Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visionsâthey are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images âice-filled bathtubs, apples with razorsâbecause our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: âA bird in hand is worth two in the bush.
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For thousands of years, people have exchanged sound bites called proverbs. Proverbs are simple yet profound. Cervantes defined proverbs as âshort sentences drawn from long experience.â Take the English-language proverb: âA bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.â Whatâs the core? The core is a warning against giving up a sure thing for something speculative. The proverb is short and simple, yet it packs a big nugget of wisdom that is useful in many situations.
Even the most abstract business strategy must eventually show up in the tangible actions of human beings. Itâs easier to understand those tangible actions than to understand an abstract strategy statementâ just as itâs easier to understand a fox dissing some grapes than an abstract commentary about the human psyche.
Abstraction makes it harder to understand an idea and to remember it. It also makes it harder to coordinate our activities with others, who may interpret the abstraction in very different ways. Concreteness helps us avoid these problems. This is perhaps the most important lesson that Aesop can teach us.
Concrete language helps people, especially novices, understand new concepts. Abstraction is the luxury of the expert. If youâve got to teach an idea to a room full of people, and you arenât certain what they know, concreteness is the only safe language.
We need to make the abstract concrete. Whether talking to colleagues or clients, students or sales reps, patients or program managers, we need to take abstract ideas and make them real by using concrete language. Helping people understand, and act on, what weâre saying.
More generally, when trying to make language either more concrete or more abstract, one helpful approach is to focus on either the how or the why.
Want to be more concrete? Focus on the how. How does a product meet consumer needs? How does a proposed new initiative address an important problem? Thinking about how something is or will be done encourages concreteness. It focuses on the feasibility and helps generate concrete descriptions.
Want to be more abstract? Focus on the why. Why does a product meet consumer needs? Why does a proposed new initiative address an important problem? Thinking about why something is good or right encourages abstractness. It focuses on its desirability and helps generate abstract descriptions.