Audience Accessibility

Too often, those with ideas share them with their audience in an unrefined confusing and indigestible way that does not result in the understanding or action that was desired.

Picture a mountainside where a huge chunk breaks off and tumbles crashing into the valley below. As it falls, it breaks apart into smaller rocks, sharp and jagged. As these jagged rocks lie on the valley floor, and water flows over them, the water is churned by the jagged rocks.

The turbulence created by the jagged rocks causes wild, white water on the river's surface. Over millennia, the action of the water and movement of rocks on rocks chips off the sharp edges and the rocks become rounded, smooth stones which the water flows over easily. And the river's surface is now smooth, yet just as fast and powerful.

In this analogy, the rocks are your ideas, and the river represents the mind of your audience. Poorly formed, jagged ideas with sharp edges cause confusion and turbulence in the minds of your audience. Knocking off the sharp edges and smoothing the rocks of your ideas as much as possible makes it easier for your audience to accommodate those ideas in their minds.

In this issue, I will explain how you can do that.

Because

Before I give you the four steps to help you take the rough edges off your ideas, I want to explain why this is important…

Generally speaking, human beings don’t like to think very much. From an evolutionary perspective, thinking requires energy, and we prefer to reserve this for the important survival aspects. And although we might not want to admit it, for some of us, social survival means knowing what the Kardashians are up to now.

Rigorous thinking has always been done by the few on behalf of the many, and this has been enough to elevate humankind to enjoy the modern marvels that we now take for granted. Luminaries such as Einstein, Curie, Rutherford, and Hawking wrestled with big ideas. They broke them down into manageable-sized rocks and started knocking the rough edges off for the rest of us to consume.

But it wasn’t enough. From there, others took those ideas and further refined them, smoothed and polished them in context, and eventually, they could be assimilated in the minds of many rather than the original few.

If you want your ideas to be consumed. To have an impact. To make a difference. Then you need to put in some work to make those ideas more palatable, more digestible. Smoother. For your audience to consume.

This is true regardless of the medium with which you are sharing your ideas. Whether you are speaking to an audience live; Speaking on video; on a podcast; creating a narrative on video or audio; or writing a book; a script; an article, or a post. In all of these endeavours, your job is to do as much of the thinking as you can so that your audience doesn’t have to.

The more you can manage this, the more refined you can make your ideas and the more impact you will have.

Edison was someone who took the ideas of others and refined them in a way that made them more accessible to the masses. It made him both famous and wealthy.

Let’s examine how you can refine your message, knock off the rough edges and deliver smooth palatable ideas to your audience…

1. Clarity

2. Simplicity

3. Structure

4. Emotion

Clarity

First, you must be clear about the outcome you intend. Even if you are enamoured of an idea and simply want to share the wonder of it, you need to be clear about the outcome you are striving for. In this case, your outcome is to get others as excited about your idea as you are.

Very often, I hear someone talking excitedly about something, but they are going nowhere with their monologue. They talk around in a circle. Their audience is unsure of what is required of them, and so fail to react, and the speaker finishes in a faltering manner, not knowing how or when to finish because they have not thought about the outcome they were after.

Usually, but not always, this happens with younger people because they have less experience with sharing ideas. But you will occasionally come across someone older who has not spent much time sharing ideas throughout their lives, and it is new to them.

Simplicity

Your goal is to present your idea in the simplest possible way so that the concept is easy to consume and more likely to be acted upon. I often refer to this as being accessible to the audience.

The danger here is that if you are a thinker in a particular area, then you have a nuanced understanding of how things in this area work. This nuanced understanding results in shorthand in your mind. This shorthand I am talking about is typically referred to as jargon. Where we use a term to represent an idea or concept so that we don’t have to explain it every time we talk about it.

For example, someone talking about finance might mention the P&L, Which is the shorthand for the concept of a Profit and Loss statement. But even if they named it without the acronym to the uninitiated, the result may be a blank stare. Because a Profit and Loss statement is a concept that not everyone is familiar with.

If you live in a world of accounting and business, the danger is that you assume that everyone understands the underlying concepts you are using as shorthand. If you are talking to a group of accounting people, then you will be okay with this assumption. If you are talking to experienced senior business people, then you are still probably okay. But if you are talking to new business people or a mixed crowd, then this assumption can cause confusion.

The use of the term P&L in this example is not wrong. It is the context in which it is used and with which audience it is used which will make a difference to your message being received or ignored.

If in doubt, simplify. Avoid jargon unless you are certain the audience you are talking to understands those conceptual shorthand words or acronyms.

Structure

I am a huge proponent of structure, as you may have realised by now. Often it is the structure I look at first and then work to that structure.

The reason that structure is important is that it allows one idea or concept to be built on top of the next, leading your audience through a narrative and building their understanding as they go. I have found this the best way to create a paradigm shift or an Ah-ha moment in the minds of your audience.

A good structure for education is to lead someone step-by-step, as mentioned above, building their understanding. But that is a terrible structure for a story. Stories require intrigue, mystery and suspense, which means that step-by-step must be avoided, except when lulling the audience before dropping a surprise on them.

In my opinion, a successful TED talk is one that melds those two concepts, that of education and entertainment. Walking the fine line between step-by-step education and surprise.

For this article, my structure which I wrote out for myself when beginning writing, was:

• State the problem

• Illustrate with an analogy

• Explain why the problem is important

• List a number of things to do to alleviate or avoid the problem

• Conclude with the benefits of taking these steps

By packaging my ideas in a structure like this, I make it more palatable for my audience to consume. If I had started with a list of things to do to avoid the issue, I would have lost half or more of my readers at the outset, as they may not have understood the problem or its ramifications.

Emotion

Adding Emotion in here may look incongruous with the rest of the steps listed above, but that is precisely the point too many deep thinkers make. Many feel that stripping emotion from the concept will make it simpler to understand. And while that makes sense in the abstract, it is not true in my experience.

One day when you are explaining your ideas to robots, that may be the way to go, but for now, when you explain your ideas to humans, you need to realise that we are emotional creatures. Emotions drive our behaviours. You engage your audience through emotion.

I believe that this is why, a decade ago, TED became the phenomenon it did. It brought high-concept ideas to a wider audience by engaging that audience emotionally using narrative and personal experiences. It made ideas intoxicating.

So when you share your idea or your concept, be sure to include sharing how you feel. How you feel about the problem, how you feel about the solution, and how you feel about the people you want to help.

It can feel strange or even scary to share emotion in your messaging, but trust me, emotion will break through where simple facts will not.

Conclusion

I geek out on well-crafted, well-delivered messages. It doesn’t matter the topic. Something that captures my attention and my imagination and makes me feel I have expanded my knowledge is something to treasure.

When I come across messages that do not work or that do not engage their audience, I feel a strange sort of responsibility to see if I can ‘fix’ that message. Particularly if I get the message myself, but I realise many others do not.

This article and this newsletter are my attempt to help alleviate that problem in the world. But that only works if you take action on it.

Next time you have an important message to share, particularly one that educates your audience try the structure I have used above and see if that makes your message easier for your audience to consume.

Good Luck!

PS You may wonder why I did not mention Speed Bumps in here, as they perfectly fit the analogy used and are an important aspect of what I talk about in this article. And Speed Bumps are something I have mentioned before and are an important part of what I do with speakers.

This is a useful lesson in itself.

Adding the concept of Speed Bumps into the mix for this article adds another layer of complexity. It requires more thinking on the part of the audience, the reader, as to what it is and where it fits in. The temptation was great to include it, as it is such a good fit with the topic, but it would have just bloated the article.

Often judicious cutting and editing is the best way to simplify, and leaving Speed Bumps to another issue made more sense in order for this issue to have the impact I desire.

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

I chose this quote for this issue not because there is a lot to unpack here but rather to highlight that although our messages need to be delivered in a way that can be easily consumed by our audience, this does not mean we should limit the scope of those ideas or our aspirations for them.

Indeed, if you want people to take your ideas and run with them, one of the best ways to do that is to make them aspirational, inspiring and grand.

Donald Trump sold the concept of Make America Great Again to a large portion of the American people. It probably wouldn’t have worked if it was Make America Safe Again or Make America Responsible Again.

And although I hate using Mr Trump as an example, the fact that he was as successful as he was (that one time), despite all of his obvious flaws, makes my point for me. The aspirational content of the promise was adopted by many.

So, when you share your important message, make it bigger than life, aspirational, and inspirational, and invite others to be part of that journey.

In this case, it was such a vague promise that it undoubtedly meant very different things to many people. Thus he sowed the seeds of his own destruction. Because the perceived promise he made could not be met for everyone, and so many felt that promise was broken.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

Plenty of instructional design work. Putting together a new business idea to work on.

Recreationally:

Spent too much time playing Sniper Elite 5 and Demeo in the weekend.

What I am reading:

Went through Alex Hormozi’s $100m Leads in the weekend, and will be reading it again with a view to applying some of the ideas.

What I am watching:

I saw Home Kills at the New Zealand International Film Festival (NZIFF) on Saturday night. It is a locally shot drama, and I was most impressed with it.