If You Want People to Remember Something, the Key is Simplicity.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon once said, "a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on." Why is it that some things spread faster than others? What makes things catchy? Why is it that some things are easy to remember and yet others are difficult? Why can professors explain things until they are blue in the face and yet often their students don’t understand and/or won’t remember, while at other times their students will pick things up in a flash. One thing that presidents, educators, CEOs, lawyers, leaders, coaches, missionaries, and counselors all have in common is the necessity to be able to communicate complex ideas in a simple way so that their audiences can internalize the message and apply it in their lives. Today’s world is a very busy place where people’s attention is constantly sought after. Pop-up messages interrupt internet browsing, bill boards interrupt commuters on their way home, and commercials interrupt the music on the radio and television. Never before has there been a greater need for the ability to communicate ideas quickly and efficiently.
Made to Stick
In Chip and Dan Heath’s book,
Made to Stick, they analyze the reasons why some things are remembered and some are forgotten. They call this the “stickiness” of ideas. Their book is organized around six principles that make the acronym
SUCCES (without the last s) and they are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credibility, Emotion, and Stories. Out of the six principles they use to communicate how to get ideas remembered, the most importance is the first: “simple” (p. 25). In order for something to be remembered in this high-pace busy world one has to keep things simple. That may sound elementary but it is absolutely not. It is a difficult task to boil complex ideas down to small understandable concepts. “Simple = core + compact,” (p. 3) and that is the most important of all the principles in their book.
Everyday people work on team oriented tasks. We do so at home, at school, at work, and at play. The success or lack thereof of the tasks we try to accomplish depends on how well the team members understand the goal that they are trying to achieve. This is why
simplicity is so essential to the success of any organization. In a highly competitive world those organizations that do not have a clear focus and a
simple core purpose fall behind their competitors. One company that clearly understands this is McDonalds. McDonald’s employees know that their goal is to deliver salty, fatty food faster than people can order and pay for it, and that service is what has made McDonald famous. Another company that does this well is Apple. They are so talented at making simple yet powerful computers that they can charge significantly more than their competitors. While it is true that some organizations make this task look easy, in reality it is difficult to accomplish.
Remove Excess Ideas
To keep things simple, all excess ideas must be removed—one must get to the core of an idea. Perhaps that is why keeping things simple is such a powerful principle: it essentially is two principles in one. Simplicity expresses both the core message of an idea and it does so in a compact way making it easier for people to remember. A successful defense lawyer says, “if you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won't remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion (p. 16). One great example of this is Southwest Airlines.
Examples of "Core Idea" Organizations
In a book called
Mavericks at Work by William C. Taylor, and Polly G. Labarre, the authors look at more than 30 companies that are leading their industries by doing things a little differently. These companies are “winning big by rethinking the logic of how business gets done and by devising new answers to the timeless challenges
facing organizations everywhere.” The successful companies highlighted in the book have broken the molds in their industries by focusing their efforts on simple ideas and concepts that others companies haven’t thought of as a compelling business model. Southwest Airlines is one of the first companies mentioned in the book (chapter 3). This is interesting because Southwest Airlines is also one of the first organizations written about in Made to Stick as well. Clearly Southwest is doing something right, and there is a connection here that needs to be made.
Southwest has become profitable and famous based on one simple idea: it is “THE low fare airline,” (p. 29). This one key concept is both core and compact which makes it simple (Simple = core + compact) [p. 2]. This simple idea drives all of the decisions that are made everyday by every employee that works at Southwest. Whether it is the CEO or a flight attendant, all the employees focus their work around this one idea. Southwest’s focus has made it
“one of the world’s most profitable airlines.” The fact that something is easy to understand doesn’t mean that it is necessarily easy to put into practice, but it is essential that the driving concept behind any organization be simple like Southwest.
Elder Jeffery R. Holland, a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, recently
said “The best missions have very few rules; but we’re deadly serious about the ones we have.” Any person who has served a mission for a religious organization or charity knows that helping people is no easy task even though it is an easy concept to understand. The fact that missions should have very few rules does not make them any easier, but rather centers the focus on the most important concepts rather than many individual rules. This idea of easy understanding but profound implementation is a major driving factor behind the power of simple. Some of the most famous proverbs are those that are understood immediately but take a lifetime to put into practice. For example, “the Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it,” (p. 16). While not all simple ideas should or will take a lifetime to accomplish, many do take years, months, or weeks to implement them into daily life. However, the amount of time required for implementation is not nearly as important as the amount of influence the simple idea should have in guiding its followers.
The United States military is an organization that does extensive planning for all of its operations. Plans have to be specific enough to accomplish a task and yet at the same time versatile enough to be effective when life happens. One way the United State military has been successful in accomplishing its goals is by placing a commander’s intent at the top of all of its written plans. The commander’s intent states the desired outcome of any given military operation. Since there are an incalculable number of potential changes in the circumstances that the executor of the plan experiences in the field, this is essential. By simply stating a commander’s intent at the top when there is an unforeseen change of circumstances, those executing the task will be able to adjust the plans accordingly and still accomplish the task. “When people know the desired destination, they’re free to improvise, as needed, in arriving there,” (p. 27). Simple means understandable and implementable on a personal level so that no matter the situation the governing idea can be followed.
Schemas and Connotations
One technique that is used to convey simple ideas are the schemas that are related with those ideas. The
word schema means “a mental codification of experience that includes a particular organized way of perceiving cognitively and responding to a complex situation or set of stimuli.” Put simply, schema refers to related topics that our mind associates with other things. An example of this would be the relation of McDonalds with the word hamburgers. Another example would be Christmas and snow. When any idea is presented to our minds, our minds naturally pull up similar things that are associated with that topic to help us understand it and remember it. When the idea of snow is presented to a person their mind might thing of cold temperatures, the color white, the season of Christmas, etc. That is the schema of snow. In order to convey simple ideas, it is important that the schemas related with the ideas presented in a core message are considered when one is trying to make a concept like “THE low fare airline,” (p. 29).
Conclusion
The power of simple ideas is extraordinary. “Simple = core + compact,” (p. 2). Simple ideas have been a driving force in some of the world’s most powerful companies because people can internalize them and allow their every decision to be governed by them. To put it simply, the beauty of simplicity is the fact that it expresses ideas in both a compact and core way, making them both memorable and to the point.
