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IIRC Jonn Kerry's campaign for President was plagued by too much nuance in both his and the campaign's communications. And the Romney critique as the "flipping Mormon" can also be seen as a rejection of nuance.
I don’t disagree, but an important distinction relative to the OP is that political communication is in an overtly adversarial environment. It’s a whole other ballgame.
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He kept his concepts very simple, he didn't use complex language that might confuse or alienate his audience, he used funny and memorable nicknames to keep your attention, he kept things visual with a lot of props and showmanship, and his key slogans like "build the wall" let people visualize any outcome they wanted. A bad communicator who tried to use nuance with the immigration stuff might have said something like "We're going to deploy a network of physical barriers in denser urban areas and utilize digital surveillance and personnel in more rural areas to reduce illegal immigration along the border." Technically more accurate, but that doesn't paint the same kind of mental picture that can easily be conveyed by "build the wall" in a speech or debate.
If the lieutenant could figure it out, then Napoleon could relay orders to his generals (who would in turn send orders to their subordinates and so on) with confidence that the meaning would not be lost on the battlefield.
I read it and felt kind-of bitter. On one hand, yeah, may be nuanced message doesn't work at scale. However, when saying literally two things (vs one) became nuanced. I wound understand if it was a speech talking about a dozen of different things and their interplay... These were literally two things - create a solid product and let's move forward fast. That's it. Also, why the hell whole hierarchy of middle manageme…
A good counterexample to the article would be Amazon's success with its leadership principles--much has been written about this, and I feel no need to repeat it here--or JFK's speech urging America to the moon, in which he spent significant time discussing the tradeoffs and sacrifices required to pursue the lunar landing, and in the end did not unilaterally decide to pursue the mission so much as he proposed a conversation about it and asked Americans to discuss the nuances and decide together. Nuance is possible at scale; it is a sad sign of the times that some now believe it is no longer possible.
If you haven't listened to JFK's speech, I strongly urge you to take a listen, and compare his measured, collegial tone to the tone of our politicians today.
https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHA/1961...
Nuance is hard to convey in groups, but I believe that *a small part of the problem is a lack of design*. Many peoples' eyes glaze over when they see a wall of text in an email and they just skim rather than read. Some simple things to enhance communications can be the following. * Use a few bullet points to put attention on the main points you want to convey. * Without going overboard, use a tasteful amount of graph…
"Nuanced communication usually doesn't work." seems more accurate. Being precise and clear is hard.
Flat orgs are very popular right now, but isn’t it a huge benefit of a hierarchical organization with subparts that rather than the President of Azure getting on a VTC and telling the whole division that the goal is velocity he can explain to his reports (a small group) that they need velocity with reliability and they can explain to their reports (more small groups) and so on and so forth? Yes, nuanced comms don’t s…
One reason is that non-scaled comms suffer from “telephone game”. If you do it like you’re saying, then go down 3-4 levels in the hierarchy and check what people are hearing, it will have mutated away from anything you originally said. Sometimes to get everyone aligned (as best you can) you have to give everyone the same message at the same time — but it has to be a simple message.
Eg,
n-level comms are where a CEO communicates to the entire org
1-level comms are where CEO->CTO->VP->Directors->EMs->ICs
2-level comms:
CEO->CTO+VPs
CTO->VPs+Directors
VP->Directors+EMs
Director->EM+ICs
Flat orgs are very popular right now, but isn’t it a huge benefit of a hierarchical organization with subparts that rather than the President of Azure getting on a VTC and telling the whole division that the goal is velocity he can explain to his reports (a small group) that they need velocity with reliability and they can explain to their reports (more small groups) and so on and so forth? Yes, nuanced comms don’t s…
One reason is that non-scaled comms suffer from “telephone game”. If you do it like you’re saying, then go down 3-4 levels in the hierarchy and check what people are hearing, it will have mutated away from anything you originally said. Sometimes to get everyone aligned (as best you can) you have to give everyone the same message at the same time — but it has to be a simple message.
I do wonder if flat is an overreaction though. Intuitively I’d expect a mixed strategy to be most effective.
Edit: reflecting more, most claimed flat companies aren’t. So maybe they are pursuing mixed strategies and comm’ing out a simplified message.
You just produce content and the people are just consuming the content in whatevre way they please. Large percentage of people won't consume it in the way you wish.
Because of the disconnect what you want is way less important fir the result than what they want.