The Shortest Writing Makes the Most Problems

The incessant advice to keep writing simple sometimes hides reality. Over-simplifying makes work more complicated. But reading better always helps.

“Keep it simple” was a motto of Joe Shea, manager of the Apollo Spacecraft Program Office. One of many challenges his engineers faced concerned the last part of the journey back from the moon. How would the astronauts measure the fuel remaining for steering their capsule just before re-entering the earth’s atmosphere? They had to guide the capsule at the right angle. Steer wrong, or run out of fuel, and they’d skip off the atmosphere like a pebble, or plunge to earth like a meteor.

But in zero gravity, the normal ways of measuring fuel don’t work. Engineers tried measuring it in fancy ways, with Geiger counters. But the counters kept failing. Shea suggested just adding a reserve fuel tank. When the main tank was nearly exhausted, you’d realize, and could switch to reserve with enough fuel left to manoeuvre.

Are you waiting for the catch? There wasn’t one. The two fuel tanks made a great, simple, solution. But getting to that solution? Not so simple.

Shea got much of his information in writing. His engineers would prepare a looseleaf notebook for him every Thursday, and over the coming days, he’d read and annotate it with questions. Come Monday, he’d pass it back, the pages would be divided up, and the teams would use his input. In this way, information was transmitted clearly, avoiding many meetings. Now we’d call it asynchronous communication. Then, he probably called it work.

As you’d expect, Shea kept it focused. He said:

“I want only those things that you want me to read and that you want some kind of answer on. Just don't tell me things are going along great, but if you want some decision, do it through your weekly activities report.”

Does that sound like managers you’ve had, who only want 3-bullet summaries of complex problems? Better keep listening. Shea dove deep into the issues.

…for engineers tired of working for bosses who had forgotten their engineering, working with Shea was refreshing. It didn't make any difference what your specialty was. Shea's maxim was that if you understood it, you could make him understand it —and once he did, you never had to explain it again. The only problem was keeping up.

The spacecraft program was huge, covering thousands of engineers over several locations. Each Thursday, over 100 pages filled the notebook, and Shea would read them and comment. Not long comments, necessarily, but perceptive ones, and the dialog between himself and the project officers stayed useful.

Imagine how much less productive the program would have been if Shea had refused to read much, like some managers today. Once, in a different time, job, and place, I emailed two options to an executive, who was known for his short temper. Reading the reply, I was first relieved (no telling-off), then puzzled. It read:

K

That meant “OK”. But “OK” to which of the two options? My line manager and I puzzled for a while, but it was days before we could get a clearer answer. And it turned out that the exec hadn’t read through the short email. (It was “K” to the first option, as you might have guessed, but you can’t assume these things.)

In corporate life, we’re in love with the idea of simplicity. So much so, that we secretly believe that hard problems shouldn’t exist, or that they’re not worthwhile. Cat Hicks, PhD , researching what makes software developers productive, wrote:

What would it look like if we could ask, “how do I make this the absolute best environment for complex problem-solving” instead of “how do I take away all these annoying hard problems.” The stuff we want to accomplish in the world is hard. But can be joyful to accomplish.

Three myths about simplicity

1. Myth #1: Hard problems aren’t worthwhile. As managers, we face hard problems every day. How to balance team resources and motivate people. How to set priorities (itself a key source of motivation). We might choose to avoid such problems; many managers do. But we can’t pretend that there isn’t value in solving them.
2. Myth #2: Solving problems must be simple. Often, you have to choose between a good result or a simple solution. You can build a simple experience (see Jobs-era Apple products). That often takes ingenious and complex design behind the scenes. Or you can choose to go for a simple solution by nature. Often, that pushes the complexity onto the person experiencing the design (Shea’s fuel tanks were an exception — a simple solution with a simple experience). Imagine that you’re managing two groups who can’t get on. Simple solution: swap half the members of each group around, so you then have two mixed groups. Is that a good solution? Likely not, not on its own at least. Complex problems need more thought.
3. Myth #3: Any problem or solution can be communicated in 50 words or less. Corporate culture is not like the days of Apollo. Now many managers don’t want to read much at all. Partly this comes from a frustration with the bureaucratic, fluffy language of the past. It’s good to write precisely, without wasting time. But also, the current desire for ultra-short messages goes with relying on slides to communicate important information. Over time, communications guides have gone from recommending seven bullets per slide, to six bullets with no more than six words each, to just three bullets. (Remember that slides are read as often as they’re presented, so those three bullets might be all you’re relying on to make a decision.) Emails are no better — the same 30-50 words we’re “allowed” on a slide are also apparently the best length for an email to drive action. Logic (and Claude Shannon) tells us that we cannot reduce a message below a certain number of symbols before it starts losing information. Hard problems often need better coverage.

When audiences at work don’t read properly, or they refuse to accept any information that’s not baby-spooned from mini-jars, they can make our work much, much harder.

How 3 bullets can waste 2 days that 1 good paragraph could save

Product leader John Cutler shows a horribly familiar scenario in “The Simplicity Fetish”:

… you're on with your manager for your biweekly thirty-minute 1:1. Time flies, and every minute counts when meetings are this short. They have an important meeting with?their?manager tomorrow morning and need to deliver a simplified version of the pitch you've been working on. A lot has changed in the last two weeks, and you're struggling to get her up to speed.

Manager:?“I need you to simplify this…three bullets max!”

You:?“I know. I'm trying to make sure?we're?aligned, and then we can summarize. There's a good amount of nuance to understand, so you're ready. The team had four one-hour meetings, and we uncovered some good alternatives. I can crank out the bullets afterward.”

Manager:?“I understand. We just need to find a way to boil this all down. We'll have three to five minutes to cover this if that.”

Your manager presents something the next day that fails to capture the plan. It's not her fault—everyone is overloaded. Five minutes after her meeting, your Slack DMs are lighting up from the direct reports of your manager's peer group trying to make sense of the plan. You spend the next three days doing damage control and realigning people.

That time spent realigning — compare it to the time that could have been spent on better communication: perhaps another half-hour with the manager; then just fifteen minutes more of the senior leadership’s time. Think of the cost of the delay, too. What are you blocked from doing while aligning people for three days?

Joe Shea had it right, I think. Not demanding full details on everything (if something wasn’t a problem, why inform him?) But if you needed him for something, you’d better explain it well.

Explaining well doesn’t mean writing loads and loads. It is good to be simple. But we’re in trouble if we try to cram every situation into a simple box. The harder the problem, the more care we should take over communicating it (because the more worthwhile the solution is).

We should respect our readers’ time enough to keep things concise. But we should respect their intelligence enough to discuss the real issues, not a simplified form of them.

Which takes us back to the problem: why can’t readers take in more than a few sentences?

For why, and what you could do about it, see the whole post on Earfinders: Writing that’s too short wastes everyone’s time.

(The layout is more readable over there, and you can access a bunch of other material on easier writing, better listening, and keeping audiences’ attention.)