THE UNRELIABLE WITNESS

You know the bitter feeling that you get when you finish explaining something and can tell: I'm not quite there. It's painful and invisible at the same time.

We all experience it, try to get rid of it. And most of us quietly assume it’s our fault.

THE PATTERN

On Monday, I was picking up my son at school. I spoke with a handful of parents, all just back from the holidays, all talking at once. And in the middle of this, I had this thought:

If that same night I asked any one of them to retell this conversation, they were not able to do so.

We were all in it, and yet nobody was holding it. And the moment it ended, it was already gone. Each person walked away with their own edited version of what just happened.

In any kind of encounter, if you think “Maybe I need to explain better” or “Maybe the idea isn't as good as I think.”

Stop now and read on. I don't think either thought is right.

THE FILM

In 1950, Kurosawa made a film about it: Rashomon.

A fascinating movie that depicts one event through the accounts of four witnesses, each with a completely different version of what happened. Every single one of them convinced they witnessed the only true version of what occurred.

Audiences didn't know how to process that film at first, because Kurosawa simply asserted a truth most people spend a lifetime avoiding: we are all unreliable witnesses to our own conversations.

THE CONCEPT

The reason behind it is our humanity. We experience a situation through everything we‘ve already decided is true.

Nobody is waiting in an empty room for our idea to arrive. They're already mid-film, far off in their head.

The psychologist George Kelly spent his career mapping this and came up with the Personal Construct Theory (PCT). His conclusion sounds almost too simple until you can't stop seeing it everywhere: two people are never in the same conversation.

How could they? They each bring a different film into the situation and watch it simultaneously.

Which brings me to the thing I keep coming back to.

“Trying to convince someone is destroying their perception of reality.”

Before your idea can land, you have to move first the story they are already running in their head about how things work. Something needs to shift just enough to let yours through.

That’s why you can say something perfect and still have no impact, sometimes that has nothing to do with you. It’s not about explaining better or polishing an idea one more time.

"In order to remember something, you have to establish relevance."

THE TAKE

Thinking about this, a good way to tackle an encounter of any kind should be to try to simplify everything to the point where we could explain it to a seven-year-old with a two-minute attention span.

If I succeed at that, I succeed at anything. If I can’t do that, I haven’t found the idea underneath my idea yet, and that’s what needs to come across.

We probably can't close that gap entirely. But we can make it strong enough that the essentials survive the translation.

Remember: Story or be forgotten.

—Théo

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