Easy is the Secret Sauce for Effective Business Communications

Originally, published as a Columbia University blog post.

According to behavioral economist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler, if you want to get somebody to do something, make it easy.

For business communications, easy means:

1) easy to understand – making it clear and simple

2) easy to apply – ensuring that the content is relevant, useful, and practical for the audience

3) easy to experience – making it quick and engaging

Here are some ways to to do this.

1) Easy to understand

Making communications clear and simple is key to achieving understanding. Regardless of whether it's in a conversation, a presentation, an e-mail, or a PowerPoint. But simple is hard. Steve Jobs knew it. He said: “Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

To get to simple, first consider what you’re trying to achieve. What’s the objective? So often we forget to ask this essential question.

Next, with that objective in mind, elevate the content that aligns to that objective and eliminate what’s not. Eliminating is hard for many. Like Sophie's choice.?Every idea is your baby after all. But you have to be ruthless and prioritize. So after all the content is put together, eliminate.?

2) Easy to apply

So often content is pushed out without challenging whether it will actually help the audience.

So ask yourself: does it have practical advice or resources that your audience can use right away? For example, are you providing actionable frameworks, quick checklists, clickable links or real examples that make it easy for your readers to apply immediately.

3) Easy to experience

Make it quick. Time-pressed people will thank you for it. Use headlines, numbers, bullet points, and white space to make your text easy to scan.

Short videos are also welcome. And by short, I mean a minute or less.?For example, we've had success with a "Tip in a Minute" series of 60 second videos. Colleagues like them because of their bite-size, useful content.?Plus they're narrated by friendly, smiling peers, folks they know or would like to know, making them authentic and engaging.

So if you want people to do something, remember these 3 magic words: make it easy. Easy to understand, to apply, and to experience. Easy is the secret sauce.?