posing a fascinating challenge for communicators. The fast-changing media environment isn’t standing still for lengthy messages or complicated distribution strategies. Consumers are setting the communication agenda. Getting the message to the target where they are is the challenge.  Sustaining the pace while delivering substance keeps us all on our toes.

Information design firm XPLANE sums it up handily in this video. Recently updated, “Did You Know 4.0″ is chock-full of stats and facts to make your head swim.  The pause button will come in handy!

The provocative headline caught my eye: Management Consulting: Help or Hazard? Only minutes into the blog, my brain disengaged.  Why?

Not because the writer disparaged the entire industry in the second sentence. And not because he plugged his own book in the sixth sentence.

What turned me off came next: Examples of missteps at Levi Strauss and AT&T prior to 1994. A string of bullet points from a book published 11 years ago.  A nod to a Peter Drucker book dating to 1993. Implications that work completed more than a decade ago was the downfall of two prominent brands. Without fresh data I wasn’t convinced.

I scanned the entire post – all 3,043 words! In 60 seconds I went from being lured by the headline to being aggravated by stale information. With all that text looming on the screen my brain went into sorting mode. Where were timely references? The synapses failed to fire upon information I found insufficient to support the headline.

When faced with information overload, our brain struggles to find meaning. The diagram here shows one way I conquer information overload. Everything gets sorted into categories to establish their relevance to my personal preferences. I tend to think like a journalist:

• Logistics (what is happening)
• Benefits (how will this help me)
• $$$ (how much does it cost)
• Timing (when is/was this happening)
• Sources (what makes this credible)
• Values (why does this matter to me)

Sorting is the only way I can begin to digest the two daily newspapers, weekly and monthly magazines and countless blogs I monitor to stay on top of issues important to my clients and my business. If a story contains a nugget or two within those categories, I’m far more likely to retain the intended messages.

I’m curious to learn how others boost their message recall.  What categories of information hold your interest?

This whole business of sending the right message just doesn’t go away. Connecting with the right customer, standing out from competitors – it’s an ongoing process.  No wonder, then, that my bookshelves are full of titles as stimulating as “Management Communication,” and “Communicating Change.” Honestly, one of my all time faves is “Getting your Point across in 30 seconds or less.” Written in 1990, that title could be changed to “10 seconds or less” and probably sell even more copies in our time-starved media environment.

A whole host of processes that most of us would rather ignore lies at the root of getting the message right.  Things like market analysis, customer research, branding, sales tracking. Throwing words on paper is easy. Figuring out a way to capture the right words, not so easy.

Getting to the end-game – the right message – is as much a function of organizational process as it is organizational product. Dave Miller, big thinker at Stoke Strategy, notes:

“How you decide how to decide needs to be as carefully managed as the words and mediums chosen.”

Paying attention to what’s going on within an organization is a worthy step before diving into the making of the message.  Teamwork, systems flow, communication tools that work. The best message won’t survive beyond your walls if your internal structure is dysfunctional. Skip that step, and frustration results.  Not exactly the best way to get your story to employees, customers and beyond.

I was listening to Seth Godin’s book The Dip the other day. It’s an oddly encouraging tome about when to quit and when to stick. Instead of mulling over implications for my business I found myself thinking about a recent hike in Yellowstone National Park and what I like to call our Most Magical Moment of the trip.

Conquering The Dip

Seth talks about The Dip involving a long slog between the initial excitement of a new adventure and the mastery required to take advantage of it.  Most people, when they get bogged down in the tedium of becoming a master, simply give up. Our hike was not so different.  We were in search of a petrified forest on an unmarked trail high on an exposed ridge in bear territory.  That’s all the detail we had.  About two thirds of the way through the very vertical hike we were just about ready to quit. A group who had started ahead of us perched on a lookout just off the trail. “We’re not going any further, we have no idea where those petrified trees are.”  We decided to stick it out.  How often do you have a chance to see trees frozen in time for 50 million years?

We pushed on up the next ridge and into an open meadow where I saw a glimmer of fur in the sagebrush. “Wait, I’m not sure what that is but it’s too small for a bear!” It was the most beautiful red fox.  Foxes are common in Yellowstone but rarely seen.  In fact the book I brought home of wildlife in the Tetons and Yellowstone had only one photo of a fox out of the hundreds of creatures featured. We stood watching quietly as the fox scanned the brush, looking for its meal.  She looked at us directly and then looked away, acknowledging that humans were in her presence but that she had no interest and we meant no harm. We were mesmerized.  She then ambled toward us to reach some shade trees to bed down for an afternoon nap.

It was a magical moment. If we had not pressed on and overcome our aggravation with a steep rocky path, we would not have observed this wonderful example of wildness.  I recalled our rare encounter as I listened to Seth, thinking that companies that forge ahead, ask the hard questions, pursue mastery are ultimately the winners.

It’s easy to skip the hard questions, but those very questions give us the answers we need to more effective in communicating with target audiences.  Among the first questions we address when planning a message strategy:

• Who are we really selling to? If we did not have the rapt attention of this audience, would our business survive?

• Who are the top three competitors most likely to steal business from us?  What are they doing better than us?  What customer needs are they failing to address? Stumbling upon that answer is a golden opportunity to communicate your differentiation to customers.

Found the Petrified Forest

And the more elusive Red Fox

Seth notes there’s no shame in quitting when you’re in a hopeless situation.  But if you’ve decided to be the best in your field, you need to stick.  Being committed to what you know to be true, regardless of the apparent obstacles, can indeed reveal a magical moment.

Slogging it out in Yellowstone, we found those petrified trees, but the chance encounter with the Red Fox set that hike stand apart from all others.  It was the defining Magical Moment.