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Slow Leadership Puts Simplicity in its Place

Thank you, Carmine Coyote.

Maybe it's because my name is Gray that I hate people who try and lump the world into simply black and white. Maybe it's more along the lines that I've never found any situation in my life that did not have complex nuances even in the few places where there were straightforward answers (such as, do I raise my kids or let someone else have custody?). Perhaps it's simply because I have a mind that is constantly playing the various solutions to any challenges, analyzing and evaluating and choosing various methods of overcoming whatever challenges were placed in my path.

Pick whatever reason you like, one thing I have never believed, is that life is simple. In fact, my religion of choice, Zen, is pretty much based on the acceptance that life is not simple, and we kind of need to deal with that anyway. That only by accepting that life is just going to be life, and dealing with that, can we hope to end some of the suffering.

So it was with great joy that I read the words of one of the smartest people I've ever come across, Carmine Coyote of Slow Leadership, absolutely rip the KISS principle apart:

"I’ve often wondered precisely what this means. Does it just mean that that it’s foolish to embrace complexity, because people are so stupid you have to make everything simple . . . or they’ll be unable to grasp any of it? Or does it mean that keeping it simple is necessary because you are stupid, so any complexity is bound to be too much for you?"

YES! God, yes! We recently had some consultants come in to present to our Board; I was in the control room, broadcasting the meeting, so they didn't get to hear my choked shock and outrage as I heard them suggest that our district's message needed to be "simplified" not down to a key idea, not a key phrase - but down to a key "word". That's right. One word.

Worse, the suggestion they came up with - and which actually resonated with some of our leadership - was that the word should be (wait for it...)

Every.

Yeah. That's right. Every. Every what, you ask? Well, gee, the fact that you have to ask that kind of defeats the whole idea of having a single catchphrase that defines our organization, don't you think?

Carmine goes on to describe what perhaps might be the difficulty with simplicity: it ain't simple.

"There are two principal kinds of simplicity. One is easily produced: take a quick, superficial view, based on some scrappy sound-bite, and ignore anything that might add complexity..."

"The other kind of simplicity is tough, demanding, and may take years to achieve. That comes from long and careful thought, thorough research, and a profound understanding of all the elements involved."

I would argue that this is less actual simplicity and more a quality of grace. It reminds me of a juggler I saw once at a faire. He was an older man, especially for such a demanding job - probably mid 60's. He did a routine bouncing five balls off a board, and the fluidity and conservation of motion made this highly complex task look almost an afterthought.

It was the years of practice, the slow and steady perfection of skills, that made it look "simple". That's the difference between juggling and magic, by the way: jugglers take very difficult things and make them look simple, and magicians take very simple things and make them look hard.

Me, I hope, at some point, to achieve a measure of grace. Because I know, for a fact, that life will never be simple. Neither would I want it to be; as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe said, "God is in the details." The wonderfully complex, rich, and intricate details.

Wisdom Schmisdom

"...while ants become smarter as the number of collaborators increases, humans become dumber." -Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users

To be completely accurate, she's talking about the book "The Wisdom of Crowds" and about how using too many cooks can really dilute the spices in the pot (a poor metaphor; blame me, not her).

It put me in mind of several theatrical experiences I've had. Working in dramatic theatre, there is a very clear chain of command; everything flows from the director. A good director has a great design team and fantastic actors and listens to their input and channels the things they bring to the table--but the final decision, the ultimate vision, is the fault or triumph of the director. With great power comes great responsibility, etc. etc.

I love that model. I love working in it, whether I'm directing or part of the design team (usually the latter). It is like being given a tremendously powerful brush with which to paint an enormous canvas (the theatre, in fact). Perhaps my favorite aspect of the digital media revolution (I'm talking about 1.0, when video stopped being linear and sound became sampled and projectors got cheap) is that it assembled more of the power into individual hands, gave a new palette (see, this metaphor is working much better, no?) to the individual artist.

I've also worked with companies like Cycropia, a collective-style aerial dance group. I respect them immensely; I love going to their performances. However, their style of creation--getting together as a group, compromising and changing and giving and taking aspects as they build a performance--drives me nuts. I'm a much bigger fan of "We'll do it your way, completely," than "We'll do it your way, but I'm going to change your vision."

In my own personal aesthetic, that takes away from a vision that could otherwise be powerful and direct. It reminds me of the scene in Amadeus where the Court informs Mozart that his song has "too many notes."

It's a personal taste. But give me a dictatorship in the arts every time.

Especially when I get to be the dictator...

Best Menu EVUH!

Sunday I was privileged to get to have brunch with my client Heidi Miller (no relation, really). She suggested we meet a small cafe she'd heard of on N. Clark St. in Chicago, a place called "Orange". As you'll see from the link, it's a good place, and I won't go into much gustatorial review here except to say the Chai Tea French Toast is just as good as it sounds.

No, I want to talk about the menu. At first glance, it's the most cheap thing you can imagine--a few xeroxed pages stapled together, wrinkled with use (mine even had a coffee circle on the front), no photos, not even much of a layout, per se. It was the "average Joe" of menus, and about as far from the glitz and laminate of a place like Red Robin as you can get.

But it's a work of art. Not in terms of image, but in terms of communication. It starts in the very first line:

"Okay, if you want to 'build your own' omelet, go to a place with either 'Golden' or 'Nugget' in the name. You see, we don't do that here. Trust us."

I believe Heidi will be talking about the implications of that phrase "Trust us" in her blog, but I just want to point out the tone: this menu engaged me. Not in the glitzy focus-group graphic designer inspired red-letter sledgehammer of a daily special, but the same way my best friend might call you up and say "Hey, let's check out the new episode of Saved over a sixpack." It got behind my guard, my automatic filter that resists the hard sell, and gave me the impression that this was written by someone that I would enjoy talking to.

Let's talk about the "special" that they had, for example, which is called "Pancake Flight":

"Our specialty. The theme changes weekly so ask your server...or, come to think of it, you should have a little card somewhere. if you don't...well, let's just say, there'll be hell to pay! Believe you me! Hell to pay! So take a moment and look around. I'm sure there's a specials card somewhere."

Did you catch that first-person comment? "...come to think of it..." you can almost see the menu scratching its head. This is not just a brunch menu, this is a conversational menu. The person who came up with it gets what my friend Amy Gahran keeps trying to hammer into the Press Powers That Be: people are tired of being talked to, they want to be talked with...

The menu has humor: "Buttermilk pancakes (a.k.a. 'Boring Cakes'): A stack of buttermilk pancakes served with–you guessed it– butter." It has mystery: while omelets #4, #6, and #9 are represented, there's no indication of what happened to omelets 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, or 8. It's got things that beggar the imagination:

"Pan Seared Oatmeal
Not yo Mamma's oatmeal, that's for damn sure! What's so different, you ask? Well, for one thing, this ain't served on a bowl, it's served on a plate! That's right, a plate! Does that do anything for ya? No? Try this on for size..." (you'll have to go to the restaurant for the rest of the description, but it involves super human powers)

Sure, the grub tastes good. Their food, which I idiotically did not photograph, is presented in an haute-quisine style that is somehow not elitist. It's just fun, and silly, and they've definitely got a repeat customer in me.

But the menu...that menu is a work of art in terms of customer interaction. When's the last time you had the urge not only to steal a menu*, but actually had to negotiate with your friend (also a blogger) about which aspects each of you were going to blog about, to avoid repetition? It's more proof to me that connection, rather than control, is the key to good communication.

*I didn't steal it. The nice server with the cool tattoos said I could take it. Score!

Inspiring story

I'm still waiting for my version of this story, I don't have enough familiarity with my tools (they keep changing). But I'm hoping for it, at some point. Read the whole interview, but here's the stuff that I found most stirring:

Chris Georgenes, Master Flash Animator:

One afternoon in the print shop, I had a leftover piece of copper plate that I was about to discard. It was small, about 3"x 7", and tiny compared to what I was used to. Instead of tossing it, I quickly drew a rough study of a figure of a woman. I spent no more than ten minutes on the drawing before throwing it in the acid bath so it could be etched, inked, and ultimately printed. It was a simple drawing, loose in line style, and very much the opposite of the hyper-realistic style I was striving for during that time in my career. I liked it for what it was, but didn't think it was a very impressive piece. I contemplated tossing the print and the copper plate in the trash and going back to my much larger pieces, but something told me to hang on to it, at least for a little while.

...A few days after my show, my illustration professor, who was unable to make the opening, went with me to view my body of work...After he looked at the last drawing, which happened to be the small etching of the woman in the corner next to the light switch, he turned and looked at me and asked, "Want to know what I think is the best thing you have ever done?"

I thought he was going to tell me it was any one of the larger pieces. To my surprise he turned and pointed to the small etching next to the light switch! He went on to explain that its simplicity and essential quality provoked an emotion within him and compared it to Rembrandt or Da Vinci. He told me it was a milestone not only in my career, but in any artist's career to draw like that. It was subtle, and that subtlety made more of an impact than in-your-face hyper-realism. That moment changed my whole outlook on art and in some ways, life in general.  --from Flash as a Big Ball of Clay

I Hate Money

It's true. And not for the simple reason that I rarely have enough (I've got four daughters; I've always known I wouldn't have enough money).

I hate what they are doing to our money here in the U.S.

Just last weekend I was at a Ren Faire and my girlfriend and our companions were treated to a mini-rant by me as I held a $10 bill. "Look at the washed out colors! The total lack of layout! How many %$#@ing fonts do you need for numbers? And this guy," I pointed at the portrait, "looks nothing like Jefferson!" The power of that last argument was somewhat diluted by the fact that the man on the $10 bill is actually Hamilton, but in a way that proves my point.

Kathy Sierra over at Creating Passionate Users proves it much better today, though, and I highly recommend her post. She's got me salivating over the Swedish currency, for example, not only for the beauty of the colors but for the sweetest thing of all: a common sense approach to making the monetary design useful in a tactile sense. I mean, we almost got it. Reach in a pocketful of change without looking and pull out a dime. Easy, right? Now close your eyes, reach in your wallet, and pull out a $5. Can't do it in the dark, can you? The Swedes can.

But it goes beyond that. Kathy talks about a design culture in other lands, and a tendency for us here to either be as careless as zoning in Houston or to decide that anything "beautiful" must be a waste of money, and therefore we give it to the lowest bidder. I look around my own workspace and see clutter, loose paper, things that are semi-permanent not through design but through circumstance...and it's depressing. I'm a better designer than that--I should apply it to the environment around me, not simply to a paying client.

And so should you.

One last thing: I loved the Sacajawea dollar. In look, in heft, in every way, that was a nice coin to have. I don't think Kathy's objection to the Important White Men was about not having our history--but about the fact that it's only a very, very narrow sliver of our history, of specifically government leaders. How about a $10 with Rosa Parks on it? Or a $20 with Sam Shepard? Robert Johnson on a $1 bill...now wouldn't that be something. With the chords and lyrics to "Crossroads" on the back...