Welcome to Friday 411, issue #129. In 4 minutes, with 1 insight and 1 action, you’ll increase clarity by streamlining your message.
1 Insight
Leaders think they need to say more to be effective, but the real power comes from saying less with greater clarity.
When the two of us started dreaming up Unleashed Leadership, we imagined a big book.
We’ve been developing and delivering the Unleashed curriculum for over five years, writing weekly newsletters for three. To support our ideas with practical application, we’ve created tools, frameworks, and stories, accumulating plenty of content. So, the plan was simple: write a normal-sized nonfiction book — about 250-pages.
But then our publisher dropped a surprising truth bomb:
Most people stop reading nonfiction books at page 120.
Think about that. Authors spend months (sometimes years) writing 250+ pages, only for readers to tap out halfway through.
Suddenly, we had a decision to make. Would we stick with our original plan and create a long book that most people wouldn’t finish? Or would we cut, restructure, and refine so leaders could actually get to the end?
We chose 120 pages.
The Pain of Cutting
Let us tell you: writing a shorter book is harder.
Blaise Pascal once wrote, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”
That’s exactly what we discovered.
Prolific author, Stephen King, says editing is about “killing your darlings.” The process of cutting stories and insights you love is painful. You have to kill them—even the good ones— because they distract from the key message.
I (Garland) had a story about our old Chevy Traverse that had broken down. I’ve told this story dozens of times to live audiences. It illustrates the difference between presenting problems and root issues in leadership. I loved telling it. But when we laid out the book, it didn’t fit. If we wanted to keep the book clear and under 120 pages, the Traverse story had to go.
I’ll be honest: it hurt to cut that story and so many others. (Almost as much as it hurt to pay for the Traverse’s breakdown.) But as wrote, we learned an important leadership lesson from killing our darlings.
The Leadership Lesson: Simplicity Multiplies Impact
Leaders often assume that more is better:
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- More words in a speech.
- More slides in a presentation.
- More strategies in a plan.
But more usually means less impact.
Clarity requires focus. Focus requires cutting. And cutting means letting go of good things so you can deliver the right thing.
That’s what we discovered in writing Unleashed Leadership. The same is true for anyone leading a team or company. Your people don’t need more information. They need clear, concise direction.
Only the Beginning
This first book, Unleashed Leadership, introduces the 3-stage process leaders can use to get unleashed from the 7 root issues that create 95%of leadership challenges:
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- Character
- Competence
- Capacity
- Clarity
- Community
- Culture
- Consistency
We couldn’t do justice to all these topics in one book. That’s why Unleashed Leadership is only the beginning. Each of the next seven books will go deeper into one of these traits, giving you practical tools to grow as a leader. Every book will be about 120 pages.
Our Book Launch Needs Your Help
Unleashed Leadership launches on October 24.
We want leaders to walk away from this first book feeling two things:
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- Hopeful — that there is a way to break free from what’s holding them back.
- Capable — that they have the process and tools to do it.
Our Goal is to have 100 reviews on Day 1. Reviews are the lifeblood of a book launch, and we’d love your help.
If you’re willing to review the book on Amazon on October 24th, reply and say: “I want to review the book.”
We’ll send you a free PDF version before it’s released. During launch week, you can grab the Kindle version for just 99 cents.
1 Action
Simplify something today. Cut one story from your next presentation. Edit your next email. Reduce your next meeting agenda. Watch how concise clarity increases your team’s engagement.