{"id":266,"date":"2011-08-26T15:26:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T03:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=266"},"modified":"2011-08-26T17:19:48","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T05:19:48","slug":"plain-english-for-both-you-and-your-grandmother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/?p=266","title":{"rendered":"That big idea is even better in plain English"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Could you explain your big idea to your grandmother?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The latest round of difficulties in world financial markets reminds me of a time, not that long ago, when we were rather busy helping people with \u2018good ideas\u2019 to make those ideas sound attractive to people with money.<\/p>\n

Some of the good ideas were astonishingly good. Many of the best ideas were also very simple. Indeed, some of the ideas were so simple that the people who dreamed them up felt obliged to describe them in 17 layers of complexity.<\/p>\n

\u2018If we tell it like it is,\u2019 one client told us, \u2018we\u2019re not going to get the money. We need you to make it sound complicated. That\u2019s what the investment guys like.\u2019<\/p>\n

(Happily, we convinced our client to stick with simplicity and his business got the money anyway.)<\/p>\n

But not all the innovations were simple. Some really were complicated. Some were very complicated indeed. And this could be a problem.<\/p>\n

I remember an occasion on which it became clear that the chap briefing us on an incredibly-complicated holiday product had no idea how it would work. No idea at all.<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t need to,\u2019 he said. \u2018I just need to sell it to the money men.\u2019 (And he was very good at selling things.)<\/p>\n

\u2018What about the money men?\u2019 we asked. \u2018Surely they need to understand how it will work.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018No,\u2019 he assured us. \u2018They just need to believe that I<\/em> know how it will work.\u00a0 They also need to write a cheque.\u2019<\/p>\n

And write a cheque they did. Not just once, but several times. But then, after a couple of years of writing cheques, the money men decided enough was enough, and they walked away having lost several million dollars on a product that no one understood.<\/p>\n

It was a situation that two of the 20th century\u2019s more original thinkers \u2013 Kurt Vonnegut and Albert Einstein \u2013 would have understood perfectly.<\/p>\n

Mr Vonnegut reckoned that you can\u2019t hope to control what you don\u2019t understand. \u00a0While it was Einstein who suggested that you can\u2019t truly claim to understand anything until you can explain it to your grandmother.<\/p>\n

So forget the industry jargon and all those sesquipedalian words.\u00a0 Get your big idea down in plain English prose that your grandmother would \u00a0understand.\u00a0 It will make it much easier to sell.\u00a0 And it will also ensure that you really do understand it yourself. \u2013 Jack Scrivano<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest round of difficulties in world financial markets reminds me of a time, not that long ago, when we were rather busy helping people with \u2018good ideas\u2019 to make those ideas sound attractive to people with money. Some of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,6,8,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kiwistreet.co.nz\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}