Some wonderful gems in this newsletter from Dan Hon.

Your problem is:

1. You can’t decide what’s important
2. You can’t articulate what’s important
3. You can’t prioritize what’s important
4. You can’t change what you need to change so that you can do the above
5. But wait: yes you can, it’s just that doing so is really hard, but not impossible.

And also:

• So why aren’t you doing it?
• If it were important, then you’d be doing it

He digs into each of these points in more detail before qualifying with…

No wonder deciding what’s important and then acting on it is hard. 

That’s before you get to obfuscatory language like, uh using the word “obfuscatory”. This is super easy to spot from a distance when, for example, you see a slide that says:

1. We are late
2. We don’t know how much later we’re going to be

But actually uses a couple hundred words and several graphs and 2+ slides that also include lines that are going up and to the right.

There may be totally understandable reasons for being late and not knowing how much later you’re going to be, but it’s still really hard to be candid and clear. 

I mean, another example which goes straight back to the pithy opening, is this statement:

1. We don’t know what’s important
2. We can’t decide what’s important
3. We aren’t treating what’s important, important.

That’s what your problem is! You don’t need to write more. If you’re writing more, you’re most likely avoiding pain. 

Then the real kicker…

What’s not funny is that everyone mostly knows this is the problem in the first place, it’s that nobody wants to say it out loud, so you get situations where if you’re lucky, someone will go first and then the floodgates open and everyone is relieved that the elephant in the room is suddenly visible. Like, you can see the physically palpable relief in body language.

He goes on to say that he’s been that lucky someone recently, and working with clients in a position to say the quiet parts out loud.

I’ve been in it myself in the past and can concur that it’s great to be this lucky, to open floodgates, to acknowledge the elephants, and relieve the shared stress by simply saying what everyone is already thinking, but too scared to say.

Such an important role. So crazy how hard it is to create a safe space for it. Working together is mostly psychology. We need to teach that more.