Tamsen Webster explains why your idea needs a core truth at its heart: an axiom or proverb your audience already believes. She walks through the Red Thread framework and shows how this truth connects your goal, problem, and the change you want to see.
When's the right time to change something that isn't working? When you found a better way to do it. And this week I'm speaking from personal experience because I've made the decision to change what I call one of the key components of the Red Thread. I'm Tamsen Webster of TamsenWebster.com. That's what we're talking about this week on Find the Red Thread. As always, like and subscribe if you're a fan. I need to admit something here, and it's not just that one piece of the red thread wasn't working as well as I wanted to, but I knew it wasn't working as well really from early, early on. And that piece that wasn't working as well as I wanted to was what we call, or have called, the idea statement. And the reason why I knew it wasn't working very well is because in essence, we were always talking about two different levels of ideas. There was your idea, the one that you wanted to have big impact on the world, and then within the red thread of that idea was this other idea. And even in the beginning, I said, "I know this isn't the best word for it, but I can't find the one that's even better." And so it wasn't until I figured out, well, what is this idea statement really trying to do Then I discovered, what did I really need to call it? And what I realized was that ultimately, the Red Thread is about the intersection of two worldviews, of the way that you see the world and the way that the people you serve see the world. And for each of you, certain things have to be true in order for you to start to see the world a little bit differently. And it's that idea of truth that finally made me realize that the idea statement is truly a statement of truth, an axiom, a universal truth, something that is believed and known to be true outside of even the context of what you're talking about. It's why so often proverbs or proverb-like statements work well as that core idea, or now as I'm going to call it, the core truth. Because a diamond is forever, it's true, it's a true statement, and And anything that you're building with your Red Thread needs to have a statement that your audience would also agree to be true. So despite the fact that I have 70+ videos now that where we talk about the idea as the idea statement, we're now gonna be talking about it as the truth so that the elements of the Red Thread are the goal, the problem, the truth, the change, and the action. And by doing that, I think we're gonna get much closer, much more quickly to the kind of concept that that statement needs to represent. Because remember, it can't be what you want people to do, it needs to be why they would do it. And the only true reason why they would do it is because it aligns with something that they believe to be true. So while that's very specific to me and the Red Thread, I think there's a lesson here for us all as well, which is, If we want our ideas to have the impact that we want them to have, we have to pay attention to not just how we wanna talk about it, but how are they best heard and understood. Because it's only when somebody understands something that they can do something with it. And that means if you realize over and over again that there's confusion about something in your idea, then it's on you as the steward, as the shepherd of that idea, to make sure that you change it so the people you serve understand it and use it the way that you want them to. That's this week's episode of Find the Red Thread. I'm Tamsen Webster of TamsenWebster.com, and you can find and follow me online at Tamsen Webster on YouTube, on LinkedIn, and on Instagram, and as Tamadeer on Twitter.
