How much time do we spend each week on getting the right words, the right words for emails, the right words for letters, the right words to put in a presentation?
I was listening to the radio some time ago and Stephen Fry mentioned a story he was told of how the enemy sent a note to the Spartans, the gist of which was, “if we capture you, we will kill your women and children, and do some fairly horrible things to you all”. A messenger was sent back from the Spartans with a note with one word on it ‘If’.
I know many of us, upon receiving the first note, would engage emotion and start a long laborious counter threat but the Spartans did all of that in one word that said it all ‘If’.
A few years ago I was putting together a new postcard that promoted my business. I was spending too much time dawdling about, changing the words I was using, that would describe my work so I decided to engage the services of what I considered my most valuable advisors; my kids, who were teenagers at the time.
“Kids” I said, “I’ve helped you guys loads of times on different challenges, so come and help me, how do I describe what I do to others”
“You help people to help themselves and then stand back and let them take all the credit for changing their lives.” said my middle teenager
The youngest said, “You explore people’s minds and help them to sort it out”.
My 18 year old at the time and the forever pragmatist of the group asked.
“How long have you been faffing about with the postcard?” “A couple of days,” I said, ”Ok and in that time what could you have achieved, if you weren’t going over the same old words, and changing them?”
“Quite a lot” I said.
“Look Mum, you could write ‘You can make people dance like a chicken in the middle of that postcard and no-one will read it because they’ll scan the top and bottom. To be honest the real message is in your eyes on the photo on the front, that’s where they’ll start to trust you. So stop mucking about and go with what you have.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been more reprimanded by anyone but what a valid point. So I stopped, finished it off and sent it to print. It worked well and strangely enough, the very same teenager followed a career in Graphic Design, so he now stops other people faffing about.
How many times do we go over things again and again to get them just right? But what is just right, as my intuitive 18 year old at the time said, it didn’t matter if I wrote that I can make people dance like a chicken, (which I can because after all I am a hypnotist as well) it’s just against the BSCH code of ethics, so believe me you’re safe.
So what I learnt from this some time ago and share with you this week after revisiting this old blog is; if you are stuck on an issue or problem, you don’t always have to ask the reliable friend who tells you what you want to hear, or the business person who is highly trained. Ask someone younger to be honest with you, and they love an opportunity to be brutally honest (with permission), they just seem to cut through the waffle and give you a blunt but truthful answer.
Give it a go and see what happens