My friend and go-to designer, Subbu, shared this quote by Herbert Simon with me as we were grinding through final edits on a new website. I was grateful that he reigned me in, as my tendency toward technical accuracy was overcomplicating some imagery we were working on.
It struck me that Simon's deep wisdom applies in business as well as graphic design.
It's why my Investor Presentation template has only ten slides and my Investment Backgrounder template is only one page (with a lot of whitespace).
It's why I invest a lot of time on crafting tight elevator pitches as part of client messaging platforms.
It's why I coach entrepreneurs on the principle of "less is more."
It also applies to how we communicate with each other. Are we guilty of adding noise to our email, text, chat, Slack, Warpcast, et al. channels in an effort to gain attention? I'd suggest that doing so is counterproductive... at best.
We cannot control the onslaught of noise hitting us from all sides. However, as Seth asks, "Why are you letting these folks into your house?" (ref Seth's Calendar, September 7/8) We can choose to tune out the channels that are not helpful, and maybe even harmful, to us. THAT, we can control.
Even better, we can control our own signal-to-noise ratio. Are we adding value to those we are communicating with, or just adding to the noise?
I suggest... more signal... less noise.
