Simplicity

Simplicity is critical whenever we need to communicate vast amounts of important, complex information quickly. Achieving simplicity requires that we reduce the quantity of information delivered while simplifying complex ideas. The challenge then is deciding which information should be removed and figuring out how best to reduce a complex concept to its most basic elements.

While in school, we want kids to learn to express themselves and speak with a full vocabulary. The way we do this is by having them write long essays and rewarding them when they use particularly long words. Unfortunately, this has the unintended side-effect of teaching kids that the right way to communicate is to use as many words as they can while using the longest words they can think of.

We teach kids that saying, "The intrepid canine ambulated perpendicular to the thoroughfare in pursuit of whatever delightful or frightful encounters may await them at the conclusion of their perchance perilous pilgrimage," is far superior to saying, "The dog crossed the road," and yet, "the dog crossed the road," is the most effective way to communicate the only critical information contained in the first sentence.

Not only is it much easier to understand and remember, but it is also more accurate: Canines can include foxes, wolves, and jackals, not just dogs; Ambulation can include any form of movement, not just walking; Perpendicular requires a 90-degree angle, where to cross simply means getting from one side to the other; and a thoroughfare can include streets, avenues, and paths, not just roads.

It would seem that school teaches us the worst possible lesson in all of communication: Make your communication bloated, difficult to understand, and impossible to remember.

If this lesson was forgotten immediately upon graduation, it would only represent a missed teaching opportunity. Instead, this fundamental misunderstanding of communication influences our professional presentations, documents, and emails. Instead of focusing on communicating simple ideas that are easy to understand and remember it would seem that many professional adults are still trying to earn a good grade in school.

It could be argued that the adoption of text messages and emojis in workplace communication is a side-effect of professionals not being sure how to simplify their communication. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as all things being equal, given the choice between reading a bloated overly verbose email, and reading a text message with a few emojis, most people would choose the latter.

Imagine a Chief Financial Officer giving a presentation to their sales organization, and during the presentation, immediately after revealing new sales targets, a regional sales manager sends them a text-message with a laughing-while-crying emoji. Though this is in no way professional, all of the most important information has been communicated: the regional sales manager thinks the new sales targets are ridiculous and unrealistic.

When we simplify our communication we use fewer words, and the words we do use are shorter. Emojis take this to its logical conclusion of using no words at all.

When considering which words to get rid of, a good idea is to follow the 80/20 rule.

For example, if 80% of what you are about to communicate would not be understood or remembered, then it is only the remaining 20% that matters. Your goal, therefore, is to remove the 80%, and only communicate the 20%. This would result in a thousand-word email becoming a 200-word email, and a 100-slide presentation becoming a 20-slide presentation.

The goal of communication is not to flood the reader or listener with information, but to get them to understand critical points that they will then remember. If there are points that would not be understood or remembered, they are not worth saying at all.

While reducing the number of words, choosing shorter words, or eliminating words entirely will help in simplifying what you wish to communicate, when the information you have to convey is complex this strategy can lead to inaccuracy. This is why in the professional workplace, emojis are generally a bad idea: while they are simple, they can be misunderstood, be wildly inaccurate, and lead people to the wrong conclusion.

For example, if you have a quarterly sales status update where things are going well, theoretically your entire presentation could be a single slide with a smiling emoji. The problem is, what exactly does that mean? Is the presenter happy? Is the company happy? Should the audience be happy? In the business world, decisions tend to be made by examining data, and by eliminating all the data in the name of simplicity the resulting presentation may be worthless.

In reality, the more complex the information you have to communicate, the more difficult it is to simplify. While the 80/20 rule is generally a useful guide, to maintain accuracy while communicating complex information, the rule may have to be 70/30, 60/40, 50/50, or the information may be too complex to simplify at all.

There is no easy, single answer for how best to simplify complex information, but a popular quote often attributed to Albert Einstein is a useful guide: make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

There is a point where removing any more information will lead your audience to the wrong conclusion.

For example, when simplifying a recipe in a cookbook, if ingredients are removed, the food may not taste good. When simplifying a set of driving directions, if an important turn is omitted, then the driver might get hopelessly lost. On the other hand, a surgical procedure may not be able to be simplified at all, as if any step is omitted, the patient may not survive.

Our goal in simplifying complex information is to find the point where if we removed one more detail, then the accuracy of the information is lost. Up until that point, however, everything else is fair game for omission. Often, you will need to cut out more information than you should, then review the simplified document, only to realize that you need to add information back. This is a process of iterative discovery that takes time but is well worth it in the pursuit of simplicity, and in the majority of cases, yields a more professional result than using an emoji.