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Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, declared, “Clear communication is necessary to management success.” The paradigmatic virtues of clarity and completeness have long guided how we define successful business communication. This traditional insistence on precision and transparency is pervasive, guiding our endeavors to craft effective messages. However, as we peel back the layers of this deeply entrenched notion, it becomes apparent that both our personal and professional endeavors often benefit from a more nuanced approach. Ambiguity, often stigmatized as a hallmark of miscommunication and inefficiency, can actually serve as a strategic tool. Below, we unpack the value of strategic ambiguity and explore when and how it can be deployed effectively. The Value of Clarity and Completeness At the heart of business communication lie the principles of clarity and completenessa commitment to the accurate and clear transmission of all relevant information. These are encapsulated in and taught through common tools like the MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) principle or the Minto pyramid method, which breaks a central message into a clear and complete hierarchy of reasons and assumptions. The aim of such tools is to provide clarity through logically structuring all relevant ideas and information. In many instances this approach to communication is indeed desirable. Imagine a corporate memo detailing a change in organizational structure. An ambiguous or incomplete message could lead to confusion, unchecked speculation, suspicion or misaligned efforts and would certainly reduce operational effectiveness. Or, envision a one-on-one circumstance such as performance review where important future changes are needed. If the requested change is unclear or the goal amorphous, desired actions and ultimately retention might be in jeopardy. In these cases, clarity and completeness of what needs changing and why would be essential to effective implementation. The Utility of Ambiguity Striving for clarity and completeness is not always appropriate, however. For example, it might inadvertently signal finality and inflexibility when the situation calls for exploration. Or it might lead to bluntness and offense in dealing with sensitive subjects. Purposeful ambiguity can serve as a useful tool in many sticky communication situations. What, then, is the difference between productive and unproductive ambiguity? When and how should deliberate ambiguity be deployed to obtain the best communication outcomes? Probing and Exploring Ambiguity can be used to encourage engagement, dialogue, and collaboration. In situations like negotiating or initiating partnerships, avoiding stating proposals too clearly may signal finality and inflexibility when it can be more productive to ask questions, tell stories, or suggest multiple possibilities. For example, if you are trying to determine your bosss risk tolerance for an innovative idea you have, you might tell a story about another organization implementing a similar idea to gauge her reaction rather than directly asserting your desired course of action. Unlocking Opportunities Ambiguity can act as a catalyst for collaborative uncovering of opportunities and innovation. It provides a fertile ground for multiple interpretations and thus inviting exploration and encouraging creative suggestions. Consider a brainstorming session where a leader initiates ideation by simply posing open-ended questions without defining a clear goal. The ambiguity invites more ingenuity as a productive path to eventual focus and clarity. Face-Saving and Flexibility In scenarios where building and preserving relationships and saving face are crucial, ambiguity can help. Nothing is more corrosive to collaboration and innovation than inducing fear or defensiveness by striking sensitive topics with the precision of a missile, especially when the topic is incidental to the purpose of the communication. Nuanced communication can nurture potential hurt feelings and maintain psychological safety. For example, when giving a superior constructive feedback, the reception and effect may be multiplied if it is combined with positive feedback, if details are sufficient to communicate the point but dont go so far as precipitating a defensive reaction, or if only selective aspects are put forth. An appropriate level of ambiguity maximizes the possibility of the message being embraced, demonstrates goodwill, preserves the working relationship, and increases the probability that best efforts will be applied. Implying Commitment without Taking a Stance Any number of situations exist where we are asked to take a position that might put us at a disadvantage. In such situations, deploying ambiguity can fulfill the requirement to respond and can validate the other parties intent while leaving possibilities open. Making statements like This is an important issue does not clearly delineate a stance, but can signal receipt of the message or respect for the question. Similarly, telling a prospect interested in a currently unplanned product feature would be very useful implies that the feature will be considered without committing to it. When ambiguity can help Here are some examples of specific situations where using ambiguity strategically could be helpful. 1 Negotiations: Ambiguity can prevent deadlock or the premature convergence on a suboptimal outcome, allowing negotiators to explore a broader range of acceptable outcomes. This facilitates a more flexible and adaptable approach to reaching a more mutually beneficial agreement. 2 Marketing: In marketing luxury goods, strategic ambiguity can create an aspirational allure, emphasizing associations and aesthetics over concrete details. A Dior perfume advertisement might, for example, focus on the elegance and prestige conveyed by the product, rather than its chemical composition or price. 3 Intervening in Complex Systems: For processes that are too intricate to detail completely, ambiguity can help focus attention on essential aspects while granting flexibility in execution. For example, in a luxury hotels customer service protocol, specifying core principles of hospitality may be more effective than detailing every conceivable scenario, creating an unwieldy standard operating procedure, which is impossible to operationalize. 4 Inspiring others: To inspire and motivate, sometimes the exact steps are less important than the overall vision and values. A recruit might be more drawn to a companys aspirational, more vague goals rather than specific tactical details. Directionality over specificity allows recipients to more easily hear what they want to find in the message. The toolkit The tools of strategic ambiguity are as varied as the purposes for which they can be deployed. Leveraging the advantages of ambiguity involves mastering som of the following specific techniques. 1 Metaphors, Similes, & Analogies: Convey ideas abstractly by comparison with other situations.Example: Our current financial situation is akin to a battle. 2 Selective Detailing: Choose details that imply your point of view without declaring it in detail.Example: Say, “The room is warm,” rather than requesting the window be open. 3 Reframing: Use higher-level abstractions to focus on broader connections.Example: A specific question about why something is so expensive is reframed as a question about value. 4 Word Choice & Phrasing: Employ strategic word choices to imply, suggest, or cushion.Example: This course of action is certified. 5 Open-Ended Questions: Foster directed dialogue and exploration.Example: What are the criteria for success? 6 Scenarios: Scenario planning can illustrate potential outcomes hypothetically, without commitment.Example: Referencing cases that align with your goal. Deciding when and how to be ambiguous As with all high-stakes, strategic communication, we must consider the goal and context to help craft effective messages. In defining our messages, we must think about what we want our audience to know, feel, and do. Further, we need to consider how they will feel about our discussion topic and its associations. In situations where these might invite concern, confusion, or consternation, making our message more ambiguous might invite better acceptance and engagement. Additionally, all communication occurs in a social context that defines what is accepted and expected. We must consider these norms along with the spoken and unspoken rules around clarity. For example, in the midst of a surgery or when flying an airplane, there is an expectation of clear, concise communication between professionals that outweighs some of the negative repercussions of communicating in such a direct manner. Ethics must be considered While ambiguity can be advantageous, it bears ethical implications. Purposeful ambiguity should not be wielded to mislead or deceive but rather to foster mutually beneficial outcomes. Each communication situation needs to net out the benefit versus potential optics of being ambiguous. While potentially more demanding, this vetting will allow for better socio-emotional and task outcomes. In our pursuit of effective communication, strategic ambiguity offers a valuable dimension to business communication. It can foster flexibility, nurture creativity, and manage relational dynamics, sometimes achieving what unerring clarity and comprehensiveness cannot. By embracing ambiguity judiciously, business leaders and communicators create better paths to eventual clarity and beneficial outcomes
Category:
E-Commerce
When you think of podcasting, you probably picture chart-topping celebrities and shows from major publishersnames like The Joe Rogan Experience, Armchair Expert, Call Her Daddy, MeidasTouch, and others. But heres the reality: Its the smaller, independent creators who dominate the podcast world. The vast majority of the approximately 435,000 actively publishing podcasts are independentscreators operating outside the umbrella of major media companiesand they play a huge role in the industrys ability to maintain its freshness and authenticity. Theyre also important to strengthening the financial foundation of the entire podcasting market. Thats because, for the advertisers that drive podcastings growth, indies are not just plentifultheyre powerful. Their hosts excel in fostering loyal, highly engaged communities built on trust and direct connection. In an era when consumers crave authenticity and can be wary of larger media companies, indie podcasters offer a unique bridge between brands and audiences. Because of this, they’ve become essential partners in any serious audio strategy. The mediums recent shift to video threatens to undermine all of that. Not only are the additional demands of video production potentially a larger burden to independents, but if podcast advertisers shift their budgets to video, they risk defunding indie podcasts that arent moving in that direction. Without funding from ads, many indie podcasts will suffer, hurting the entire market in the process. Why indies matter Its important to remember that independence is central to the culture of podcasting. The idea has always been that podcasting had a low barrier to entry, meaning that anyone with a point of view could start one. This not only resulted in a huge range of podcasts covering a variety of niche subjectsallowing listeners to curate according to their own interestsbut also a built-in authenticity, creating a deep connection between creators and listeners. This intimate relationship, still enjoyed by independent podcasts, has always delivered value for advertisers. Our research shows that not only do indie podcasts feature more and longer host-read adspodcastings most effective advertising formatbut theyre 37% more likely to hit their performance targets when compared with those on larger network podcasts. And indies tend to offer more creative options, and their ads are about 50% more likely to continue to deliver advertisers impressions for months, or even indefinitely, after the initial insertion. By comparison, podcasts from major media companies face bureaucracy that can slow down creative decision-making and lead to safer, less innovative content. They also operate under brand safety mandates and scale requirements that can restrict experimentation. Infrastructural and perception barriers limit the agility and authenticity that independent podcasters exercise freely, rapidly adapting content, collaborating personally with advertisers, and taking creative risks that resonate deeply with engaged niche audiences. The right balance Yes, independent podcasters may have smaller, niche audiences, limiting the broad reach needed for large-scale awareness campaigns. And they may lack business infrastructure and legal expertise, complicating outreach, contracts, media and analytics operations, or compliance. Thats why its important for podcasting media plans to include a mix of major and independent titles in order to earn the benefits (and offset the weaknesses) of both. Instead, many advertisers are forfeiting potential earnings by allowing indies to get left behind; podcast advertising revenue continues to concentrate among top-ranked shows, with the top 500 receiving nearly half of all ad spend. And as podcasting shifts to video, that imbalance may get worse. Brands know that major podcast networks bring scale, consistency, and reach. Its often an easily executed media buy. But a good media plan requires balance, especially if the goal is to preserve the independent spirit that has made podcasting such a powerful medium. Both in ROI and cultural impact, indie podcasts are worth protecting, and brands must invest accordingly.
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E-Commerce
Fuma Terai is not a Lego designer. Based in Japan, he is far away from Billund, the small Danish town where all the companys official design work happens. And yet, Terai is responsible for one of Lego’s best sets of the year: Gizmo, the iconic creature from Joe Dante’s 1984 classic Gremlins. In 2024, Terai submitted an adorable Mogwai as part of 80s design challenge from Lego Ideas, the companys crowdsourcing community platform that turns fan ideas into real sets. More than a year later, his idea is now selling for $110 on Legos website. Building a Lego set is an exhaustive process that marries creativity and technical precision. Before fans ever see a finished Lego product on shelves, its creation demanded a special negotiation between structural strength and playability, realism and abstraction. Lego designers have always needed to resolve impossible-seeming tensions to bring a set to life, and the creation of Gizmo, with his expressive features and fur, forced this process to its limits. Chris McVeigh, Lego senior model designer, says creating Gizmolike many other Lego setsrequires playing geometric tricks on the builders mind. There’s a lot of nuance to the shaping, McVeigh says. How can I round this corner in just the right way? How can I fill it in? How can I fill this in and make it look organic? Where is the abstraction? 10,000 votes and counting Gizmo, codenamed Project Midnight internally, was born from Legos Ideas platform, which crowdsources ideas for new sets from Legos biggest fans, as part of its 80s challenge. After Terai uploaded his design, it quickly garnered more than 10,000 votesa number that automatically triggers Legos internal review process. [Screenshot: Lego Ideas] Monica Pedersen, Lego Ideas’ marketing director, says the first step is for Legos team to check for feasibility: can this physically be built? Are there intellectual property conflicts? Then there is a review of the submitting designeris the fan a good person who can represent the Lego brand? After those questions are answered regional sales teams and retail experts evaluate commercial viability across different markets. Fuma Terai [Photo: Lego] We basically screen for design feasibility. Can it be built in real life? Are there restrictions that we cannot adhere to? Pedersen says. Out of 177 product ideas that hit 10,000 votes last year, only five survived this winnowing process. The redesign challenge Most of the time, Lego designers take a fans creation and rework it from scratch. One of the things that we decided on fairly early was that we wanted a little bit more nuance to the shaping than what we could see in the fan model, McVeigh says. McVeigh’s process began with what he calls reference image workmeasuring proportions carefully against the original Gizmo puppet, determining scale through draw-overs, and identifying the key element that would define everything else. To do that, he needs to draw it. Chris McVeigh [Photo: Lego] Part of my process is to do drawing. This is something that goes back to my art teacher in high school, who always said that you don’t really understand something until you have drawn it, he tells me. With Gizmo, he only did a couple of sketches, to make sure that he got the scale right. The eyes became the project’s North Star for the project design for two reasons. First, he needed to get them right to match the characters warmth and personality; Gizmos eyes are what defines him as a charming living creature. This included getting the eyeballs size and look right but also his eyelids. It was very important to the aesthetic of this model to have these eyelids positioned in a way that they were over the eye, McVeigh says. They could have painted the eyelids on a semi-spheric Lego piece that would act as his entire eye but they wanted to add a bit more dimension. The eye design set a blueprint for everything else: The key element was really the eye size and the size of the model and everything else just was tied to that, he explains. How the eyes would work was determined very early on with some brick-built mock-ups. The completed Gizmo uses 1,125 bricks and measures over 8 inches high, 10.5 inches wide, and 3.5 inches deep in standing posesignificantly larger than Terai’s original concept. The size of the build has increased since I submitted my design on Lego Ideas, Terai tells me with satisfaction. [Photo: Lego] The art of organic abstraction For McVeigh, the relative similarity between his first physical prototype and the final product reflects successful upfront digital work. The first built prototype I made doesn’t look that different from the final model, he says. But beneath that surface consistency lay months of refinementstructural improvements, articulation engineering, and the careful balance between organic suggestion and geometric reality. McVeigh had to find ways to suggest flowing hair and conjure the little Mogwai’s button nose. His job was to solve the three-dimensional problem of organic shapes with bricks. He knows that the magic happens the moment a persons brain translates a cluster of simple plastic forms into the illusion of fur, flesh, or fabric. [Image: Lego] Working digitally in Lego’s internal design tool, McVeigh started with a wireframeshoulder points, pelvic points, basic proportionsbefore tackling the model’s greatest challenge: making plastic bricks that suggest organic fur and flesh. One of the interesting challenges when you’re doing creatures is to give a sense of volume of hair when you are using Lego bricks, McVeigh says. His solution relied on a specific element: a small 2×2 plate with an upturned corner that he had originally developed for Himeji Castle‘s roof edges, a Lego Architecture set released in 2023. I decided to use that to give the effect of wispy hair flowing off the model, he recalls. I wanted to make sure that I use that in several places in the model so that the aesthetic was felt throughout. [Images: Lego] This approach exemplifies what McVeigh calls abstractionthe crucial decision of where the model is going to be abstracted, where I know I can’t match something perfectly. And honestly, I think that’s part of what makes the product Lego-like, just that abstraction. The most challenging abstraction proved to be Gizmo’s nose. McVeigh started with large, flat designs, but they werent feeling quite right. McVeigh made the final change after a colleague’s gentle push: Is there something you could do about the nose? The original Lego Ideas submission (left) and the final nose design (right) [Photo: Lego] He started experimenting with half-circle and full-circle plates, the flat rounded plates with 1 x 2 or 2 x 2 Lego studs, the little round protuberances sporting the Lego logo that make pieces stick together. They were hard to put in the model and required a significant redesign, but he really wanted to use them because of how they could capture the impression of nostrils, he tells me. The final nose solution demonstrates the psychological cleverness underlying Lego design. The 2×2 round plate, with its subtle cutouts on its edge, really sells the idea that it’s a nose by fooling the brain into seeing nostrils where none exist. It’s one of the exciting things about Lego, McVeigh says. The brain fills the blanks. The final model has two poses: standing and sitting. Players will have to choose which pose in advance, however, as Gizmo wont move on its own. This is sometimes implemented in Lego builds with what McVeigh calls a branch build in the instructions: At some point during the building instructions you will be asked to choose between OK, do you want to build Gizmo standing up or would you like to build him sitting down? The model is not static, however. It features a rotating head, posable ears, articulated hands and arms, and leg rotation. [Photo: Lego] From a fans mind to store shelves Throughot the design process, Terai remained involved as what Pedersen calls an honorary Lego Ideas design member. McVeigh says that every time they showed Terai the progress that they had made, he would just light uphe was just grinning ear to ear. For McVeigh, capturing Gizmos soul in brick form is a perfect example of the prototypical Lego abstraction process. For Terai, it was a lesson in bringing an idea to life. Through working with the design team, I was able to see and understand how a product is created from start to finish, Terai says. I saw how they create a product. I have dreamed of designing Lego since I was a child, so it was a wonderful experience to be a part of.
Category:
E-Commerce
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