The vision thing

We save lives.

George H.W. Bush was a practical, nuts and bolts kind of guy, I suppose. He was a fighter pilot in World War II, and I'm told that pilots tend to be more mechanics than poets.

So maybe it was unfair that we all jumped on him when he uttered the vision sound bite.

In the January 26, 1987, issue of Time magazine, journalist Robert Ajemian reported that a friend of Bush's had urged him to spend several days at Camp David thinking through his plans for his prospective presidency, to which Bush is said to have responded in exasperation, 'Oh, the vision thing.' This oft-cited quote became a shorthand for the charge that Bush failed to contemplate or articulate important policy positions in a compelling and coherent manner. 

The phrase has since become a metonym for any politician's failure to incorporate a greater vision in a campaign, and has often been applied in the media to other politicians or public figures.

As someone who once led a small group trying to craft a vision statement for a global corporation, I sympathize with the former president. I can't remember what we came up with. I remember at one point I suggested: "Him with the most cookies wins."

I'm pretty sure the CEO took what we crafted and stuck the word profitably in there. He was big on reminding us that we were there to make money. Which, in the end, we didn't do, despite whatever our mission statement was, which is why the company went bankrupt. We didn't have the most cookies.

One day as our little group was hard at work, an executive stuck her head in the door and asked what we were doing. We told her. She said, well, I just bought frames for our current vision statement and they're hanging in every office around the world. If you write a longer statement, it won't fit in the frames.

One wonders how any company can ever make any money.

I did some research on mission statements at the time, and I recall one from a motorcycle helmet company: "We save lives." I recall that this was printed on a giant banner and hung over the assembly floor. I can't find a reference to it today, but I put it forth as an excellent example. It had to have inspired the employees, everyday. It elevated molded plastic to a higher plane.

Looking for it today, I came across a company that makes body armor. Safariland's motto is "Together, we save lives." I don't know to whom together refers; maybe buyer and seller. If they pay me a lot of money, I'll suggest they lose that word; they don't need it.

I think this is probably a pretty cool company. From an editor's point of view, however, I had to read a good way into its history to figure out that it sold body armor and other cool stuff. Okay, only an editor would fuss.

One real good thing: the company has documented 1,800 lives saved by its armor. That's way cool. That evidence is far more eloquent than any amount of cliches blended and extruded into a vision statement.

But I did not shoot the decotype

(Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest)

Hey, look at me!

That would be me.

When I meet people in a professional setting I often feel that there's some kind of disconnect: something's not going right.

I, of course, assume they recognize that I'm the center of the universe. So I'm always disappointed. I think it's true that I learn more about them than they do about me. That's because I'm naturally curious -- you know, why would any self-respecting person be at this event? -- and also because I've learned to inquire about people in my many years as a journalist.

I'd like for them to know that I've been at the writing game as long as I have. Truth is, whatever they do I've probably done. I was at a seminar for job seekers recently, because I wanted to meet the presenter and offer my services to her clients. Her presentation was quite good, but I realized I could have given it. I've changed jobs so often, and worked with clients on their resumes and job searches, and I just know how it works.

Hey, look at me!

When you've been around as long as I have you find yourself working for much younger people. I have clients now who weren't even born when I started writing for a living. Heck, their parents weren't even married. Heck, they're parents were still in high school and picking at pimples.

Hey, read page ten of my resume!

I suddenly understood my predicament when I read an excellent piece by Dorie Clark on her Harvard Business Review blog. So that she won't have to, let me tell you upfront that she is a business strategy consultant, adjunct professor of business administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, and author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future.

She relates her own personal horror stories of being "misunderestimated," as our former president would say. She offers excellent advice on how to prepare before an anticipated meeting with someone and what to do after the initial encounter if the jerk wasn't paying attention.

And now I arrive at my reason for this post. Persuasion is successful when certain conditions are met. The first, according to Aristotle, is the "ethos" of the writer or speaker. This means the communicator's expertise and knowledge, as well as his overall moral character and history. If these are in good standing, the audience is more likely to accept what the writer or speaker says.

I can state with certainty that my wife and our three neurotic cats have no regard for my ethos.

You need to always ask: Does this person or this audience know that I know what I'm talking about? If the answer is no or you're not sure, you have some work to do. Dorie Clark's piece is a good start.

Geese grow on trees

But you knew that.

Actually, people once believed it, but we're so smart today that we don't. Therefore, our minds are open to all sorts of new ideas.

Not.

Here's a quick, delightful video about confirmation bias, one of the many reasons it's a miracle that we who write and speak can persuade anyone of anything.

This is a video teaser for David McRaney’s book, You are Now Less Dumb.

Two questions for you:

1) If not geese and trees, what are your audience's embedded beliefs?

2) How will you adjust for that?

So you want to be a business guru

Didn't make the cut.

The writing team of Stuart Crainer and Des Dearlove has surveyed the field and named the 50 most influential business thinkers.

The top 5:

1. Clayton Christensen
2. W. Chan Kim and Renee Maborgne
3. Roger Martin
4. Don Tapscott
5. Vijay Govindarajan

If you're interested in what it takes to join their ranks, here are the criteria given to the various judges in the field of thought leadership:

1. Relevance of ideas
2. Rigor of research
3. Presentation of ideas
4. Accessibility/dissemination of ideas
5. International outlook
6. Originality of ideas
7. Impact of ideas
8. Practicality of ideas
9. Business sense
10. Power to inspire

As a writer, I noticed that the presentation and dissemination of their ideas were high on the list. What else do these leaders have in common?

1. An academic affiliation: Christensen, e.g., is a professor at the Harvard Business School
2. A book: Kim and Maborgne, e.g., wrote Blue Ocean Strategy
3. A memorable concept: for Martin, e.g., it's "integrative thinking"

It's a pretty high bar. Many are called, but few are chosen.

What we can learn from Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway, 1916.

The great novelist, also a writer of nonfiction, began his career as a reporter at the Kansas City Star, where he followed the newspaper's 110 rules for writing.

``Those were the best rules I ever learned for the business of writing,'' Hemingway said in 1940. ``I've never forgotten them. No man with any talent, who feels and writes truly about the thing he is trying to say, can fail to write well if he abides with them.''

Here is a selection of these timeless rules:

Use short sentences. Use short first paragraphs. Use vigorous English. Be positive, not
negative.

Never use old slang. Such words as stunt, cut out, got his goat, come across, sit up and
take notice, put one over, have no place after their use becomes common. Slang to be
enjoyable must be fresh.

Watch you sequence of tenses. “He said he knew the truth, not “He said he knows the
truth.” “The community was amazed to hear that Charles Wakefield was a thief,” not was
amazed to hear that Charles Wakefield is a thief.”

Eliminate every superfluous word as “Funeral services will be at 2 o’clock Tuesday,” not
“The funeral services will be held at the hour of 2 o’clock on Tuesday.” He said is better
than he said in the course of conversation.

Be careful of the word “only.” “He only had $10,” means he alone was the possessor of
such wealth.” “He had only $10,” means the ten was all the cash he possessed.

Avoid the use of adjectives, especially such extravagant ones as splendid, gorgeous,
grand, magnificent, etc.

Here are several I'm a stickler about:

A long quotation with out introducing the speaker makes a poor lead especially and is
bad at any time. Break into the quotation as soon as you can. thus: “I should prefer,” the
speaker said, “to let the reader know who I am as soon as possible.”

“He saw more than one thousand ducks flying” – not “over one thousand ducks.” Also
say “fewer than” instead of “less than,” when numbers, not quantity, are considered. It is
proper to write “He had more than $10.”

``Hemingway was a big, brutal son-of-a-bitch,'' recalled Emmet Crozier, the playwright who was on The Star's sports staff at the time. Hemingway dogged Moise's steps, listening to his theories about tying paragraphs together so they couldn't be cut; that pure objective writing is the only form of story telling; and lamenting ``the regrettable indication of a great nation's literary taste when it chooses a national anthem beginning with the words, `Oh, say.' ''

How to discover a story

There's a human in the data.

Everywhere you turn these days someone is telling you to tell a story. That includes me, sorry.

Let's say you wake up one morning and decide this is the day: you're going to tell the world a story about your company. Your conviction builds as you enter the building. Then your 9 o'clock cancels, so you lock the door, sit at your desk, declare to yourself that this is story time, and you ... sit there.

Ok, here's a way to think about it. I'm indebted to Scott Anthony, managing partner of the consulting firm Innosight, for this, well, insight:

I was working with a team that had been tasked by the company’s CEO to develop a new venture in a promising market space. Its three members had been working for about six weeks. They’d conducted detailed research, talking both to prospective customers and numerous industry experts. And then they used Microsoft’s most popular products to produce what they thought was a business plan. But it actually was a kind of fiction built in three chapters: an Excel spreadsheet with sophisticated analyses showing breathtaking financial potential, a PowerPoint document blending facts and figures with compelling videos and pictures, and a Word document summarizing all of it in prose so lucid Malcolm Gladwell would shed a tear.

So Anthony simply asked: “Who is your first customer?”

They fumbled through their stacks of papers and came up some numbers on a demographic. Nope, he replied.

I asked the question again. Instead of summary facts and figures, I wanted the team to be very precise. What is the customer’s name? Where does he live? What does he look like? What are his hopes, dreams, and aspirations? What does he love? What drives him crazy? How would the team’s idea fit into his life?

Ah. There you go. Statistics aren't a story. A protagonist with a name is moved forward by some aspiration. He encounters mountain peaks: things that drive him crazy. That's a story.

Your cue to look for story is any business plan, customer research, page of numbers, list of bullet points. Look in the abstract generalities of business life for a specific human story.