232 How to Make Your Ideas Irresistible by Finding Your Red Thread with Tamsen Webster | Partnering Leadership Global Thought Leader

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm really excited this week to be welcoming Tamsen Webster. Tamsen is part strategist, part storyteller, and part English to English translator. She helps experts drive action with their ideas. She has honed her trademark Red Thread Approach in and four major organizations like Johnson and Johnson, Harvard Medical School, and Intel.

She's also a former TEDx executive producer and a current idea strategist. I really enjoy the conversation with Tamsen on her work as well as her book, Find Your Red Thread: Make your big ideas irresistible, because it's essential for all of us as leaders to be able to communicate our ideas in a way that people can understand, relate, and embrace the ideas. Tamsen does a great job in sharing both frameworks and examples of how that can be done well.

I am sure you will also enjoy learning from Tamsen. I also love hearing from you. Keep your comments coming, mahan@mahantavakoli.com. There's a microphone icon on partnering leadership.com, you can leave voice messages for me there.

Also, when you get a chance, don't forget to leave a rating for the podcast on your favorite podcasting app that will help more people find these conversations and benefit from them.

Now here is my conversation with Tamsen Webster.

Tamsen Webster, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me.

[00:02:16] Tamsen Webster: Thanks Mahan. I'm excited to chat with you about all of this.

[00:02:19] Mahan Tavakoli: Tamsen, I love all of the work you have done on finding your red thread and the book you wrote. Find your red thread make your big ideas irresistible. The reason I say I love all the work you've done is I was following your work even before you sat down and wrote the book. Now you have put it all on paper I really appreciate it, and I think it's very relevant specifically to leaders as they want to communicate effectively with their teams and leading their organizations forward.

But before we get to some of your thoughts and perspectives, we'd love to know whereabouts you grew up and how your upbringing impacted the kind of person you've become Tamsen.

[00:03:01] Tamsen Webster: I grew up mostly in Virginia Beach, Virginia. And that's because as many people who live in Virginia Beach do, or Norfolk my father was in the Navy, so we moved five times before I was five, but then we settled down a bit in, in Virginia for a while. But I still think that being a military kid and that whether even before I was fully conscious, learning to pick up resettle, find a new set of patterns, that kind of thing really set a path in the rest of my life where I lived in two worlds simultaneously.

It was really a part of who I am and still is to understand as quickly as I can, what's going on in a situation, where are there points of connection? Where are there similarities? What resonates with me? What resonates with other people? How can we get all that to connect up?

I put a lot and in my military kingdom as being influential in why I do what I do now, the way that I do it.

[00:03:54] Mahan Tavakoli: You have a great ability to make those connections, but you also have a systems approach to your thinking.

[00:04:02] Tamsen Webster: Yes,

[00:04:03] Mahan Tavakoli: reading through your content you are able to put structure into thoughts, where does that come from?

[00:04:09] Tamsen Webster: Oh Lord, I don't know. I think from what I understand from just learning theory and some of the research that's been done there that's a basic classification for how people learn that there are certain folks that are high structure builders and there are folks that are not that.

And it doesn't mean that one's better than the other. I've never actually been tested for structure building, but I have to guess that I'm probably just about as extreme as you could be. Efficiency is very important to me and I don't like to spend a lot of time on things that I don't have to.

 I don't like to rethink about things. I'm happy to stay flexible and open my mind, but a lot of my life and my time is spent figuring. How can I just come up with a way to think about this so that it just works and I don't have to worry about it anymore?

I've always referred to that as the traffic noise in my head, so I just, fell into it. What was a kind of finding efficient modes of thinking, finding ways to think about things that allowed me to think about more things it's just been part of who I am for as long as I can remember.

[00:05:04] Mahan Tavakoli: What I appreciate is that structure building is important and being able to communicate and being able to bring other people along, that's a part of what you've done with your content. Sometimes people know how to do something really well themselves, but aren't able to bring other people along. You are able to put it in a structure that others can read learn and come along the journey with you.

[00:05:29] Tamsen Webster: Yeah. I think that's right. If I were to classify what I do, or one of the kinds of things that I'm drawn to over and over again is that I'm very much about operationalizing ideas. How do you take an idea and how do you actually make it real? We talked before we were recording about brands.

How do you take this idea of a brand and live it day to day? How do you take an idea about a change you may wanna implement as a leader and get other people to actually see how that works? How do you do that? What does that look like? And you're right. I think the more that people can follow a process, not only for how to make that change or how to implement that idea, But importantly, and this is really the kind of the core of my work, if they can understand the process for how you reach the decision that was the right thing to do, the more likely it is that they're gonna follow along as well.

Yeah, I love me a good system. I can probably make a framework out of anything. It's part of the work that I love to do. Part of my pro bono work is working with TEDx Cambridge, so speakers that are giving TEDx talks. One of the things that I love working with them is that sometimes someone will have an idea and they don't quite know how to get it to a point where other people can put it into practice. And I'm really fascinated by people who seem to do something differently, who haven't yet figured out that there is a mental process that they follow. And I love trying to figure out can we create a mental process for that?

Because I had a client, for instance, who she had this really interesting idea about, how can you find middle ground with someone who feels like they're completely opposite from where you are? Which is very germane to a lot of leadership conversations.

She had this beautiful kind of you just find it. And I was like, but do you? I'm like but you didn't, but you didn't just find it. So we worked together and she got to a point where she said we articulated it as, you have to find your own middle ground first.

In other words, you have to find what is acceptable to you as a midway point for what's going on. So it was really fun to work with her because we really created this process from scratch and. We tested it, not only with the original scenario that made her come up with this idea, but then with a couple other hypothetical scenarios so that we're like, yeah, actually if you follow these steps, you can help someone find their own middle ground, which will help them find a middle ground with somebody else.

I love this work. To me that kind of stuff is like a puzzle and I love puzzles and crossword puzzles and things like that, and mystery novels, I love them. And so it's just a way for me to help untie very complicated gordian nuts as often as I can.

[00:08:01] Mahan Tavakoli: Tamsen, and I don't think there is a day that goes by when I don't hear from a CEO and executive talking about the frustration they have that demerit of their idea when communicated with a lot of energy and enthusiasm doesn't by itself get traction. Why is that?

Why is it that great communication goes beyond just the merit of the idea that we have and the enthusiasm or the force with which we communicate?

[00:08:33] Tamsen Webster: There's so much there. I would say that the first thing that I think happens, what happens the most is that we tend to enthusiastically and passionately argue on the merits of our idea from the perspective of someone who is already convinced that it's the right one. And that is a fully different conversation than somebody who is hearing this idea for the first time, or has heard it before and is skeptical about it.

And I think that if we could invest all of that enthusiasm and energy as much in trying to understand our ideas from someone else's perspective and then framing them that way first, we would be a lot more successful.

Because our brains do this amazing thing with our ideas. And that is that once we've found the answer to a question, once we know a need of change needs to be made, okay, let's do this. Even though our brains go through quite a logical sequence of steps to come up with that idea, once we do our brains back to that kind of reducing traffic noise, our brains erase those intermediate steps and just go question answer, and we forget to show the work.

But the work, right?

Back to math class, teachers always told us to show the work. You couldn't just write the answer down. You had to show how you got there. We need to do the same thing when we're communicating, particularly when we're communicating a shift in thinking or behavior.

We have to show our mental work about how we got there. Not once we got there. Here are all the other awesome things that it's gonna do for you. But starting from here is this question, a lot of times we think it's about this, but I was wondering what if it was about this instead because I believe and then therefore.

So that's showing the work about how you reach the decision, which again, isn't about the extra benefits of the outcome, it's actually about what are the things that you believe about the world, about your organization that lead you to that conclusion that you have to resurface, you kinda go back and excavate them out of, the deep recesses and deep file storage of your brain and make sure to talk about them because that's actually what's really gonna connect with people.

[00:10:42] Mahan Tavakoli: That is so important Tamsen, and I wanna underline what you just said, show your work is one of the challenges I find with CEOs as they're communicating strategy and strategic initiatives. They, along with the senior team in many instances, have spent months on the strategy, but without showing the work, they're just talking about the need to shift and that future shift rather than showing the work, which you say can come about through storytelling, but not storytelling the way A lot of times we think about storytelling, a different kind of storytelling.

So how can we show the work in a way that engages people in this process,

[00:11:30] Tamsen Webster: So one of the things that I say in my book is that every idea has a story because every idea is a story, or rather every idea is the product of a story. I don't necessarily mean once upon a time kind of story. I mean that, our brains, and this is well established by other authors and researchers.

Our brains are wired for story. That's how we make sense of the world. Again, not just once upon a time, but story in the definition of why things happen the way they do. We come up with explanations. So in this way, think of story as it's our explanation or sometimes our rationalization for why something is happening the way it's happening, or why it should happen a certain way.

And what's fascinating, so this was my hypothesis when I first started this work on this method that I developed, six years ago, was that I was like what if the stories that we tell other people have the same elements as the stories we tell ourselves, what if they were the same? Are they the same? If I took those elements from stories we tell other people and applied them to our own ideas and to the steps that work that we need to show, would that work? Does it fill in the blanks between question and answer, between problem and solution? Answer yes..

And By filling in those blanks, does it help other people follow those same steps so that they will reach the same conclusion as well? Yes. So when I talk about storytelling, it's not so much. Hey, let me tell you about this time when, but it's much more about story building. It's about building the story in someone else's mind for why this is the right product, service, change, whatever for them.

And that means doing the work of saying what would be that story they would tell themselves? Their brain would tell them about why this makes sense. And let's tell that story rather than the story that we tell ourselves, our story is this is the right answer because it does all of these amazing things.

But the story they're gonna tell themselves is about why it solves a problem, not only that they know they have, but a problem that they didn't know they had, and because it aligns with the things that they believe and value about the world, or about the business, or about their leadership, or about their role in the comapny.

[00:13:41] Mahan Tavakoli: Tamsen you also say you can't create change. You can just create the conditions for it and invite people to change. So it's very different mindsets in inviting people in to a story they can tell themselves.

So it's not just your story, you are inviting them to tell this story themselves.

[00:14:05] Tamsen Webster: It's such a deep part of what I've learned about the world is that, for short term, can you make someone do something different? Yeah. Especially if you're in leadership and you have authority over them and you can make their job dependent on it. But I've always been a fan, not just of creating one time action, but creating long-term change.

And in order for that to happen, the motivation for that change, the explanation, the justification, the story for that change that you want people to make has to come long-term. It has to come from within inside them. It has to be intrinsically motivated. It has to have that internal source.

The best thing we can do is actually make it an unfamiliar combination of familiar concepts, so we can make it about something that they already want. We can make it something that validates what they already do. We can make this kind of new perspective based on something that they already believe about the world or about themselves or about the business. If we've set it up in such a way that they would readily agree with that, then when you get to a point of introducing that change, then they've agreed with all the principles behind it.

So why wouldn't they agree with the conclusion? They may still not, but this is how you can raise the probability of success, is that you build, know, that work that you're showing the, story that you're building in their mind is based on things that are already familiar to your audience and critically already agreeable to them.

And at that point, the invitation happens on its own because you're basically saying is this something that you want? Yes. Is this a way that you've been looking at it so far because it delivers this outcome or benefit to you? Yes. Would you agree that there's another way to look at it that is also important based on what you're looking for?

Yes. Would you agree that there's something about the world that makes a different approach make sense? Yes. Okay. Then you've just gotten them to agree to all the components of the argument, and then it's just about saying, so if you agree with all that, doesn't it make sense to agree with the conclusion?

And more often than not, if you've done that work, then the answer is yes. They will. And it feels to them again, not like something new, but actually a deeper alignment with what they want and what they believe. And that to me is the that's absolutely what we want because that's how you're gonna be more likely to get that intrinsic internal drive to keep doing whatever that change is that you're asking your folks to do.

[00:16:23] Mahan Tavakoli: And that pattern repeats itself Tamsen, as I was reading your work , I had a question in the back of my mind, that you answered beautifully with the iPod example, because there are a lot of times where we hear examples of this is something people didn't know they wanted.

So how does that fit in with bringing people into their current worldview and having them incorporated into their story?

[00:16:55] Tamsen Webster: The iPod, everybody was like, nobody knew they wanted an iPod but Apple knew that everybody wanted their music. At the point that the iPod and actually other MP3 players were available at the time, people being able to take, music with them being able to run a soundtrack of their lives was actually a really important thing. And up until that point, the focus was on kind of individual albums.

 We were taking albums or mix tapes or whatever, cassettes, CDs, mini CDs, eight tracks, whatever it was. But, what Apple did was to say, this technology allows us to take our entire library with us, right? And wouldn't that be great? Because now like we can just understand if I could have all of my music with me at any time, if I could have a thousand songs in my pocket, as Apple said, then all of a sudden you get to say, now I can truly get my music to match my mood and the more music I have to choose from, the more likely it is that I can get the music to match my mood.

So therefore, the big change that the iPod represented was a thousand songs in your pocket, but was really bring your whole library so that you can actually be able to listen to whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you are, answer our beautifully designed iPod. What was powerful about the messaging was the fact that, our own brains in a lot of ways, did that math. When we said a thousand songs in your pocket, our own brains were like, oh, it's portable a thousand songs. That's a lot of music. That's my whole library. If I had a thousand songs in my pocket, I could listen to whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I'm gonna be a happier person, or whatever it is. And all of a sudden, we did that work.

It's rare though, that a company can find a phrase, that captures so quickly that piece. But my experience with working with companies is that we can get to powerful phrases like that by doing that kind of reconstruction of the potential story that we could play in people's minds.

What's so great about that iPod thing is again, they're like what story would people tell themselves? How do we get someone to understand why an MP3 player, whoever makes it, is better than what they have right now? And we could talk about, song fidelity or whatever, but people would argue with it. They're like, it's not as high quality as CDs. It's certainly not as high quality as LPs. Why would we do that? We were arguing for mp3's based on everything else that was tactical benefits whatever.

Apple understood, at least at some level that the story that we would tell ourselves about why we needed one was because all of a sudden it was kinda like to hell with quality, I can have my whole library in my pocket. And that's really what they're saying. We're gonna stake our claim on that, that we're gonna go for the people who, that's where they find value.

[00:19:39] Mahan Tavakoli: That's the powerful point about what story would people tell themselves. And this is a way of incorporating people in that story. So they see themselves in a story, which is a key part of what I've learned from you. Now, you mentioned finding your red thread, which can be for the entire career, for everything you communicate, and it can be for even one message that you want to communicate.

So what is the red thread Tamsen?

[00:20:14] Tamsen Webster: It's the story that we tell ourselves to explain how things happen. It's the stories that drive action. I just happen to borrow, the fact that from Northern Europeans who already used the phrase, the red thread to talk about that, when they talk about what's the theme or the big idea of something, what's the logical progression of ideas, I was like there's already a word for this.

It's not well known necessarily in the U.S in that context, , but it's still the thing that when I'm talking to businesses and leaders whether it's an individual conversation with a team member or it's their whole market level platform, it's a question we have over and over again.

How do we communicate that our idea is the best one for the audience that we wanna serve? How do we get the right people to understand that our solution is the right one for them? How do we get them to understand that and that connection between your audience and you, is that story they're gonna tell themselves is that red thread?

So for me, a red thread is that story you tell yourself it explains why things happen the way they do, like why you behave the way that you do, why things happen to the way that they did, why they will happen the way that they will. But it's just that story, that explanation that we've created in our minds to explain how the world works and why people act the way they do.

[00:21:29] Mahan Tavakoli: The Red Thread is a beautiful link within the challenge. I see a lot of times Tamsen, which is we've become good at communicating the problem and jumping to the solution, communicating the solution rather than what you say is people want their own way to the idea and just communicating the problem and the solution doesn't give them that ability to engage.

Whether it's a sales message or communicating the strategy of the organization or an initiative for the team just talking about the problem and the solution leaves them out. The red thread is a way to connect.

[00:22:13] Tamsen Webster: Yes. Because the red thread is the connection between problem and solution, between question and answer, between idea and implementation. And you're right. Actually, I have a whole keynote on this cuz I believe so passionately, the fact that like most leadership, communication, change, communication, sales, messaging, marketing, messaging misses the middle. We miss what in stories is known as the moment of truth.

Remember what I said before that, all evidence points to the fact that the stories that we tell ourselves have the same components that the stories that we tell other people. But the stories that we tell other people, even if we're thinking about fairy tales or movies or whatever, they don't make sense if you only give people the beginning and the end.

So one of the examples I give is if you're talking about Star Wars and you just say once there was a brat kid named Luke who wanted to be a pilot and he ended up destroying the death star and saving the universe, and you're like, Okay, all right. And you're like, do I wanna see that movie? I don't know, but I don't even know why that happened. Why did that happen? And when we take it out of the context of our messaging, it seems ridiculous. But we can see this over and over again in those conversations that we have people where we leave out what in storytelling is known as the second act.

Stories back to Aristotle have three parts. There's an act one, that's where you set up, that's basically where you introduce the problem, that people know they have. There's act two where they have to deal with a problem that they didn't know they had and order to solve the problem that they do know they have. And then the resolution is how do they act on the decision they've made, based on the knowledge of now these two levels of problems that they've got. So you've got set up, conflict, resolution. And you need all three for a story to make sense to people, for it to be compelling, for it to explain the change from bratty kid to hero, for instance.

If you drop out that middle part, even in our message to ourselves, it doesn't make sense to people, we are just going from problem to solution. We're just saying, Hey, you wanna improve your health? Leeches, what? Like "why?" So we have to explain that piece, because if we just said, wanna listen to music? IPod, people would be like, "why?" if you say Hey, we need to merge with this other company. Why, and the typical answer would be like because it's gonna create synergies and do all this other stuff, but no. We actually have to show the work that led to that. Not the benefits once it's there.

It's not like once Luke has saved the galaxy and all the other good stuff that comes, it's what was that battle that had to be fought? That battle between good and evil that had to be fought in order for him to be the pilot he wanted to be. And oh, by the way, he ended up saving the galaxy. Like we have to do that with our messages too.

And when we skip it, A, our messages don't make sense. And you can see that in how often whether we're talking about solution selling, or challenger selling comes into play, because one of them is talking about problem solution.

We oftentimes, we skip right over because you have this problem in the case of challenger that you didn't know about. You need to do this again, okay? Not just because you have the problem, here's the thing, when you drop out that middle, you are actually creating an invalid argument.

I know that sounds really wonky, but in order to create, your minimum viable argument for anything needs to have two premises before a conclusion. Put it this way if somebody has a problem and you want them to implement your change to solve it, the real problem they have to solve, if we just say, we'll solve it this way, then what you're saying, the real problem is that they just haven't done the thing that you want them to do yet.

That's actually not a valid argument. We have to say that this thing that I want you to do, because it has this quality and that quality solves this deeper problem, that's why it's gonna help you solve this other problem that we know about. So that's why we have to build the message from reverse.

We say, here's the problem you know about, here's a deeper problem you didn't know about, because that exists, we need something that has this kind of nature. We need a solution that has this kind of thing that will do it. That's this solution. Do you see like we can't just skip, we have to show our work. We have to go through that middle part. We have to reveal the conflict, and we have to have that moment of truth that all good stories have. That's what immediately proceeds to change.

So that's the thing, like every story has this moment of truth, which is that moment right before the decision happened that the sets the ending. And I would say 90% of leadership, marketing, sales messaging does not have that moment. And without that moment, that's why we're not getting that change. We're not getting people to go, "oh, of course that's why we need that." That's why we have to have that piece. So yeah, I'm a little passionate about that piece, but once you think about it, it's just it's so obvious that we can't skip it, and yet we skip it. And so I'm like, stop skipping it. We gotta put it back in.

[00:27:10] Mahan Tavakoli: I love that Tamsen. It's the biggest struggle I see. Because that moment of truth , is something that we haven't trained our minds to think about. So when you talk about the stories in movies that we see, it makes perfect sense.

However, when we are communicating in a business setting and when I spent almost my entire career Tamsen at Dale Carnegie training training executives all around the world, including some of the most senior executives, and in most instances, they talk about the problem and they get to the solution and they focus on how am I going to communicate this solution in an effective, powerful way. So that middle part that you talk about is oftentimes not the focus of enough attention.

[00:27:58] Tamsen Webster: right?

[00:27:59] Mahan Tavakoli: You talk about understanding that goal and a problem, the truth and the change, I want to spend a little time on that truth, which is a huge challenge

[00:28:11] Tamsen Webster: is a huge challenge.

[00:28:12] Mahan Tavakoli: when we know the problem, what is the kind of truth, and how should we think about the truth in a way that it allows people to connect to it, but it's not so obvious that it doesn't have any benefit to communicating the message.

[00:28:33] Tamsen Webster: So obviousness is fine as long as it wasn't obvious in the context of the argument that you're making for your idea or for the change. Remember what I said earlier the best way to talk about a change is to have it be an unfamiliar combination of very familiar and ideally agreeable concepts.

So fundamentally what a truth is, so back to storytelling cuz I was really fascinated by this. I'm like, why do all stories have this? And messaging pretty much usually doesn't, business messaging doesn't. Like what are we missing? So I went and I talked with storytellers.

My sister happens to be an award-winning screenwriter in Hollywood. And I was like, like in this moment of truth, Aristotle called it the Anagnorisis, I'm like, what's revealed? Like what do you call that line of dialogue? What is the thing? I know the effect is a moment of truth and or the, that anagnorisis that moment you realize Luke, I am your father's. Oh, okay, that's gonna change everything. And she was like, oh, storytelling doesn't have a name for it. Sounds Ooh, dang it.

So I went looking for it and I actually found the, I think the psychology has a name for it. And that is it's what psychologists refer to as a silent assumption. It is a belief that you have about how something works that is oftentimes so internal to who you are, and what your business is. That it oftentimes doesn't even occur to you to say it out loud.

So I'll use an example from one of my clients. One of my clients they're a company called Made of Air, and they're in circular economy. And what they're trying to do is they're helping companies that want to reach net zero with their climate and carbon emissions get there.

 They're working with companies who build things and a lot of building materials, just by their very nature are carbon positive. So if I'm having a conversation with one of these builders, and I know that they want to get to net zero, like that's their known problem kinda the unknown problem, the way they haven't really thought about it before is actually, oh, okay, there's negatives and positives, so Yes. But we're not thinking about kinda the nature of the materials, but the truth, that's just a silent assumption about how we see the world that makes a different solution to reducing carbon possible is math,

because think about it this way. If you have two of something and you want to have zero of something, what needs to happen? Two of those things need to go away, and one of those things could be, let's just use less carbon. But for those companies, that's not really possible because , it's just part of what they do.

But again, back to math, everything that both the Made of Air and their prospective clients would agree with is that to reach zero, every positive needs a negative. So you could just take two away. But also means if you have a negative two of something, you're also gonna get back. We had to work to get to that.

 Because what they create is carbon negative emissions materials. That's what they create. They create building materials out of carbon negative products and materials. Okay. If you're somebody who is building things with carbon positive, if you also use these carbon negative things, because of this previously silent assumption that for every negative you need a positive to reach zero.

Oh, okay. So now there's another option for me to reach net zero than the one I've been thinking out before. But it's that point of to reach zero every negative needs a positive. Is that silent assumption , it didn't even occur to made of Air to say that because it's just so obvious.

Obviously if you wanna get to zero, and you've got positives, you need negative stuff. But remember what I said before, that's the perspective of someone who's already decided that negative emissions materials are correct. But for somebody who doesn't have that perspective, we have to surface and state that silent assumption.

So someone goes. Oh, of course. If I'm using these positive materials and I want to get to negative, I can only do that if I have negative emissions materials as well because math, because that's just the way the world works. So hopefully that explains a little bit more about what we're looking for there it is. In logic there's also a name for it, it's the major premise. I think this idea of a silent assumption is a little bit more tactical that people can put their hands on. And it's why, in the book I talk about one of the ways to get to that truth statement is the classic Toyota five why exercise,

because if you keep asking why, eventually you get to a silent assumption no longer silent, that explains why you're doing it that way. Because at some level there's some oftentimes primal belief about the world that explains why you see it and why you do the things that you do that particular way.

[00:33:11] Mahan Tavakoli: So it's interesting. The truth is a truth that exists that is not necessarily understood and observed by the people you're communicating the message to.

[00:33:22] Tamsen Webster: At least not in that context. So that's the important thing because the best truth statements are ones that someone would readily agree is true somewhere else. And because that statement is true over there, because how our brains work, we're like, then it has to be true over here, doesn't it?

Generally that's true. You would always pick a true statement where that is true, cuz we're looking for something where when we say it, we believe it. Like you, the leader believes it, but you're also fairly sure that your audience is gonna believe it as well.

And that's where you're trying to find it. And sometimes the easiest place to find it are just in those sayings that we say to each other haste makes waste, and the more the merrier, seeing is believing because those are things that generally we as humans accept to be true.

Same thing with basic principles of math and science, particularly physics, like physics is very handy for some of these things so for instance, so this isn't necessarily like business change, so I spent 13 years moonlighting as a Weight Watchers leader in addition to my full-time job.

And one of the things that would come into play is that, people would wanna lose weight. But they believed that they were what they called night eaters, that there was just kind of something like, know, past eight o'clock, they just really had trouble. Stopping eating and because Weight Watchers is based on a point system, it's kinda like a budget where you have a certain number of points every day and food has points. And as long as you stay within your daily points budget, you shouldn't achieve whatever health goals you're looking for.

But would happen is that they'd run outta points, so here I had people who really wanted to lose weight were struggling because they believed themselves to be night eaters. So I had to look at it from a perspective of okay, I'm trying to communicate a change in their behavior. How do I get them to change their behavior in a way that doesn't feel like a massive change? Because I can't tell them like, stop eating at night because that's not who they are. They're not gonna believe that they can do that. And that's, that's one of the biggest barriers to change communication is that we try to get people to believe something brand new. But a brand new belief is the weakest kind of belief. Cuz the longer we believe something, the stronger we believe it. So we needed to anchor it in something else.

Okay. So I had people believe they were night eaters, and they really were focused on how many points they had to eat in the day. And they were more focused on kind of the day as a day. And this is what I realized, and they were focused on the day as 24 hours.

But nowhere in the Weight Watchers literature does it say that. When does a day start, because we can all agree that a day has 24 hours in it. But do we all agree when a day starts, when does it start? Does it start at 12:01 or 12 0 0 0 1? Or does it start when you wake up? Does it start I don't know.

So the truth statement that I voiced was everyone will agree that there's 24 hours in a day. That's the truth, and so what that led to was the change was, so start your points at night because you're a night eater. That's when you need the points. You're still sticking with a day. But if we can all agree that a day is 24 hours, and I'm telling you, as the expert in Weight Watchers, that nothing says that the day has to start in the morning. The day can start at night, start the day at night.

And now you see what I did there was just like, you get what you want. You don't have to unbelieve something you believe about yourself. It's anchored in something that's probably even deeper than that. Somebody's not gonna suddenly unbelief that a day is 24 hours. They're not gonna be like, no, actually it's 22. So when I say would you be open to starting your points at night? They were just like, yes.

And it worked for them. It worked for them again, because it was consistent with what they wanted. It was consistent with what they believed both about themselves and of the world. And so you're right, Mahan. These are, hard to get to because of all the things we've talked about before, because some of these things seem so obvious to us, they're just part of how we see the world. They're part of the ongoing story that we're always telling ourself about how the world works, but it doesn't occur to us to surface it. But when we can surface it and go, it's 24 hours in a day, that can start whenever, someone's like, oh, and you can completely change how they were thinking about that.

So it really does come down to what can you find as a point of agreement that explains why a different path is the only one that makes sense given what they want and what they're doing.

[00:37:35] Mahan Tavakoli: That is such an outstanding example, Tamsen, really helped clarify it for me and it also emphasizes the fact that not just for brand communications, but all the communication that the CEO's, executives, managers of teams do when it's important, it takes time and effort to think through that communication and think through the kind of truths that you can access.

So when you talked about, you can start the 24 hours at any point in time, after I hear it, aha. Makes great sense.

 But it's not as, I was thinking how to communicate my message for five minutes before I communicated. I would've come up with that.

So it requires real deep thinking to be able to find the truth that then connects your problem to the change that you're looking for.

[00:38:30] Tamsen Webster: Yeah it does. I believe very much in the conservation of energy law, meaning that energy doesn't disappear, that we just get to decide when is it gonna take work. And I've been in leadership positions for 25 years, so I get it. Do you need to do this for every communication you put out there? No. Do you wanna do it for the high stakes ones? Yeah. If you don't wanna be spending that work on the back end, trying to fix and convince and persuade on the back end, why once you attempted it the first time, they're like, okay, that didn't work. How do we do that? How do we do that? How do we do that? And now you're in this point of defense around this idea that you've put out there.

So for me it was very much a stress saving and effort saving, at least in that direction, because I would rather put that effort up front and raise the probability of success the first time, then spend that same amount of effort after a failure of the message.

Maybe I could get eventually to the same effort, but why do that? The end, where I would've ended up is finally I had gotten the right pieces and parts in place after any number of failed attempts to get the story straight, for something that's high stakes, figure it out at the beginning.

And I can tell you from experience and with clients that have been working with me now for years, you get better and better at this about spotting these silent assumptions both in your own life. And one of the best ways to make yourself better at it is to see if you can spot them in the world. Because every now and then someone will just toss up something you're like, that's true.

Like Simon Sinex TEDx talk, start with why, which just revolutionized a lot of internal leadership communication. One of the truth like statements, he says in this is that people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And that is that kind of silent assumption.

Like he's surfacing that silent assumption. And as soon as you hear it, in certain contexts, you're like, yes, that's absolutely true. But it also happens in really subtle ways when someone will just pop off with the ends justify the means. And they're like, okay, they've just revealed to you in that moment, they've surfaced a previously sound assumption that whatever they're doing right now they think is totally fine given the outcome that you're going for.

Okay, now that's an opportunity, particularly in a leadership position. So tell me more about why you feel that those means justify that end so I love Simon Sinek and I love Simon's work because I think it is critically important that we articulate the why behind our what. Why do we do what we do? Back to Apple, why innovation? Great, fine. But I also think it's important, and this is what is I think, dramatically underserved in leadership, communications and all communications frankly, is the why behind the how. Why do we do what we do the way that we do it.

In other words, the why behind the what Simonson X. Y is like okay, why do we believe in these ends? And I'm saying we have to be just as good at explaining why we believe in the means to those ends, why do we believe that this is the right way to do something? And that's really, Important particularly if you are communicating about trying to make a sophisticated or complex change to a big, sophisticated, complex problem. People have to hear that. They have to hear that because just naturally we're gonna say you can't just solve a giant problem like this with this little thing. That's not gonna work. So explain to me how you think, why you think what was your thought process that got to the point where you feel like this, whatever this thing was, is gonna move the needle?

So it's that why do you do what you do the way that you do it? When you can get to that, and that's what I really hope that the red thread method does for people, is give them a way to surface that.

Because it's surfaced, it allows your audience, whether that's your team or your market to go, I do or I don't agree with the means that you're using to those ends. . And it's at that point that someone either is going to agree with the change or not. Because if they don't agree with the means long term, they will never agree with the end.

They just won't agree with the solution for how to get there. Cause if they don't agree with that, they don't agree with why those means are what they are, they're not gonna agree with the solution fundamentally. And I think that's powerful cuz it can tell you who belongs in your organization and who doesn't.

Because there's been plenty of times where I'm sure we as leaders, look at what someone does and we're like, why did they ever think that would be okay? And that person will come back to us and but it achieved outcome you were looking for. And you're like, not in the way that we do things. But to me, that tells you that there's not enough being articulated surfaced about why is that? And it's not just your values, it's the collection of these things. It's the beliefs that drive our behaviors, and that's the behaviors that set the brand.

So we've just gotta understand how do those beliefs come together in these stories that we tell ourselves as leaders in the stories we tell ourselves as organizations so that they can make more sense to our teams, our staff, and the market as a whole.

[00:43:36] Mahan Tavakoli: It adds a lot of clarity, and as you said, it enables people to buy in or opt out in many instances. What I find is that the lack of clarity causes people not to know whether to buy in or opt out. So a much lower level of engagement and connection, which is why Tamsen, I see a lot of relevance to the process that you share to communicating business strategy.

One of the frustrations that I hear from many of the executives that I work and interact with is that, They feel like they have a great strategy, that they have spent a ton of time, in some instances, engaging the entire organization, getting some feedback, and then communicating the strategy. And there is very little engagement or buy-in into that process.

I do think the truth becomes a big piece of it, and I love you say any good business strategy in essence is an argument, and this can be used in a way to communicate business strategy. So we'd love to get some of your thoughts. When leaders are thinking about communicating business strategy, what are the kind of truths?

Because the problems they spend a lot more time on, the change and the actions, they are very clear on. What are the kind of truths that can be revealed as a part of making people work their way into the idea of this strategy

[00:45:12] Tamsen Webster: So the first thing I wanna make sure to give credit where credit is due, that phrase, that strategy is an argument I first read that's the work of some researchers out of MIT who published this great article in the MIT technology review about that they were like, strategies and argument.

I'm like yes. It's because the strategy is how we do something, right? And so when you are articulating your strategy well by definition you're arguing for that kind of how, the reason why you are taking those steps to achieve that particular outcome.

And it's not just because the outcome is worth it. And that's generally where we end up. It's because we are anchoring that we believe that A, there is this known problem that's important to solve. B So that's the first truth, is that you've gotta get to a point where you're anchoring, know, your argument for a strategy or a change and something that you believe is the known problem.

And importantly, if you're trying to get somebody else to buy into that, that it's something that they also agree is an important problem. So that's what I call the goal. But another way to think of that is that's the known problem. It's the problem that people know they wanna solve, and it's the reason why they'll pay attention to you in the first place because they're like, I have that problem. That's a persistent issue. I would really love an answer to that. Or maybe it's an urgent issue I know about that.

Now the next piece that we need to establish, so this is what I call the problem, because in my mind, this is actually the real problem. There's a reason why we aren't able to solve the known problem yet. And that's where you have to establish, know, what I call the problem of perspective, the two-part problem , because in essence, we're looking through an incomplete lens, right? Or the lens that we're using to look for this problem is keeping us from seeing, a solution that can actually help us.

When I was growing up, there's , these children's activity books, where there would be a secret code and that you could only see it if you put this piece of red cellophane across it, and because that would take out one of the colors, then suddenly you could see something. And I want you to think about it. That's how we have to articulate the real problem is that, we're all looking for this solution. We're all smart, good, and capable good people, but we're like wearing this cellophane over our lenses and we're actually not seeing the secret or that we aren't using it and we need to put this lens on in order to see it. And that's kind of more accurate. So that's the second truth as you're gonna put it, of saying, how can we frame this underlying tension between perspectives in a way that, the audience will agree that's true.

Classic example, forest and trees. Can you get someone to agree that they're focusing on the details of something more than the big picture of something? They might say yes. And both are important, like a forest is made of trees and if you have a bunch of trees, you get a forest so nobody's wrong there. But if you're trying to find a path out and somebody's only looking at individual trees and not the space between those trees, then we're never gonna find the path out, so that's why establishing that deeper problem, think of it as the tension that has to be resolved before we can solve the problem we know about,

This is a thing that we haven't thought of yet. We would agree. It's true once we hear it. And then the, the one that we've been talking about the most, what is something that we can all agree is true about the world, about humans, about the situation, that means that new perspective is the only way through.

So let's take our forest and trees example, we say we can agree that a path can only go through open space. You can't walk through trees. Therefore, if we're trying to find our way out of the woods, we need to look at the spaces between the trees. We need to find the path through the forest, which is gonna be, we need to pull back from the tree a little bit and look at the spaces instead.

We're not invalidating anything that anybody's been thinking about. We're just making a different behavior make even more sense given what they want and what they believe about the world.

You see what we've done is saying, okay, the strategy is look for the spaces between trees. Are you lost? Look for spaces between trees. Okay, why? All right. And then you say, because if you only look at the trees you're not gonna see the spaces. Why are the spaces important? Because a path only runs through space. I know it seems silly, we have to say that. So therefore if you're trying to get out of the woods, back off the trees a little bit, start to find the space and then walk through the spaces, , I know it's metaphorical there, but that's really what we're trying to do.

And your strategy has that argument behind it, whether you realize it or not. So that's really what I try to do with the book. And what I try to do with my clients is to say, You already made that argument with yourself, like your brain already did. You may not be aware that it did, but it did.

And so really this process is an excavation process of, recreating. What was that pre-conscious set of decisions, those pre-conscious filling in the blanks of the story that your brain came up with to say that's the right answer.

The power of that and the payoff of that is that when people hear the whole reasoning if you've designed it in line with what they believe and what they want, It's gonna make a lot more sense to them than just trying to say if you look at the spaces you're gonna get out, then I know that's what I want. Don't tell me that again, or You're gonna get out faster. Great, fine, but why am I gonna get out faster? I don't understand. I am lost. I wanna get out. What's happening? And you're like you're looking at the trees and you're not looking at the spaces. Spaces are where the paths go. So therefore, look at this space.

Oh, okay, now I understand why you're telling me to do that. That's what we have to do. Again, in the early stages of training yourself to surface these silent red threads that are happening. It's tough, but it gets easier the more that you're just of mentally, you can use this as a framework to go, okay, someone just asked me a question, they've just told me their goal. All right, what's the deeper problem? What's the tension? Like, how are they looking at it? What's a different way to look at it? What do we both believe that explains why that different way is gonna point us in a new direction? Okay. Therefore, what's the answer? To me when I read that article, I was like, yes. That's why strategy is an argument. And that's why, simultaneously we need to make sure that we understand the argument behind our strategy.

[00:51:27] Mahan Tavakoli: As you were describing at Tamsen I've both had conversations and very familiar with communication of strategy whether it's at. Amazon, Salesforce, Carlisle Group, Microsoft, a lot of 'em follow very much the same process that you talked through. There is an intentionality behind what you mentioned and the revealing of this truth where people do say that aha, and it does engage them and it makes it their idea as opposed to just something that the leaders of the organization are communicating with respect to strategy.

So as you were talking through the process, I could visualize almost like the red film paper that you were talking about. I was putting it on the strategy of some of the organizations I'm very familiar with, whether smaller organizations or some of those global ones. And in many instances, they match the framework of the red thread that you share in your book.

[00:52:28] Tamsen Webster: Yeah, because it is how we make sense of the world. Like these are the pieces. There's a reason why these are the main elements that all stories have, because without all of those elements, without a goal, a problem, a truth, a change, and then the actions that make that change real, a story doesn't make sense. We don't understand why the ending is the way that it is. We don't understand why some, someone behaved the way that they did, why they made those choices. If we don't have all those pieces, it doesn't make sense. And I'm convinced the reason why those are the elements and the stories we tell other people is because they have to be the elements of how we make sense of anything. We have to understand what the desired outcome is. We have to understand what's the deeper reason why we're not getting that right now? And it's not because we don't have the solution yet, it's because we're looking for the solution in the wrong place.

Like that's the thing. And we're saying, okay, if we look at the solution over here, okay, that's gonna make more sense if we anchor that new idea in something that we are 99% sure are absolutely sure that our team, our staff, our audience is going to agree with, without us having to convince them because it's one of their beliefs about the world too, then we have made what could otherwise be a difficult, scary decision seem like not a big shift to them. And that's the key.

My first job outta grad school was as a change management consultant, and I have not stopped being that in my mind, I've not stopped figuring out how do we make and maintain transformational change easier.

And the way that we do it, like what all of this comes down to is we oftentimes think that change comes down to challenging people's beliefs, challenging or changing what they want, challenging or changing what they believe. I a hundred percent do not believe that works long term. What I know works long term, because I've seen it work long term, is that if you create a change and you anchor it in what they already want, what they already believe, you validate what they're already doing. They're much, much more likely, and you're just putting those things together in a new way, it's an old belief in a new context. Then it makes this change that otherwise would feel like different and new and scary. Just be like that makes. . Okay. Now, it doesn't make it easy. From there, there's still effort that has to be expended back to conservation of energy law. But now we can put the effort on actually doing the thing instead of trying to convince people that it's right.

So one of my favorite quotes, it didn't make it into that book, it probably will to the next one by Blaze Pascal, the mathematician philosopher, is that the art of persuasion is as much that, of agreeing as that of convincing.

And I take that to mean that persuading is really about and particular we're trying to get someone to change, it's about presenting them with a series of concepts that they agree with and that once they've agreed with all of those concepts, then if you've done it right, Then they're gonna agree with the conclusion or it's gonna be really hard for them not to.

And that's really what we're trying to get to is how do we break an idea into its component concepts so that it's something where each individual piece, what it will get someone, how it solves a deeper problem, how all of that is rooted in something that they believe to be true about the world already without you having to convince them.

That all adds up to conclusion, change. Oh, okay. All right. And it's still effort, but all right, now I'm with you. Now let's spend our energy on making this change happen, rather than on this back and forth about are we sure this is the right thing? Are we sure this is the right way? I'd rather put my effort in making the change actually happen than in back and forth about whether or not it's the right one.

[00:56:14] Mahan Tavakoli: I'll love this Tamsen and it fits perfectly with, I had a conversation with David McCraney, love his work in his book, how Minds Change. What you are sharing fits perfectly to what he shares. All of it's science based with respect to how you can get people engaged in the stories that change their own minds rather than forcing which doesn't work.

Unfortunately in many organizations, even though the language has changed in talking about servant leadership, there is a tendency to believe that because of the hierarchy, because of status in the organization, when you tell people we need to change, they are going to go along with it.

But what you are sharing is this changes the hearts and minds effectively, so they buy into the change and the strategy because you cannot force it on people.

[00:57:15] Tamsen Webster: To me it's is your focus on driving action or is it about driving change? By which I mean sustained action. And my feeling is that, over time, you know the thing that if, if you also care about not burning your people out and also being, engendering a good culture and being seen as a good leader, then that change needs to be something that comes willingly from your people.

 So yeah. Can you make someone change from authority? Sure. For a little while, but long term, we're not gonna do anything that is inconsistent with how we see the world. So another talk that I give is very much about this and it's, one of the things that I learned is a truth statement that most of us would agree with is pain is the enemy of long-term change.

We will not continue to do anything that is mentally, physically, or emotionally difficult for us long term. We will not. If we do, it's because we've changed the story we are telling ourselves about the effort or the pain required, like you will not keep your hand on a hot stove.

You will not do it. And we will not over time continue to do something, work for people whose means don't justify the ends as far as we believe. So the more that we as leaders can articulate that, we always talk about that ends justify the means. We don't spend enough time on the justify piece.

Tell me about the justification. Tell me how you are justifying this. So , I'm deeply passionate about this. I'm yes. A lot of it is science-based, cuz I've been so curious about it and I wanna figure out and I joke that I'm an accidental epistemologist and epistemologist or people who understand the science of beliefs.

 Because that's ultimately what it comes down to because here are things that I know we can't unbelief things that we believe not quickly. We will not operate long term in things that are in opposition to what we believe. We won't do something that if we don't believe at some level, it's the right way to do it for us.

And yet the thing that we spend the least time in when we're communicating is explaining to people. There are beliefs about why this is the right thing, and yet it's the only thing that long term people will connect to that they will buy into, and it's the only thing that long term will set their behavior as coming from inside and not from being dictated from the outside.

[00:59:33] Mahan Tavakoli: That's a great way to communicate whether it is communicating a brand message, communicating a simple change to the team. Or communicating a strategy to an entire organization. So we just touched the surface of find your Red thread Tamsen. And what I most especially appreciate about the book and the content that you share is that I see it as a framework to constantly think about and practice and take notes on and work on because as you said, we end up seeing more of these truths, we end up becoming more capable at using the framework for communications.

Now, in addition to your book, I wonder, are there any leadership practices or resources you recommend for organizational leaders as they want to communicate more effectively their message, whether to the internal audience or to external audiences.

[01:00:33] Tamsen Webster: So there's tons of resources, I have a post that I wrote about my 17 books that I think that any good message maker should have. We can refer people to that. And it has ones that I think most people either have heard of or would think of.

Chip and Dan Heaths Make It Stick. A lesser known one that's called Made To Stick by Peter C. Brown a great book called Magic Words by Tim David. Another great book by a guy named Phil Jones, exactly what to say. So there's a lot of stuff that's already out there that I believe just solid, Jonah Burgers contagious the work of, how to change minds, nudge all of these things.

Anything that you can get your hands on that explains how people make decisions, what kinds of information they use to make those decisions. And then how to articulate what you're saying in a way that leads to those decisions is gonna be useful to you.

One of the things that I do on my social channels is I share these links that I hashtag swipe file. And a swipe file is something that a lot of people in advertising agencies or copywriting agencies know. A swipe file is something where you see something that's, either some copy that's inspirational to you or useful to you, or a template or something, a good image and you just, you swipe it and put it in a file to serve as inspiration for later.

But for me, I refer to it as studies stories and stuff you can use, and a fair amount of it is articles that are about how people change and communicate that change and all of that. And some of it's just weird stuff.

So this is where the practice comes in because just like I would suggest as a practice to listen for and spot truth statements when you see them in the wild, when you hear someone articulating it in an advertising campaign, or when you hear somebody like in your own organization, you're like, wow, they just did a really good job. Oh, look at that. They just, oh, there was a truth statement. I heard it. Or Ted Talks or things like that, spot that.

But for me, this white file is another practice that leaders can engage in because the more that we can say to someone, this situation is like that situation, the more powerful and more kind of down to earth that we can make things feel to our people. This gets back to learning theory and the difference between case-based learning and rule-based learning. I won't get into that now, but because the most important thing to understand is that the vast majority of humans, so 75% of humans are example or case-based learners.

In other words, they need to see an example of what you're talking about in order to understand what you're talking about. Some of us, this is the rule-based learners can just extract the big idea from that. But most people need to see an example. And not only that, in order for them to really understand, they have to see an example that really closely aligns to the situation they see themselves in.

Now, that sounds frustrating, at some level except that, research shows that case-based learners can be taught to see the rule if they're given at least two examples and they're shown what the connection point is, and guess what that connection point is, it's a truth statement.

So the reason why I talk about the swipe file, is go find interesting stories and interesting things and just however makes sense to hold them in your mind. Because there's gonna be a situation where you're trying to say to someone, you know what this is like that thing.

And sometimes it's an experience they're very familiar with where you can say, have you ever had this thing where someone said, the ends justify the means, and you're like, not those means, you can use that to say, this is like that. Or you've heard me say it was just like, that the red cellophane, this is like that.

We are building our arsenal of our ability to explain something in the moment and to make that connection for people. So I really believe in leaders being kind of voracious collectors of stories and information outside of your industry, outside of your company, outside of your organization, outside of business even, because there's just sometimes there's like cuckoo banana stuff that can help you.

 For instance, I found this story about how they discovered this shipwreck in lake superior or Lake Michigan, like the water is down and, they just finally were able to find the ship they've been looking for forever and ever.

And that's interesting in and of itself because it could be a story of perseverance that they knew the ship was there and so they really wanted to find it. So you could use that story this way, but there was this thing at the end of it that I thought was amazing.

So these folks, they were on a ship. and it sank. They got saved, every person on this ship was saved because there was another ship that was able to hear their distress call and got all of the folks off. But this kills me. The company that owned the ship that sank afterwards gave the captain 50 bucks and the crew 35 bucks each for loss of clothing.

and to me I was like, what a great example of a company being completely tone deaf to the actual experience the people just went through, because you're like, I don't think their clothing is the thing that they're most worried about. I think the thing that they're traumatized by is the fact that they wore on a ship that sank.

So this is what I mean. You can start to look at that and you look at those stories and you're like what stories could I tell? What else is like that? And so that when you are having a conversation with someone, again, you can take something familiar, but now you can use something that's a little bit more interesting.

Yeah, I can tell a story of Apple or iPod, or I can pull out something that you've never heard before and you're. That's like a cool story. So I'm interested in it, and B it makes you laugh because you're like $35 for loss of clothing because you were on a chip that sank, I think you missed the point there, the next time you're in a situation where you as a leader, need to talk about, Hey, let's not miss the point here.

Or you're trying to argue, for instance, for diversity and inclusion, or how do we account for people's traumatic experiences and how that affects 'em at work. You can say, all right, let me tell you this story, in this case, an actual story. How would you feel if you were that sailor and you're like, here's $35 for the clothes you lost. Okay, we're done now will you please go back on the ship? And it's no. So I think that kind of collection. Concepts. That collection of stories is a really important practice for leaders because it expands your ability to not only find those kind of, similar stories. This is like that, but it also raises your ability to spot those kinds of underlying ideas in everything that you do.

[01:06:54] Mahan Tavakoli: What an outstanding story, but also practice Tamsen because I'm currently working with a couple of CEOs and I'm a big believer in storytelling. I've done a bunch of podcasts with park Howell.

 Paul Smith has a couple of outstanding books Lead with the story and 10 Stories great Leaders Tell, and in many instances, the CEOs that I work with, they say, whoa, how am I supposed to come up? Where am I supposed to come up with the stories? So your point is there are stories all. Around us. It's that swipe file of all kinds of stories that we can then find the relevance and connected dots with the truths revealing later. So I love that example. And the practice is really important because stories are the way we make sense of the world around us, and I find many of the leaders I interact with lack in the storytelling that is important in guiding the organization forward toward a strategy.

This is an outstanding practice for that. So how can the audience find out more about you, Damson, and all the great resources that you share with your community?

[01:08:09] Tamsen Webster: All my stuff is at my own site, so tamsenwebster.com, but I would be honored if folks would sign up for my newsletter, which I promise always is very tactically focused. I always summarize in my newsletters the 10 links I've shared in the previous week for the swipe file, but also really focus on giving leaders and those who need to communicate big changes the information they need to make their messages more effective.

[01:08:34] Mahan Tavakoli: You do an outstanding job with your newsletter, Tamsen. I'd been following your content and reading your work before your book. You've done a great job with a book. Find a Red Thread: Make your big ideas irresistible, putting your thoughts in one book, which can serve as a workbook to think through the way we communicate our red threads, whether for small messages, large organizational messages, or even our own professional and life red threads. I want to wrap up with in the book intro, you have a TEDx test. Something that I think the leaders listening to this episode should also ask themselves when they're communicating an idea.

Can you summarize your idea? Can you include something that people want? Is it something that is unconventional in there, something that other people understand? And can it be communicated in 140 characters or less, which is very difficult for most of us.

[01:09:42] Tamsen Webster: Yes it is. And the secret to doing that is that you have to think of it like you would reducing a sauce, if we're trying to come up with a new idea, we oftentimes try to go straight to articulating that like just, what is it? What's the one line? But my experience is that we actually have to understand the whole story before you can summarize it. And that's the thing. You need to know the whole plot of the story before you can, explain to people in one sentence what it is.

But it's a great test. It's a great way to show someone A, that they don't have it yet oftentimes. So if you're saying, okay, you've got a big communication, need to be about change coming up. All right, what's the big idea? Give it to me in one sentence. And then usually you'll get about three minutes worth or more of an answer, and you're like, okay, you're clear enough yet. Okay, so let's back up. Let's do the work. Let's figure out exactly what problem this is solving that we know about. What's the actual solution that we're gonna be arguing for? And let's make sure that we've got the case that we're gonna make. And then once you've got that, you can say the key to driving change and not just long-term action, is validating people's beliefs, not just challenging them. That's gonna be the big idea of this talk.

And then everyone's okay, great, tell us more. And then that's when you can create your case for it. And the book, is all about that. So it both starts and ends with that TEDx test cuz they ask people to, write that down. And then by the end of the book, I've shown them how they can build something like that. I call it the through line. And then that's what we end up doing. So I think it's always a good test.

Can I summarize my idea in a sentence? Is it something that someone can understand? Does it contain something people want via means they don't expect? And if so, Okay, great. Am I using words only they will understand and is 140 character classes. It's just a really good way to just say, do I have it? Because if we don't have it at that point yet, then there's more work we need to do.

We need to get more of that clarity we're talking about because it's only clarity that allows us to be able to articulate something that concisely and crisply and compellingly.

[01:11:37] Mahan Tavakoli: I really appreciate you providing us the framework and some insights to work our way toward that clarity. Thank you so much for joining me in this conversation Tamsen Webster.

[01:11:47] Tamsen Webster: Oh, my pleasure, Mahan. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.