Matt Abrahams

You really have to think about your audience.

And most people don't.

Most people are just so worried about getting the content out.

They don't think about how it lands.

Success is if your audience takes what you've said and they're able to do something with it and understand it.

You know, the F word of all communication is fidelity.

It's about accuracy and clarity of transmitting ideas.

And if you're not in sync with what your audience needs, then you're in trouble.

Most of us create one message and just deliver it to multiple audiences and think we've been successful because we got it out.

That's the wrong way to think about it.

That's an exercise that I use for two reasons.

I use it to show that we have a tremendous amount of judgment that we make when we communicate.

Because if you ask somebody, why is it so hard to call something something it's not?

They'll say, well, that's not what I'm used to, or I want it to be better than something else I was thinking.

The other thing that I use it for is to help elucidate how we heuristically think in these challenging situations.

So invariably when I do this in my class, I'll say, were you using any tools to help you figure out what to say?

And people say, yeah, I went in the category of colors or in your case, the category of species of dog.

These are heuristics.

Our brain is trying to help us.

And heuristics are very important.