Looking for the right answer? Make sure you’re asking the right question.
Looking for the right answer? Make sure you’re asking the right question.
Or why too much detail is almost always a bad thing…
Many years ago, I said to a client, “send me anything you think might be useful in helping me build up a picture of the project”.
I was thinking perhaps a PowerPoint presentation or a PDF brochure. Some sample sales emails, or an internal document or two. Nothing major, just bit more information so that I could really get my head around the company, their offering and their target market.
You can tell what’s coming, can’t you?
A couple of emails duly arrived, but the emails weren’t the problem – it was the attachments. Endless PDFs with exhaustive detail. Interminable PowerPoint presentations with more slides than you’d think humanly possible.
I scanned through them, but gave up in the end. I was swimming in a sea of detail, unable to see the big picture. Just for fun (in these cases, one takes what one can get) I counted up the slides and PDF pages, and the total came to almost 600.
Be careful what you ask for, I said to myself. Because really, I brought it on myself. And back then, I thought more was better, and you could never get enough detail.
But over the years, I’ve realised that less is always more. When I’m researching a topic, I have to resist the natural temptation to find out everything. A little voice inside my head says you might need all that detail.
But you know what? I never do. But it’s knowing where to draw the line that’s important.
I’m not saying you don’t need to do background research for your copywriting project or marketing campaign. It’s just that you shouldn’t let yourself overcomplicate what could potentially be a simple question.
And even if you have all the details, it’s often instructive to remove them and see what you’re left with. To strip the problem right back to its basics, and see what you’re really trying to do.
I was vividly reminded of this when I watched Dan Myers’ TED talk Math class needs a makeover. I almost didn’t watch it because I have an aversion to maths, but I forced myself in the end.
And you should too.
It’s only just over 11 minutes long, and it’ll get you thinking about how you solve problems in your business. Even if you’re not a mathematician (and let’s face it – most of us aren’t) you’ll learn something really interesting.
My takeaways were:
Make it real
Keep it practical
Step back from the problem
Ask the right questions
Use multimedia
Get your intuition working
Form the shortest question you can
And of all of those, the last is the most important in a marketing context (Who am I writing this for? What’s the one thing this campaign should achieve? How will I get people to take action?).
Short questions are simple questions. And that’s how you’ll find the simple solutions.
Enjoy the talk.
[If you’re reading this in an email, click here to see the talk on TED.com]