Summary + Specifics = Stronger Messages

I admit it: the whole point of this week’s post, and indeed of the video it’s ultimately about, can be summed up in that one simple solution:

Summary + Specifics = Stronger Messages

If you want your messages to drive action, you need to have both “fast” and “slow” ways to explain them. You need to make sure your audience can easily scan your message to get a “fast” sense of whether or not it’s valuable to them. That’s where the summaries come in: headlines, heading, bolded phrases, and so on that deliver the overall message quickly and efficiently.

Then, if that fast scan is successful, you need to make sure you have the specifics to pay off their curiosity and attention. You need to make sure you answer all the deeper, “slow” questions that the fast scan raises (who, what, when, where, why, and how, or some subset).

Now, you may say, “Tamsen, that’s pretty obvious,” and I’ll agree.

But that doesn’t mean people do it, either enough or at all.

I’ll admit that I have a strong bent towards scanning when I initially review information. That’s true whether it’s my morning scan of the newspaper, or one of my biweekly (and free!) reviews for my “What’s Missing From This Message?” YouTube Series, or during my due diligence before signing on a new client.

But that’s also true for all humans. People generally want to know, quickly, whether or not your ideas might be useful to them. They make quick judgments based on relevance and urgency. Are you offering them something they want or need?

That said, not having that magical combination is consistently one of the most common issues I see in messages clients have me review. Why? Because people often tend towards one element of the equation or another. There are “summary” people and there are “specifics” people.

The Summary People tend to fill their content with breezy platitudes and taglines that they don’t (or can’t?) go on to explain further. The Specifics people often spend so much time getting all the details and nuance right they forget to tell people the actual point they’re trying to explain.

Here’s the thing: both approaches make sense, and both summaries and specifics are necessary for your audience to act. That’s because each element appeals to its own aspect of how we think.

You’ve probably heard plenty of references to our primal “lizard” (or alligator or monkey) brains, usually contrasted with our more developed, rational homo sapien brains. Pretty much all of those contrasts are derivative of the work of Nobel prize-winning team of Daniel Kahneman and his research partner Amos Tversky. So let’s start with how Kahneman summarizes in his book, Thinking Fast and Slow:

• System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control.
• System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration. [This the “slow,” more developed thinking.]

System 1 is “fast” thinking, which other authors characterize as the “lizard brain.” System 2 is the “slow,” more developed thinking. Summaries satisfy the fast System 1; specifics satisfy the slow System 2.

And you know where this is going: you use both systems when you make decisions, even if just to rationalize a decision you already made with your lizard brain. ?? The same is true for your audience.

That brings me back to the equation I started with today:

Summary + Specifics = Stronger Messages

If you’re a Summary person, craft your message or content the way you usually do, and then go back and add the specifics you need to make your case. Both the Red Thread Storyline? and the Conversational Case? are simple tools I’ve developed to help you do this.

Similarly, if you’re a Specifics person, craft your content the way you usually do, and then go back and add the summaries that help you survive the fast scan. The Red Thread Throughline? and “proverbing” can help.

Either way, the more you help your audience understand and agree with your message — at both the fast and slow level — the stronger your message will be.