A couple of weeks ago, I led a workshop on “strategic storytelling.” I was with a group of very smart people whose job is to go deep on complicated problems. They’re used to building PowerPoint decks full of complex diagrams. Analyzing mountains of data. Getting the whole story and telling the whole story.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when a few people in the room balked at an exercise to simplify (ahem: oversimplify) their complicated work.
Simplifying the complex
In that room of savvy engineers, business analysts, and designers, I listened to their descriptions of their work. I left them go long-form to start; they filled pages with hand-written overviews of why their work mattered, what it involved, and how they felt about it. They were proud to share their deep expertise, and I gave them the spotlight to share it in full.
Then I changed things up. I gave them the 3 x 3 challenge: Write a story about your latest project in 9 words. You get three sentences. Each sentence can only have three words. Tell the beginning, middle, and end as simply as possible.
I pulled this exercise from my favorite dog-eared writing book. It was published in 1990 and intended for fiction writers, but I find its exercises incredibly helpful in helping me get to the core of what I’m trying to say.
The book uses Cinderella as a 3 x 3 example:
Cinderella can’t go.
She goes anyway.
Cinderella gets prince.
This exercise isn’t designed to tell the whole story. Instead, it forces you to essentialize.
As the group got to work paring down their long paragraphs into a scant 9 words, I heard groans around the room. Some laughter. A lot of quiet and furrowed brows. Scratching out and re-writing. People stared into space, trying to find the right words.
Finally, we went around the room and shared. My favorite 3 x 3 started with the simple introduction: “[Client] was broke.”
While everyone succeeded in writing just 9 words, I challenged some people to get even simpler. I pushed back on even the most basic jargon that obfuscated the real meaning. I asked for better alternatives to “margin,” “portfolio,” “components.” (When you say “components,” are you talking about screws? Or strawberries? Get specific.)
Once they’d essentialized, I asked them to tell their story to the person next to them. They didn’t have a word limit, but they had to pretend they were talking to a fourth grader. I gave their colleagues permission to “buzz” them if they used a word a 10-year-old wouldn’t understand.
We kept peeling back the layers to get to the most simple, basic version of what they do, why it matters, and why anyone should hire them to do it.
Why simplifying is scary
At the end of our time together, we were reflecting on the process. One person raised her hand. It was her turn to challenge me: “I get that these exercises were exaggerated on purpose, but most of the time I don’t want to talk to a client like they’re a 10-year-old. I don’t want to make the work sound too simple, because I want them to believe that I know what I’m doing. I need to use their language, even if it’s corporate jargon, to show I understand it and can speak it.”
In other words: She needs to prove herself. To prove that she’s a trusted expert. Someone with advanced skills. Someone who knows their stuff.
Her question highlighted one of the most basic fears I see among experts. I think of it as the inverse of impostor syndrome. Experts know their knowledge and worth. But they feel an urgent need to make sure other people know and respect their worth, too.
When you’ve spent your career earning expertise, honing your knowledge, and learning a complex language, don’t you want to show it all off? Why would you want to strip away any of the complexity you’ve worked so hard to master?
Simplifying is your superpower as an expert
Here’s why. It takes a deeper level of understanding, wisdom, and perspective to take a complicated subject and make it simple and approachable. That’s the true goal of expertise: to be able to essentialize the complex, shine a light on the big ideas, and pull out the key themes.
The world is full of experts, but the experts who set themselves apart are able to talk about their work in an understandable way. To pull people in. To make metaphors and develop other people’s understanding, instead of just touting their own sophisticated knowledge.
Simplification doesn’t mean dumbing it down. It means extracting the most important part — the must-know concepts. It means using your heady expertise as a toolbox, but being able to pull out the most effective tool — not throwing the entire toolbox at every problem or conversation.
True expertise isn’t about proving yourself. It’s about standing on your mountain of knowledge and pointing the way forward. When you can do that, you don’t have to prove yourself. Your clear perspective will speak for itself.
So go ahead, simplify your complicated ideas. Try telling your story in 9 words. Practice talking about it to a fourth grader. Getting simple won’t negate your expertise, but it will force you to bring your best ideas to the top of the heap.
