We often grapple with the question of why and how leaders should go about making a point through their messages. In otherwords get people to understand the message when they hear it, they remember it, and they change their behavior because of it.
Messages that make a point or “sticky” messages have certain disctinctives – unexpected, concrete, credible, and emotional.
For example conisder John F. Kennedy’s message of a vision of “putting a man on the moon within the decade”? People immediately understood what he meant. (The words “man,” “moon,” and “decade” are all very simple and concrete.) They also remembered it for a long while afterward. And thousands of people changed their behavior because of it.
The key to making a point is to remember that your audience often doesn’t have your expertise and therefore the need to use language that’s meaningful to them. If Kennedy had described his vision for the United States as “being the international leader in the space industry,” he would have had far less impact.
Another characteristic of making an effective point through a message is that it helps people understand what they’re supposed to do in a particular situation and what tradeoffs they have to make, so they don’t have to keep checking back with you for direction.
A really good example, I came across of a person making a point is that of Jeff Hawkins, the guy who led the original Palm Pilot team. Hawkins walked around holding a block of wood which was the exact size of the Palm Pilot he had in mind. The wood served as a constant visible and tangible reminder of his goal for the product: “elegant simplicity.” Engineers who were tempted to sneak in more and more features just because they could, would be discouraged from committing “feature creep” when they saw the block of wood.
The Palm Pilot embodied elegant simplicity: It did only four things (including managing your contacts and to-do lists), but it did them very well. And it was easy to use. Contrast that product with pretty much any remote control device currently out in the market, and you’ll see the difference.
Other great examples are the high-concept pitches made to Hollywood movie producers. A particularly sticky pitch was “Jaws on a spaceship,” for the movie Aliens.
This simple description of the movie’s concept was packed with information that helped everyone involved make the right decisions. Potential investors could see that the project was promising, since Jaws had been so successful. And the people in charge of marketing the film, creating the score, and designing the sets could all figure out how to do their jobs based on the notion of “Jaws on a spaceship.” The director still had to provide some guidance, but he didn’t have to constantly spoon feed them information.
So how do you make a point effectively? Do you have examples if so please share it.
