Communications' Communicating Problem

Smart, Interesting, Clear

I was giving a presentation once that was part of a months-long, multi-step project for an enterprise client. About midway through, the client very politely interjected to ask, “Where is this going?” This was SHOCKING. How could he not see what a perfectly constructed story I was delivering, blending strategic excellence, brilliant insights, and practical application. But the meeting was off the rails.

Ultimately, we wound up having a follow-up meeting a week later that featured much of the same content, packaged more clearly and aligned with the client expectations.

But I learned an important lesson that would inform a huge portion of my working philosophy: The intention of your communication is irrelevant. All that matters is how it’s received. Your chart or email or voicemail only exists as it reaches the eyes or ears of the recipient.

This might seem obvious, but because of all the layers, silos, matrices, and inter-[something]-teams that make up modern marketing organizations, the communications industry has a communicating problem. The chaos has been intensified in the hybrid working, Slackified world, and we’re all in such a hurry to make our point and move on that we forget to put ourselves in the shoes of the audience.

Over the years I’ve developed a simple framework to use when communicating with colleagues, clients, and partners: SMART-INTERESTING-CLEAR (S.I.C.).

As humans, we’re predisposed to think that every word out of our mouth is smart, interesting, and clear (aka easy to understand). But the existence (and recent proliferation) of miscommunications and disinterest tells us that we’re not quite as eloquent as we thought. (Just count the number of TikToks making fun of meaningless corporate meetings.)

The reality is, even the most brilliant communicators rarely deliver the S.I.C. trifecta of Smart, Interesting, and Clear because it’s mostly impossible. It’s impossible because of the natural differences in style, capabilities, and listening skills we have as a species.

Once you recognize that we have to make tradeoffs between Smart, Interesting, and Clear, it becomes much easier to properly connect with an audience to communicate your point. While not as clear cut as two-out-of-three choice between Good, Fast, and Cheap, the S.I.C. framework also forces us to sacrifice elements of what we want to say.  

Along with the framework, here are a few basic principles in applying it to be a better communicator.

Know Your Audience

This might be a scandalous thing to say in 2024, but some people are stupid. For those people, no amount of brilliant analysis or compelling storytelling will help them understand your message. In these instances, being clear is the most important thing.

Conversely, if you know an important member of an audience has a low attention span, you have to dial up Interesting to keep them engaged so you can land your key points. This might mean sacrificing the understanding of the stupid people in the room.

Know Your Objective

Sometimes its ok for a client not to fully understand. Particularly when it comes to sharing brave ideas, the first step in a successful pitch might be just to get a client excited. There’s plenty of time to make is easy to understand down the road. In this case, you might sacrifice clarity to maximize how interesting or unique the idea.

Everything is Relative

Perhaps the most important part of the S.I.C. framework is that it’s not about what you think of your communication, it’s how your audience experiences it! If someone says, “this is very complex,” the absolute worst response you can provide is “no it’s simple.” Even if you think you delivered the clearest story possible, you have to imagine it from the recipient’s perspective.

Balance in All Things

If you dial up “Smart” so high that a presentation (or a single slide, a phone call, or a DM) is neither interesting or clear, you’ll lose the audience every time. Like in life, we need balance in how we communicate.

Over time, the S.I.C. framework becomes an innate part of your communication style, enabling you to assess the effectiveness of your delivery more nimbly. You can apply the framework to huge stage presentations or single sentences on a phone call. It’s also a good diagnostic framework for when things go wrong—did I find the right mix of Smart, Interesting, and Clear for my audience, objective, and message?

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This Week’s Whimsies

This great piece by Julia Alexander about social media becoming less social is very high on the smart and interesting scale, which means it requires a couple of reads to really understand it (in a good way- see, choices!).

Saks is developing apartments and hotels in some former stores, malls are converting closed Macy’s stores into skating rinks and Amazon warehouses, and Wells Fargo bought the Nieman Marcus space in Hudson Yards to turn into offices. Since three things make a trend, let’s call it something catchy like Retail Reimagination.

Brian Morrissey ponders what happens to Mass Brands without Mass Media. In my opinion, we wind up with way fewer “mass brands” and all the rest simply become commercial vassals of Google, Meta, and Amazon.

Another brilliant essay by W David Marx that doubles as a deep analysis of Rocky IV.