Simplicity is about finding the core message and sharing it in a concise way. The core message is the one important element you want to communicate. As the old saying goes, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”
Imagine you are trying to develop a plan to instruct a friend on playing a game of chess on your behalf. Outside of the opening one or two moves, it is impossible to accurately predict the opponent’s response and soon any plan becomes useless.
In the Army, it has what it calls the “Commander’s Intent.” Once the battle begins, commanders in the field have to adapt to the changing situation on the ground to achieve a successful outcome.
The core message of Southwest Airlines is that it is “the low-fare airline.” All new ideas are run through this one core message. By always taking this core message into account, all decisions are simplified into an easy choice. If the decision will reduce costs, it is a go. If it will increase costs, it is a no-go.
Why is finding the core message hard? It’s hard because it is painful to leave behind ideas that are interesting and important to you but isn’t actually the most important idea you are trying to communicate. With too many choices, people suffer from what is known as analysis paralysis. They either make no decision or choose poorly.
Therefore, the first step in creating a sticky idea is prioritizing the part of the message that is most important. With the core message isolated, the next step is to simplify it by making it more concise. Try to communicate your core message with as few words as possible. How do you take your core message and make it more concise? Try using analogies that tap into what the other person already knows.
For example, the producer of the movie “Alien” had to simply say that his new movie was “Jaws on a spaceship.” From that simple and concise phrase, the scriptwriters, directors, set designers, etc. could leverage what they remembered from “Jaws” and apply that to the new movie “Alien.” Therefore, when it came to set design, the producer didn’t have to describe the interior of the spaceship to the set designer, because the set designer could easily recall that the boat in Jaws was old, somewhat obsolete, had lots of character, and overall was less than reliable. All that information was conveyed in the simple analogy that “Alien” was basically “Jaws on a spaceship.”
How can you make your ideas more sticky by making them simple?
