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Comment by TheBiv | Hacker News Reader

This Q&A really hit home for me.

Q: Early leadership lessons for you?

A: I didn’t understand the role of simplicity and messaging early on. One of the things that happened at one of my start-ups was that I would get bored saying the same thing every day. So I decided to change it up a little bit. But then everybody had a different idea of what I thought because I was mixing it up.

So my big lesson was the importance of a simple message, and saying it the same way over and over. If you’re going to change it, change it in a big way, and make sure everyone knows it’s a change. Otherwise keep it static.

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The best thing I've even seen in this space is the Brand Strategy Canvas. It's like the Lean Canvas or Business Model Canvas but walks you through the positioning and messaging for a startup.

At my last company, we didn't use it and had pieces of a strategy, message, and an awful name. Then we sat down and spent ~2 hours and worked through it block by block. It was painful but on the other side, we had a better name, a clearer Vision, a simple way to describe that Vision, and lots of sound bites to use in conversations, blog posts, etc.

My only complaint is that we didn't do it a few months earlier.

Here's a video of the creators walking through it: https://vimeo.com/112098978

Thanks for posting about this, more people should know about it!

This is super interesting and great timing for me but I can't seem to access the PDF anywhere,

Various links that I have found through google all point to what seems to be an old half used domain...

Any suggestions?

Looking for a copy of it.. drop me an email and I'll see if I can dig up a copy.

It's a delicate balance between refining the message to make it simpler & clearer, vs changing it because you're getting bored. At the beginning of the project it's probably important to try different approaches, but then stick with the message once you have it. Many people would say that it's best to A/B test different messages in ads, and track which one works best. I'm finding it important to pitch the idea to 50 people first, get a feel for what resonates in the room and then test the messaging in an ad.

I wish the interviewer had asked a follow up question about the value of a constant message vs constant wording.

My interpretation of the advice is that it is important to stick to a focused message, but would be okay to continually refine how the message is communicated. For example, I've been promoting the message "open source will help us to be more competitive" but have had to tailor how I communicate that message depending on who I'm communicating with. Same message, tailored messaging.

I too have this problem, or rather a different version of it. I fear my audience would get bored with the message so I unnecessarily vary it. I've since come to realise the true power of repetition, regardless of how many people think me a broken record...

Do they actually think you are a broken record, or do you think they do?

Whenever I hear someone repeat something, it does give me a sense of confidence in that person's belief,and the more I hear it, the more I think that they may be right.

Carthago delenda est.

Same audience every time?

I'm currently nearing the end of David Marquet's "Turn The Ship Around" [1]. The author talks about this same point in his book. One of the points he makes is that different people will get the message at different stages. So repeating it and being consistent are important. As far as I remember, Simon Sinek goes through the same idea in his "Start With Why".

By the way, "Turn the Ship Around" is a great book, and pretty easy to read.

[1] http://www.davidmarquet.com/

The POST Notes of the Parlimentary Office of Science & Technology are interesting examples of simplifying complex messages. Over the past few years I've tried to follow the POST Note model when creating introductory messaging or executive summary analysis.

http://www.parliament.uk/postnotes

The Lean Manufacturing A3 method promotes summarizing a change proposal or problem solving project on a single sheet of A3 11x17 paper. I've provided a Wikipedia reference below, but recommend searching for better references beginning with the keywords "Lean A3" and exploring from there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A3_problem_solving

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