Simplicity and Communication

Think of someone who you consider to be an expert at communication. What makes them so good? Do they speak without hesitation? Do they have a good grasp of their subject? Is their delivery polished? Whilst all of those are important, I would suggest that there are two things an effective communicators will demonstrate: clarity and simplicity.

On  Wednesday I looked at material simplicity.  Today I want to use the same principles to look at the importance of focusing on simplicity of communication.

Complexity.

Look at the following example. It comes from  the UK’s Department of Health for a definition of a container in the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations 2004:

“‘Container’, in relation to an investigational medicinal product, means the bottle, jar, box, packet or other receptacle which contains or is to contain it, not being a capsule, cachet or other article in which the product is or is to be administered, and where any such receptacle is or is to be contained in another such receptacle, includes the former but does not include the latter receptacle.” All that to describe a simple container for medication!

Some people seem to think that expertise is demonstrated by using long words and creating complexity. In this way, they attempt to show the superiority of their knoweledge by seeming to understand things that others cannot. In addition, complex, convoluted and opaque writing creates an opportunity for others “in the know” to nod their heads wisely (“I’m part of the hip crowd!”) and even to create the role of “interpreter” of the “words of wisdom”. Little wonder then that in some quarters, simple communication is frowned on. It removes the  apparent superiority of the orginal communicator, membership of an in crowd and the need for an interpreter.

Simplicity.

More and more organisations are embracing social media as a means of communication with their customers. This should mean that more focus is placed on the need for clarity and simplicity. Because of the pressures of work, organisations are too quick to accept the first solution that seems to be about right. Or they give important communication tasks to subject experts, who write for people of similar levels of expertise, rather than for the end user. Just look at Micosoft manuals to see an example of the end result of that philosophy!

We need to be committed to the belief that there is a simple way of communicating to customers and the public in order to keep on searching for something better than the first solution. Organisations have to enshrine simplicity as an important corporate value in order to encourage everybody, from top down, to put effort into achieving simplicity.

But don’t ever confuse “simple” and “simplicity” with “easy”. If you make that mistake, believing simplicity is easy to achieve, you will be tempted to give up too easily when it turns out be harder to achieve than you had anticipated. One of the reasons it may turn out to be hard is that simplicity comes from knowing your subject well. At the ecademy birthday bash on February 18th, Nick Tadd, Vanessa and I discussed social networking and the various social media tools for about an hour. Thinking about it afterwards, one of the things I really enjoyed about the discussion was that no-one felt the need to try to impress by using long words.

Another reason why simplicty and clarity may turn out to be harder than you had first thought is the danger of soming up with a solution that is either simplistic or and over-simplification.

Simplistic.

A solution may appear to you to be appealing in its simplicity but turn out to be simplistic, failing to deal with all of the elements of an issue. The question is: “How do you know if a solution is simple, or simplistic?” The answer is that you will not know unless you have a good grasp of the subject being communicated. If you are the communicator, you need to make sure that in finding a simple way of describing a phenomenon, you haven’t  underplayed the complexity of the situation.

Over Simplification.

Over simplification is not quite the same thing as simplistic. Whereas a simplistic solution underestimates the complexity of a situation, an over simplification misses out some important aspects. A simplistic solution is usually wrong; an over simplification is incomplete.

In conclusion, in order for you to communicate with simplicity,  you have to have a good understanding of the subject being discussed. That way you can avoid falling into the traps of being simplistic or of delievering an over simplification. If you want to do it consistently I believe that you have  to embrace simplicity as a permanent habit, as a way of thinking. But that’s just my belief. How important is it for you and what tips would you add?

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