The average book on leadership or management runs between 60,000 and 100,000 words. A business plan? That’s about twenty thousand. The typical article like this one comprises roughly 800 words. The point? We not only use many words to guide ourselves towards success, but we often assume we must. Without a doubt, the right words can give us something that we all, and especially leaders, long for: precision. Yet in a deeply volatile, uncertain, complex and evermore ambiguous environment, prioritizing only precision can result in a kind of stricture that snuffs out other things that matter just as much, often more – things such as openness, adaptability and innovativeness. Especially in an uncertain world, the hidden power in brevity and clarity proves pivotal.
Google’s 12-word road map
It’s not just about fewer words. Brevity and the clarity of the words chosen are about refinement, that is, testing, thinking and refining down to the necessary. The power in doing so is neither new nor hyperbole. In 1999, for example, Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, famously secured the early investment capital that seeded the now $3.7 trillion company with just 12 words: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
It’s not just their current market cap that proves the power in this approach. Recall that when Google made its case with a scant dozen words, search engines as we know them today didn’t even exist. Google had to convey the value of something that simply could be while laying out a compelling path for it. What Google put forth was visionary, in no small part because it combined focus and flexibility.
On one end, “universally accessible” was a line in the sand, a must-do goal. Yet, importantly, even if at first counterintuitive, spelling out exactly how that would happen was not. It’s not that Brin and Page lacked ideas for how they would begin. But at the start, they couldn’t know with precision whether or not those ideas would work, nor what future challenges would arise even if their hunches proved true. Twelve words were enough to begin a decades-long journey to greatness, but only because those words were well-thought-out, flexible and consciously allowed balance.
Look for words that provide clarity and direction
What was that balance comprised of? Clarity of direction, but absent rigid step-by-step instructions that often bind creativity and adaptability. Lucid indicators of what to strive for, yet with the expectation of those indicators being constantly revisited. Such features are among the key elements that enable the brevity-as-might argument.
They don’t require a mere twelve words, just fewer than we tend to think. Take the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and its now legendary Blueprint for Next. In 2017, then newly appointed Chancellor Carol Folt inherited a difficult job. The university she was asked to lead was faltering. It was big too, with at that time a combined 45,000 students, faculty and staff and more than 70 departments spread across 14 schools. Both things lead to confusion, not only about how Carolina should chart its future, but even murkiness about what it stood for.
To ascertain both, Folt found plenty of words to sort. Not only did the university as a whole have past volumes of strategic plans, but each individual school and department also had its own voluminous plans. Ignoring none of it, Folt still chose to set all of it aside, long enough to ask people what really mattered to them, what they did well, what they hoped for and what they hoped to become. After a long listening tour, she and the entire Carolina community distilled it into a single-page outline to guide them to their next step. That single page became the touchstone for every move the university made thereafter, and the compass for the success that continues to grow out of its clarity and brevity to this day.
Words as guides for success
Without a doubt, words matter. But they matter for more than the precision we often believe comes from more of them. They matter for the flexibility they can provide, not separately from the precision, but intertwined and in balance with it. The right words can offer guidance to success, for the leader, to be sure, but also for her team, its external partners and even for their marketplace.
In a parallel world to business, Ernest Hemingway is famously said to have once been challenged to write a novel in just six words. Rather than scoff, he proved the power of a few words carefully chosen. His reply? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” It’s a well-thought-out response, but pregnant with possibilities yet to be discovered. Is there any doubt that every leader wants the same?
Opinions expressed by SmartBrief contributors are their own.
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