“I have no idea what you just said, but it’s exactly what we need!” This is an actual quote from a senior executive at a major corporation. She wasn’t the first executive I’ve heard get excited about a proposal without understanding the context or facts. Unfortunately, as is often the case, while the sound byte sounded good, the solution itself had no legs. It wasn’t going to work.
In our attention-deprived world, executives (and others) seem to be making more decisions based on sound bytes. Just look at the case of Shirley Sherrod. Just one additional piece of context (a single sentence) was the difference between her being a racist or an enlightened leader. Unfortunately, decisions were made before hearing that one critical sentence.
Sound bytes are effective. E=MC2 was a simple elegant representation of a complex physical law. Yet, while knowing it might help me pass a physics exam, it’s not going to enable me to build a nuclear reactor.
The problem isn’t with sound bytes themselves. The problem is with how sound bytes are used.
The first part of the problem is how those sound bytes originate. It used to be that people thought through an idea thoroughly, developed a story around that idea and then culled it into its essence for presentation. That was pre-Powerpoint. But Powerpoint reversed and truncated the process. Now people often start by structuring and executing thinking in terms of bullet points. The result, while pithy, provides no real substance. We’ve all been in presentations where the presenter doesn’t provide much more than a restatement of the bullet points on the slide. Then when challenged on an issue or asked for clarification, the presenter usually deflects to the next phase of the project when things will be “fleshed out”.
This isn’t actually a Powerpoint issue. It’s a leadership issue. Tom Peters uses Powerpoint as well. Yet, his one word slides set the backdrop for a ten to fifteen minute (or longer) discussion on a topic. His slide may say E=MC2 but he backs it up with a lesson in physics.
The second part of the problem is in our consumption and use of those sound bytes. In this case, the sound byte used to be the start of discussion. Now, the sound byte is the discussion. Decisions are made based on five or ten discrete, pithy phrases rather than a detailed understanding of the meaning and implications of those phrases.
We are living under an illusion that things are moving too fast for us to take time to understand. We are told to keep our messages short and to drive decisions quickly. Both are true. But, to be done effectively, both require an underlying understanding of the big picture. At some point we need to know the full story in order to act on the bullets.
Otherwise, we just get into on-going ping-pong matches between discrete, reactive ideas that generally don’t hit the mark or deliver value.
Brad Kolar is the President of Kolar Associates, a leadership consulting and workforce productivity consulting firm. He can be reached at brad.kolar@kolarassociates.com.
