Monthly Message Design Office Hours 📱

Hey, it's Tuesday. I was about to say it was Monday. It's Tuesday. It's May 26th. I'm Tamsen Webster and this is the Message Design Office. Office Hours, perhaps going to become the Sense Giving, Sense Giver Office Hours. I don't know. It's all related. But here we go. So I'm Tamsen Webster. If you don't know me, I study the transferability of ideas and how that happens. So that's why it's tied to messaging. And once a month or so, I do this free office hours so you can come ask anything that you want about idea transferability, idea viability. The various ways in which one needs to transfer that. So content development, talks, etc., writing, all the stuff. And today I, on my community chat on Substack, very late, by the way, asked folks, hey, what of these three topics would you be interested in? And then the lovely Jeanette Broday came in with a very specific question. So I wanted to honor that. And so start there. So I'm going to bring that up, that, that, and then, and Jen behind the scenes, say hi to Jen, um, we'll clean it up if it needs to be. I don't think it does, but this was the question that Jeanette asked. Um, she was, uh, thinking, I don't want to speak for her, but she told me a little bit more about it saying it was coming really from the, the her understanding and reading of Pope Leo's response to AI and the way he was talking about it. But the way that she framed the question, and really loved this, was, what's the balance between complexity and simplicity, and what gets lost when you go towards one or the other? And in my follow-on text conversation with her, again, on chat in Substack, she was talking a little bit about things like trust and how really complex that is. So there's any number of ways we can go with this question. I have thoughts, so I'm going to go specific ways. If there are other folks watching and you've got questions, are thoughts related to this, please go on into the comments. If you really want to join me live on screen, just give Jen— what's the best way to do that? She'll tell me how to do that. She'll put it in the chat. And we'll pop you on stage and have a chat. But so I, again, starting with this question of what's the balance between complexity and simplicity, and the question asked by Jeanette, I think that there is a really— the way I think about this, the first place my brain goes, and I prepped it for us, is what is often known as Gall's Law. And so the— there was a systems theorist thinker guy named John Gall who in 1975 said this, and you can read it on the screen, but the way he talked about it was that a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. Now, when we're talking about ideas, um, Obviously this isn't necessarily an actual law. I don't know that anyone has tested this, but that would be a fun research side quest, note to self. Um, but I do believe it's a viable analogy because I've been operating with this kind of frame in my mind about how to think about ideas for quite a long time now. And what I have observed, just as is often the case, or really is always the case from what I can see in complex topics of math and science and engineering and technology, a lot of those things that I do a lot of work with people on, is that again, invariably, even the most complex versions of those ideas, even the newest versions of those ideas, if you roll them all the way back, they are often based on very straightforward— not necessarily simple— straightforward basic principles of how things work. And kind of one of my operating theories with all of this is that that is also true for ideas. So what does this mean in the context of, uh, Jeanette's question about like how does this all relate? Is that I think— so, A, what's the balance between complexity and simplicity? I would say simplicity is that they're not opposed, and in fact they are related. And, and what I think ends up being more useful as I'm talking to people about idea transferability and these kinds of things is actually this idea of not so much simplicity, but I want us to think about it as— I'm going to make it bigger so I don't make it— as accessibility. Meaning is it appropriately tuned for, to a couple things. And I think that as I think about this, again, if you know me well, I'm gonna be thinking about this out loud and all often ways first time. So accessibility has a lot to do with who your audience is, and that's gonna have a lot to do with what they do or don't already know about whatever it is you're talking about. And inclusive in know and what they already know is what do they already believe they know, which is also an important thing to, to bear in mind. Because if we're talking about accessibility, you're going to talk to somebody who— about your idea. Let's say if you've got a scientist talking to a scientist, then as long as they're in the same discipline, generally there's going to be a level of baseline knowledge and expertise that means that you can talk about complex ideas in their oftentimes complex form with their— what other people would consider to be kind of fancy pants arcane labels and things like that. If you're talking about that same idea to, let's say, a 10-year-old child, this is a technique known as the Feynman learning technique from a physicist. I talked about this in a recent post article on Substack. Um, then again, the idea remains the same, but because the person you're talking to has a much different baseline understanding of it, we need to change the, uh, the language and the way we're talking about that idea into concepts that they already know, etc. Now, another thing about the accessibility of an idea is also going to have to do with where in the process they are. And so, um, what we mean by— it's like it's telling me you can't read my writing, that's fine. Um, where in the process they are, because in my experiences, good learning technique would tell you this. Jerome Bruner in particular would say that we need to build on what people know in order to be able to expand what they know. In other words, the more you know, the more you can know. And in rhetoric, this is often referred to as the known-new contract. But if somebody has already— if you've already introduced them to something and they already understand it in that baseline format, then we can start to add more complexity or more of that nuance to it. We can start to move it up that line from from simple, accessible, to more complex. And, you know, all people tell me that there should be 3 things. I can come up with 2 right now. And so maybe there's a third, maybe there's not. But to me, this is really where it comes in, is really finding that simple, the most accessible form of the idea, and start there. And honestly, I would say that it is Useful. Oh, I have one other thing to add to my three. I knew it would come eventually, but I think there's one other thing that's, that's useful as we, as we think about, um, this. And that is, I would say I have yet to find a situation where it doesn't make sense to present some version of the most accessible form of your idea first. Um, it gives people something that they can comprehend right away. And it also gives them an immediate frame around which to, like, stick everything else that you're talking to. And again, it's, it's one of those things that works with how people think, and it allows you to attach more information over time to that basic frame than if you were just to give someone a whole bunch of detail and then hope they start to figure that out. Brains don't quite work that way. So I see there's a question from Ian and I will get to that in just a second. But the third thing that I want to answer is, you know, who they are and what they know, where they are in the process, like how much have you introduced them to, right? Because the accessibility can get, you can get more complex the longer you have spent someone, spent with someone, and the more detail you've been able to add. But the last thing I think is important for an accessibility standpoint is actually how resistant or skeptical they are to start with. And for this, I'm going to reference a document that I'm an advisor on a startup and they were having me look at their, their business case. And it's one of those things where an audience, let's say like organizations, companies were labeled as a potential revenue stream. But a lot of the language associated with those companies was as if the companies were the bad guy. And so that's one of those things where the idea won't be accessible if somebody literally, or some representative of an organization, literally can't see themselves in the idea because they're like, mm, this is not accessible to me because it just doesn't apply. So I think those are the 3 things. OK. Um, let me answer. Let's go to Ian's question. So when a compact case— I'll explain that for those who don't know— um, feels logical to me but still doesn't land with the audience, what's the fastest way to diagnose whether the problem is with the if, with the then, or the beliefs underneath? Okay, so the first thing I want to do is explain what I mean by the compact case, um, and what Ian is talking about. Thank you, Ian. So let me put that— okay. So the Compact Case is my working theory of the simplest, most accessible form of an idea, or at the very least, the minimum viable packet of information that an idea needs to have in order to be understood. There are— it starts with two pieces. Um, let me start. Um, so there is an if, which is a desired outcome, And there is a then, which in this place is an approach. Can you flip these so that it's a when-then? So it's a when we do this, this produces that. Yes. Happy to answer why that's the case. But because this if-then cause and effect stimulus and response relationship is a one of the most basic building blocks of understanding and of sense-making that exists in all forms of sentient life, as far as we know— dogs, babies, humans— doesn't require words. That's one of the reasons why I believe that this, this if-then, what's also known as a conditional, is a necessary part of making sure that an idea is understandable from the get-go. I'm going to start— keep it right at this level because this It's also oftentimes one of the first places it breaks. So Ian, to your question, one of the first things we are— we need to look at whenever something isn't landing the way you look, like, it's always, almost always going to be in one of these two places to start. Um, and the first thing we're going to look for is we're going to ensure the fact that both of those pieces are there. In other words, we want to make sure that you've got an outcome named and you have an approach named. So it would be super helpful for me, Ian, either if you would type into the comments or be willing to come on stage to let me know, like, if you can give me your current— I call this the core claim right now— that would be super helpful because that way I'm not dealing in hypotheticals and I'm dealing with something real and live. So we're going to call this the core claim, which is an if-then conditional. Um, and so, for instance, let me just give an example. Um, I literally typed this out earlier today, so sometimes this is my life. Um, if we want to understand why viruses are the way they are So this is actually an idea from Asher Leeks, who is an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Asher Leeks, I should say. So if again, the outcome that we're, that we're talking about is understand viruses, then, and then this is what he was arguing for in the TEDx talk I was working with him on, then says Asher, we need to pay attention to the evolution of their— he calls it sociality. I'm going to translate that to make it more accessible. Um, social interactions. So, and I'm just going to say again, the, the official word there is sociality. Um, and to another evolutionary biologist, that's going to make a lot of sense. But to most people who hear that word for the first time, they don't know. So this is one of those places that once Asher knew what he, what he wanted to get across, then we made this, that term more accessible to, in this case, an educated lay audience, TEDx, and turned it into social interactions. We made the bet that most people would understand what evolution is, or at least have an intuitive understanding that was close enough to start with. And we made it— we were kind of betting that that audience at least wanted to understand viruses better. We all get sick. Oftentimes that's from viruses. We don't necessarily know where viruses come from. This particular talk happened within spitting distance, pun intended, of COVID And so viruses were very much on people's minds. And so The reason I wanted to bring this up—

hey, Ian—

um, is that I wanted— like, usually we've got a problem in either one of these or the other is missing. That's the first problem. Two, they are framed in ways that people don't understand, right? So let's say we said, um, sociality evolution. That may not be something that people actually understand. Um, And then 3, uh, another thing that breaks here is the 2 aren't— let's assume that those things, they're both, they're both there, everybody understands both parts. Another thing that can happen is that people don't, um, well, one other thing, people don't care. If they don't care about this one, the way that our brains process information, particularly in an if-then, is that if the, if the if doesn't apply, then the whole thing is void. They don't, they don't care. And then the last thing that can happen is, let's say they do care, they do understand. If those two things don't seem likely to be linked, if it's not plausible that what I can understand about evolution of social actions— and again, I know I need to explain just a tiny little bit more about that— doesn't make sense with the whole idea of understanding viruses, then it might fail there too. So with that as a backdrop, I see Ian is online. So let's bring Ian up and we're going to chat. Hey, Ian, how are you?

Sup, Tamsen? I'm doing well. How are you?

I'm great. So tell me what you've got now and we'll work from there.

Yep. So what I have now is if I want my clients to consistently follow through on the work in my program, then I need to make it easier for them to act on what they already know they should do.

Okay. So who is this message for?

Yeah, so it's way— it's really broad right now. So it's info product creators, experts who have designed a specific methodology, who have packaged that methodology up into, uh, some kind of consumable information product like a book, course, coaching program, consulting, things like that. But what I have found is that the work that I do actually works It's— I'm thinking that I'm going to focus on authors. So maybe there's like some—

I'm an author, I get that. Okay.

Yeah.

So, all right, so the first thing I would say is the reason why I asked was the way you frame the question sounded like if I, Ian, want you authors to consistently follow through then you authors need to act on what you know you should do.

Got it.

Do you hear it?

Yeah, definitely.

All right, so let me, let me explain. Let me unpack that for everybody else. So the first thing is that this if question needs to be something that I as an author want, and you want to help me too, right? So if— so we can stay with that kind theme, but keep it into what an author— like, again, because if I have to say that this thing is relevant to me, or again, I'm just going to ignore the whole thing. So if I don't have an issue with consistently following through on your stuff, this makes no— this does not— this does not apply is how my brain works right now. I, as an author, may have trouble consistently following through, like actually getting X done, right? Now, if that's something you can help me with, then you can make the, the core question that, that if part of it, then you can say you're going to want to frame it from the language of the author, which is like, how can I actually get the book written this time? Can I get it? Or how can I make sure that people act on this book that I'm writing, right? People act on the content of the book. I know a little bit about your stuff, so that's what I'm saying. Right. So that is, if that's a question I have as an author, like if I'm the kind of author who doesn't just want to write the book but really is writing this book because I want people to do things differently afterwards, then, you know, I can, I can write the book as well as I can. But if I want to, this is one of my favorite phrases, raise the probability that someone will actually implement what is in the book. Now we're at a point where I can say, okay, and Ian, I get— I'm— if I remember correctly, this is, this is fairly aligned with what you would do, right? So yeah, I would say we probably want something with like, how can I raise probability? Again, that may not be as accessible as we want it yet, but the first thing we have to do is get clarity, and then we can get it to be like comfy for the, for the audience, right? Raise the probability that people will act on my book's ideas, right? Does that feel good? Something like that. Do you see where I'm going? So if If I want, if they're asking this question, um, and do you see how like that now starts to bring it— now it's accessible back to, to this question we were talking about today. Now it's accessible because I'm gonna— if, if I am an author with that question, and I'm much more likely to have that question, just this is my own belief, but then how do I follow through on your stuff? Like now, because self-interested, really. But what you're trying to find with that if question is that intersection of what they care about and what you can help them with. But it has to be something that they are actively caring about right now. Yeah, you see, right? So, um, because remember that, that failure point is if I don't recognize myself in that question, I'm not going to pay attention to the rest of it. Yep. Right. So, and again, if we're just writing this for text, you're going to say to raise the probability that people will act on your book's ideas. Now we've turned it into— now you were talking to them, and because it embeds a question I have, now I'm, I'm more likely to pay— now I'm much more likely to pay attention. So now we want to say act on what they know, what that they should do. Now who's acting here? Right. So, okay, this is a great example because as soon as you change that if questions, the rest of it's probably going to change. It should. Right. Yeah. So, and this is one of those things where it's like, okay, well, where do you immediately go with that question? What's the answer?

I don't know.

Do you have an answer? Because we can start there. Like, because again, it's not hire Ian. I know you want it to be, but it's I would only hire you if I agree with how you're going to do this. So I need to know what approach, like, kind of like, what's your, what's your, what's your theory? Like, what's, what, what do you do, period? What's your answer to this question of how can we actually make people follow through on a book's ideas? So just talk to me, or if you've got a quick, clear answer, let us know.

Yeah, so where my mind immediately goes is what was originally kind of written. So making it easier for them to do so, right? Making it easier because it, in my opinion right now, there's a lot of friction for people. Uh, like maybe there's like a workbook that comes along with the book, but there's still a lot of friction of personalizing the information that you learn in a book.

Mm-hmm.

And then filling out the worksheet or the workbook.

Mm-hmm.

Um, Yeah. Like there's no problem consuming the content in the book, like reading the chapter.

Yeah.

But then it's applying it to your own situation and then taking action on the exercises. You're typically on your own, right? As a, as a consumer, as a reader.

Yep.

Or you can, you know, pay for the coaching program, which is another direction that we might go with the if statement that I might go. I'm gonna experiment with the if statement. It's like, if you want more of your clients to buy your higher ticket services, then you need more of them to, you know, get value from the book or something. I don't know. But, um, sticking with this if statement, then is the easier thing. Do you feel like that's the right direction? Like making it easier for them to—

so I don't disagree, but it's not specific enough yet, right? Because the opposite of, well, you wouldn't make it harder, right? So I need to know, right? I agree, like, that making it easier would raise the probability, but you need to tell me what, what makes something easier for someone to follow through, right? So just again, I'm not telling you your idea, I'm just picking up based on, you know, for the, for the benefit of those watching, that one of the words you said was personalized. Yeah, so it, that would tell me that, um, You know, I could see— again, remember what the other match that has to happen is that I have to see— there has to be this kind of intuitive, like, honestly and literally it's a gut check that says, could I, without any other explanation, understand how something that was personalized would raise the probability of someone acting on something, right? Someone would go, yeah, abs— like, right? Like, that's the kind of thing where someone could— like, the just the likelihood, that gut check on the likelihood is there. Right. So again, not saying that this is the one for you, but we need something like personalization makes sense. Right. And why does personalization make sense? Because what's easy for one person is not necessarily easy for another. Right. So the kind of this idea of like, you know, again, I'm just super quick, but what we're looking for here is like quick Remember I was talking about math and science, getting down to basic principles. That's what we're trying to do here too. So we could say something like, um, process is personal, right? Something like, something just super similar, similar, um, uh, because what we're trying to get through here is, um, again, we're just trying to say why would we need— we're just making it explicit why personalization would raise probability. So if you said something like, process is personal, what's easy for one person, like what makes one person follow through is not the same thing that makes another person follow through. So the more personalized something is to someone, the more likely that it's going to be personalized to the way they work and where they need help implementing. Do you see? Again, super fast, but that's the kind of thought process that we're looking for. So personalization alone isn't it, right? Because it can be fully personalized, but there's gonna be something else. If we were to fall, you know, continue with this line, there's gonna be something else in addition to personalization that could bring, that you believe to your core, 'cause it's built into like why you've developed the products and services that you have, helps raise the probability that people act on ideas, right? So want to take a gander. Jen has suggested accessibility, right? So that does speak to this kind of idea of kind of knowing again what you do, which is oftentimes is to create GPT accompaniments, right, to books, right, to help people move through. There is this aspect of accessibility, not in the level that we're talking about, but almost like an on-demand, right? So you're almost having like this kind of personal, um, like this on-demand prompter. Um, prompting— prompt might be one of them, not saying. Um, partner could be another one.

Companion is what I—

companion, exactly. Um, the alliteration, like you can take the girl out of marketing Can't take the marketing out of the girl. They do not have to be alliterative, but it really helps stickiness for you and your audience. So just, if you, you can say companion, I'm just going to say partner.

Partner.

Um, just, it's your idea, you get to call it what you want. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm just gonna illustrate it because I'm gonna remember it better if it's partner. Um, so then we have to say, why would a partner be like a really, really, you know, kind of a critical success factor? Or the reverse, why is the lack of a partner a critical failure point in acting on something, right? So why is it that a partner, just like we need personalization because different people respond differently to requests to act. I, for instance, suffer from what's known as pathological demand avoidance. You tell me to do something, even if it's myself, I won't do it. As Jen will know, she very kindly puts in when I should record things in my calendar, and then I'm like, not today, and then I move it. I eventually get there. Okay, but why are we doing that for partner? So tell me more about why you believe so much in a partner, whether it's AI or not. This is key, right? Whether it's a GPT or not, we need to say What is something that, again, split second someone goes, that's true about partners, that would make it more likely that I would do something that I want to do, right? Like, that's important.

Yeah. Uh, I'd say my mind just immediately goes back to the fact that when you have somebody guiding you through the process of completing the thing that you need to do in order to act on the ideas step by step It just removes so much of the friction. So like maybe there's an accountability piece to it, but it, it goes back to just making it a lot easier. It's, it's instead of you on your own staring at a workbook, just kind of left, left to your own devices to personalize the information that you just heard.

Yep.

Apply it to your own situation. That is so much harder than if you had a partner personalizing that information for you and guiding you one step at a time through the process.

Okay, so remember that I'm picky, but this is why I do this work. I mean, this is why— okay, and the reason why I'm picky is because your audience's brain is picky. And so I think it's best to be picky— you're doing this in public, but it's best to be like picky and essentially private before before you try to defend it in public, because that's not when you want to find out that your idea is not defensible. Okay, now what I'm going to be picky about is that we need to make sure that— I heard a lot about that a partner that personalizes is great, but I still didn't hear as much about the partner on their own. And that's how we make sure that the idea is as strong as possible, is that we actually We're going to, for a little while before we put these two together, we're going to imagine that there's like a brick wall here between these two things. And we're going to say partner, like personalization doesn't exist. Why on its own? Why does partner equal increased probability of action? Why?

Well, if I just think back to my experiences in life when I've been able to work with a partner on things, The accountability is a big part of having a partner in a process, right? The accountability of that person's gonna show up, they're gonna be there doing the thing that helps. But also the other idea is that, okay, when I have a partner, I'm not just talking to myself, right? In the mirror, but I'm able to actually collaborate and bounce ideas off of this person, right? And just kind of, you know, just workshop stuff like what, like what we're doing right now. If I was trying to do this on my own. I would just be saying the things that I'm saying out loud, but you're able to hear what I'm saying and then you can kind of digest it through your own lens. And obviously you're the expert in this domain, right? So I'm able to just kind of voice, just brain dump, right? Brainstorm.

So this may not be where you would end up landing. Again, we're just showing the process here, but I heard something along the line of partners add perspective, right? And so that like you can, And you could go on to explain the fact that like they're gonna have, particularly as, again, if you go deeper, once you get the opportunity to explain further, which you generally don't get if they don't understand why they would listen in the first place, right? So once they understand that, oh, I want a personalization partner to accompany my reading because the process of follow-through is personal and partners add perspective. Okay, that's why, right? Like, the more personalized kind of you have as a partner, the more likely you're going to be doing that. Great, fine. Ian, how do you do that? And you're like, oh, okay, well, first of all, in order for a partner ad perspective, they've got to be fully versed, right, in everything that we're talking about. In other words, they've got to be way more expert in this than you, but you get to be the expert like you the reader get to be the expert in that. Um, oh, and then Jen coming in with the winner. Um, the author adds the expertise and the partners add perspective, right? And the partner can help you reinforce like what it is that you want to do. So again, this may or may not be where you end up, but what I wanted you— because you asked that question of like, how do I know where it's not working? And The first thing I did, just to recap for everybody else, was to go back and look at that if-then. Do we have both in place? We did, but we didn't have an if that spoke to the audience in a way that was immediately relevant to them. And then once we— and because that was broken, then the then didn't make any sense in that context. So then we've— now we've started to build out a little bit about how you can talk about that. Right. And what we're basically saying is, do you, do you understand and agree with the idea? Again, not of what it actually is, but what it does. Right. So it's what you're offering people with this combination, which is something I call the core strategy or the prime strategy, is that you're offering them a way to think about how to answer this. Like you're basically saying, well, if you think of this through the lens of a personalization partner. Right. And why? Because you're going to have somebody who's going to keeping you accountable and is also now you get to put them back together, helping to personalize everything that they know and everything that they understand about the process, about you, et cetera, and really personalize that through. That's really going to help you. Here is how I, Ian, have developed that, and here's how I, to the authors, can help do that for your people. But see, the authors have to understand Why would the end user do it before they're going to pay any attention to why I should do that with you? Yeah, does that make sense?

Yep. Order up, order of operations. Start at the top. You need to figure out the top first.

That's right, the order of operations is— and it really does start with the order of operations— is absolutely, positively always start with the if. Um, because again, as I was saying before, if that if question— wherever it was, I don't even know anymore— if that question doesn't— if that question does not make it through again, that nanosecond first contact with the audience's mind, if it doesn't survive that as, I'm curious about that, um, I understand it well enough, I can make sense of that question enough, and that's important, I can make sense of what you've just said in such a way that there is now a gap between what I know and what I want to know. I'm going to keep listening. And so if— yeah. And so I think one of the things that's important, and again, I'm bringing into this some reading I just was doing on the behalf of a company that I'm aligned with, is that this has to be something we cannot— this— you cannot shame someone into changing. Not long-term. You may be able to shame someone into acting, but not into changing. And so what that means is that I have yet to see a message that, that is— feels in any way judgy to someone that they're like, yep, sign me up. Um, and you're not doing this right, but this is why I spend so much time when I'm talking to somebody. And even we talked about this a little bit like before, where it's like If you're talking to people who have trouble consistently following through, right? All right, you ready for some magic? Do you see how that question actually now can be served, answered by a personalized partner, personalization partner? So the thing is, is that this is why, and that happens all the time too, so that usually it's like It's the mismatch between the question and the answer. And we have to start with that right question. Get the, get the pieces of the answer that would be true regardless, because they are what you believe. And then once they're there, oftentimes you can say, oh, okay. So if you've got somebody who's consistently following through, guess what? Still the same answer. If you've got someone who doesn't know where to start, guess what? Same answer. And again, that's going to be contained in other stuff. So other questions, thoughts, comments? Ian, thank you for doing this with me today.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. I just want to reconfirm that, like, the if statement should be the question that your target audience is asking themselves, right?

Yes, it's at this little— it's at the— so the— this— whoop, here we go. So this question sits at the intersection of What they want to know, uh-huh, and what you do for them. This question lives right here, okay? So one thing I often refer to this, and it's a way to test it, is I often refer to this as a qualifying. There's no better time to discover how terribly one writes than when one has to do it in public. Okay, um, so the qualifying question operates in both ways. What it tells you is, in other words, think of it in the terms of SEO, even if it's not in terms— if even if it's generative AI right now, someone is still asking something. How do I get people to do this? Yeah, right. And so they, if, if like they have to ask that question and you have to show up, right? Or you have to be kind of talking about that thing that they know they want to know in order to even arrive in their consideration set to begin with when we're talking about a product or service, right? But it also works for you. Because any author who is not curious about how they can get— help people actually act on their expertise, they are not your client, right? Don't waste time, right? So it's kind of like I often talk about my work in the context of buy-in. Um, it's where a lot of people say start. They don't have any better language for that than buy-in. But I settled on buy-in because it isn't just how do I persuade people. There is something about buy-in that speaks to genuine belief or a genuine conviction. And I literally don't want— and I have no problem saying this out in public— I do not want to work with people that I have to convince why they should want people to be internally motivated to be on board. So where you start that question is really important, right? And so obviously consistently following through, that's also somebody that you care about because that was your first version. So that's important. But what we don't want to do is go saying, how can I find a personalized prompter? Right? Right. Like, or a personalized partner. Yeah, it's That comes back to— you remember where I said accessibility comes back to where they are in the process. Now this is what happens when a market starts to mature a little bit, right? And what happens when I'm gonna start— market starts to mature a little bit is they can start first with how do I do this thing, whatever it is, to start, right? And this is where you are right now. After a while And this is just the beginning of where we are right now. We're starting to say, people are saying, how can I build an AI partner? Right? Like, as the market starts to mature, then people will start to be saying, how can I do this for my audience? Right now, there's probably not enough of those people to sustain your business who are asking this version of the question. So we back up to where more people are knowing that as the competition develops and as the market starts to mature, they are going to get more and more specific with that question.

I mean, yeah, makes total sense.

Okay.

Yay!

That's the whole goal. Okay. Super. Ian, thank you so much for jumping on and chatting. Appreciate it.

Thanks again, Tamsen.

All right. You're welcome. Any other questions from folks? Comments? We've had lots of people watching the whole time today. Yay. If Jeanette's still on, I'm also curious if I answered her question or not. Because her question, if I remember correctly, I'll just riff a little bit until somebody else has a question, or if they don't, we'll just give everybody time back in their day. Was actually, I can bring it up. So her question was, This idea about trust is often reduced to behaviors, respect and responsibility, but it's a much more complex and multidimensional, that kind of thing. OK, so this is a great example of going back to who they are, what they know, where they are in the process, and how resistant are they to this message. I'm going to say that the CEOs of the AI companies are very resistant to Poplio's message. Um, now if they are also Catholic, this might create some kind of internal dissonance for them. I don't know. One may hope. Um, but the thing is, is that for anybody who's really trying to transfer their idea, we, we want to make sure that we are, we are planting seeds in fertile ground. Um, and it doesn't mean to keep the whole Pope thing going, that we're preaching to the converted. It just means don't put— don't plan an idea where it's going to take a lot of effort on everybody's part in order for you to be happy about it. Now, I'm not speaking to the Pope here on that, right? Because the Pope is basically saying, here's my position. That's— that is kind of the Pope's job, is to say what's the church's position on this. Um, But when we're talking about a thing like trust, there are— we have to decide who are you talking to? Are you talking to the people who already believe as you do that it's way more complex than just behaviors, respect, etc.? Right? And if that's the case, then you can start with a more complex articulation of that. Again, it doesn't mean that it's opaque to people. It still needs to make sense at their level of accessibility, but it doesn't— we need to make sure that we're not talking to people— the biggest risk for always with an idea transferability is that we've got a mismatch, a misalignment between who you're trying to be accessible to and the, and the, and the, the form of the articulation. Ah, there we go. The articulation is misaligned with the accessibility. Um, You know, so the articulation is misaligned with the audience and what the audience needs for it to be accessible. So Jeanette, you're, you're saying that you're always too complex, um, but I just want people to understand themselves, not just know how to do something. That's one of those places where that's going to work when people want to understand themselves, when they are not— where that ground hasn't been like, if that— again, if the ground isn't turned up a little bit there, people are not generally open to advice they didn't ask for. And it's not 100%, but we— and this is frankly a thing that I've— this is one of the biggest lessons and kind of things that I've learned through being in my doctoral program, kind of I got clarity around this, is that We are, as humans— and this isn't just you, it's me, it's everybody— we are all subject to the belief that what we think is right, and that what we think is more right than what somebody else thinks who is not doing something or believing something the way we think they should. And The issue with that is that, A, that has a name, um, it's called naive realism. I don't like to use that word because people don't like to think that they're naive, but that is literally what it's called. Um, and the other problem with it is that most people think that way. And so this is one of those things where from an accessible point of view, math works against us. Which is most people cannot be more right than other people. Like, that doesn't, that doesn't work. So I just, I urge everybody, and this is a, this is something I have, I have to remind myself as well, Jeanette, so this is not personal to you, that we may be wrong. And that is the heart of an academic, a scientific kind of mind. Not everybody chooses to be that way. That's also fine, right? I could be wrong about taking that stance. But what I find is that there is an empathic reason to do that too, right? Not only may I might objectively be wrong about something that I am sure that I've been convinced about, Um, but holding the possibility that someone else may be more right, or that there may be a piece of information that I don't know or that I don't understand, allows us to approach people, ideas, environments with a different mindset, which is not, I'm right, you're wrong, but this is how I understand it. How do you understand it? Right. And, and in that, in that gap between how do I understand it, how do you understand it, not to see who's better or worse, but just why is it that we understand things this way? Starry-eyed realist. That's where I believe there's enormous opportunity for All of us. No more enormous opportunity, full stop. So I will come back to saying, if, if there's resistance to your idea, whatever it might be, there are probably two big reasons for that. Number one, to anybody's idea— this is good, not specific to any particular person— number one, It is if they understand it, if it's relevant to them, and they're resistant to it, they just might see it a different way. Um, the other big reason is they're just not there yet, and they may never be. And so this is a choice that you make though when you are or you want to be a leader of thinking, what I like to call a thinking leader rather than a thought leader, or to use, you know, the, the kind of, um, more academic term— I still love it— sense giver, right? I'm trying to give you the sense that I have so that maybe it will make sense to you that, that doing that work We get to decide where we want to spend our time and effort. And I am personally of the place where I don't— I— some people literally enjoy really changing people's minds, like wildly changing people's minds, like going from black to white, like day becomes night, whatever that— they love that. I do not. Um, but I'm so glad that there's people out there that do. Because that's where they're going to spend their time. And there's enough room for where everybody is in different processes of thinking to kind of figure out where you are and where you want to be and where you want to serve. So when someone's like, oh, it's too complex. And I've gotten that feedback too. You get to decide. And here I'm going to quote my one of my best bosses. Ms. Maya Dennis, she— I worked for her at Allen Garrettson Advertising Agency, and she was quoting to me advice from one of her bosses, when— which was, when somebody gives you feedback that you don't agree with, um, or you don't understand even, like, step one is to decide whether or not you care. That's a really important step, right? Because if, if someone goes, that's too complex, but it's a group of folks that is not your people, then that is not a place to continue to like pay attention. But you say, I want to facilitate insight, great. So if you've got a group of people who do, or who say, I, I really want to understand what you're saying, but I don't understand, that is a group you care about. And then that's the group where, again quoting Maya, um, That's the group where you say, well, what is it about what I, what I did? What experience did I create that led them to feel that way? And that's where we start to look and go, okay, was I talking about it in the way that I see it, or was I talking about it in the way that they can see it? And I think that's important because to facilitate insight, This is something I wrote my last Substack article was about. This was, you know, this is about comprehensibility, right? And comprehensibility is really key to this idea I've been working through on kind of idea coherence being the key to somebody being able to make sense of something. And they can't have insight if they can't make sense of it first, right? So this is why I spend all my time these days at this sensemaking stage, because if people can't make sense of it, You're dead. And, but if you, they can make sense of it and they make sense of it to them in such a way that it makes more sense to them than whatever it is that they're doing or thinking now, then I think solid sense giving preempts the need for persuasion. You don't have to convince people because they're like, oh, that makes so much sense that that's just what I'm going to do now. So when it comes to facilitating insight, it's about saying, What is the— this is again an analogy I go back to, but what is the— what's the, what's the big picture version of it again? And sometimes that goes back to Gall's Law, what I talked about before, which is what is the simplest form of this that, that you can talk about? Like, at the base of this really complex thing is probably something very, very, very, very simple. And you start there and you make sure that you've got— they can make sense of it, and if you're trying to move forward, they agree with it before you start— you add all the detail. Um, this is why over and over again I'm like, you've got to be able to state that idea and that if-then. You've got to be able to state the support for it, as we were doing with Ian. Um, you've got to be able to state the support for it in, um, This is fun. Uh, um, you've got to be able to state the support for it in a sentence. So Ian's got to be able to say, I believe that if you want to raise the probability that people will act on your expertise, then they need a— and you need a personalized partner or a personalization partner. Why? Because the process of change is personal, right? So we need something that adapts to the people and because partners add perspective or whatever it is that he ends up saying. With that overview, if someone goes, yep, I get it right, then they've— now they have that. They've made sense of what you've said so far. Then he can start to add detail. What does personalization mean? What does a partner mean? What does that— oh, partner means an AI. Okay, well, how do we do that? What does that look like? What's the technology involved? Um, but yeah, I mean, as you were commenting, how they see it versus how you see it, it's different. Like, there— it has to be. Um, oh, I had an analogy. I had a Hypnopompic analogy for this the other day and I completely forgot it. But, um, the thing is, is that we see our ideas— oh, it's back to the map, right? That we see our— we live in our ideas, right? You live with this understanding of the world. Like, And I love to be this way because I've lived in Boston for 30 years. There are still streets that I walk down literally every day, do not know what they're called. And so this is only a problem when some tourist asks me, how do you get from here to there? And I have to go, oh, well. And they're like, well, what's the name of the street? I'm like, I don't know. This is why maps are important. It is all the way back to that famous line of the map is not the territory. Right? You know the territory, you live it. They need a map, and we cannot like— we have— the only thing we can transfer is the map. And then once they've got the map and they start to understand where are they, how do they navigate, what does this look like, then they can start to understand and become a local. Never as much as you are, right? But at least they're going to understand how to get where you are with it, and how do you get back? That's probably way more than you wanted, but, um, I think that that's really the key here, is that— and that's probably one of the hardest things to understand— is that you can't explain it your way to somebody else unless you are 100% sure that they understand it exactly the same way and that they can talk about things in exactly the same way. And I'm going to tell you that even when you think that's the case, at least my experience has been, is not. You know, just as a little fun fact, like one of the qualifying paper I had to do for my doctoral program, I looked at how one theory has used one term since 1985. And nobody agrees on what it means. It, it means three— it can be used in three different ways. And not only that, people never studied it. So even if somebody says, oh, I'm talking about epokko transformation, and somebody goes, oh, I do that too, unless they actually explain what they mean by it, they could be talking about two completely different things. And then what's worse, because people put different names on these things, And this is what my dissertation is about. I believe that that kind of sudden perspective transformation is the same as these— the same phenomenon shows up in at least two other disciplines, meaning shows up in organization science, shows up in cognitive psychology, and nobody's talking to each other about any of it. So that's what's bananas. Anyway, so start with the audience and what they would understand, or go back to what I was talking about my last Substack post when I was talking about the Feynman learning technique. Really, you're, you're never going to go wrong if you can always explain your idea in less than 200 characters, less than 150 words max, right? And as if you were talking to a 10 to 12 year old child, not because your people aren't smart. They are. It's simply because you are dealing with people who are distracted and who don't already know everything that you, you do, which means every part— the only part of their brain that they can use to process your information is the part that's the most taxed. So we've got to make it as compact and comprehensible as possible. So, uh, on that note, I hope that was useful to everyone today. Thanks for hanging in. Uh, thanks, Ian, to coming up and being a live example. And thanks, Jeanette, for the question that kicked it all off. So sign up for— if you follow me on Substack and subscribe, then you'll get the announcements about when this happens. But I do this once a month and look forward to seeing you next time.

Bye.