Blah Blah Blah Read online

  Hersey became even more focused on the pictures: “Little boys trying to learn to read in Fairfield witness a lone boy named Tom condestued Tom mned to play endlessly, and with unnatural control of his manners, with two syrupy girls, Betty and Susan. This frightful life that Tom leads is bound up inextricably with the first crucial stages of reading. It is not entirely surprising that some boys draw back from the experience.”

  What reading looked like in 1954.

  In summarizing their findings, the council concluded that the kids weren’t learning to read because they didn’t want to read the books they were given—and they didn’t want to read those books because they hated the pictures.

  Hersey ended his article with a plea to the textbook publishers. “In primary grade readers, pictures on each page give clues to virtually everything in the text. The child is helped to visualize the words, but he is helped by pictures that are uniform, bland, idealized and terribly literal. Why should they not have pictures that widen rather than narrow the associative richness the children give to the words they illustrate—drawings like those of the wonderfully imaginative geniuses among children’s illustrators, Tenniel, Howard Pyle, Dr. Seuss, Walt Disney?”

  Lucky for me many years later, one courageous textbook editor read the article.

  The Lists

  William Ellsworth Spaulding was an editor at Houghton Mifflin’s textbook division in New York. He read Hersey’s article and was inspired: Why not get one of those children’s authors to write a school textbook? But of the illustrators Hersey mentioned, the options were limited. Sir John Tenniel, the original illustrator of Alice in Wonderland, had died forty years earlier, back in 1914. Howard Pyle, author and illustrator of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, had passed away even earlier, in 1911. And Walt Disney, while very much alive and kicking, was busy putting the finishing touches on a theme park in Los Angeles.

  This left Ted Geisel, a moderately successful children’s author who wrote and drew under his mother’s maiden name, Seuss. Spaulding was familiar with Dr. Seuss and contacted his publisher, Bennett Cerf at Random House, to see if Cerf might be willing to loan the author out to try his hand at a textbook. Cerf agreed, as long as Random House could sell the bookstore version of anything Dr. Seuss wrote.

  Agreement made, Spaulding approached Dr. Seuss. To ensure that whatever Dr. Seuss might write could serve as a textbook that teachers and school districts would buy, Spaulding gave Dr. Seuss three lists of words that experts had agreed were important for first-graders to read. Altogether, the lists contained 348 words.

  Looking at the lists, Dr. Seuss thought the whole exercise ridiculous. But then he picked the first two words that rhymed: “cat” and “hat.”

  The Bet

  It took Dr. Seuss nine months to write and illustrate The Cat in the Hat. (He used only 236 of the words.) The book changed the way teachers taught, how schools bought texts, how publishers thought about education, and—most important to this book—how people connected words and pictures.

  The Cat in the Hat was so successful for Random House that Bennett Cerf decided to raise the stakes. He bet Dr. Seuss fifty dollars that Seuss couldn’t pull off the feat again using only fifty words. This time the list contained “ham,” “am,” and “Sam.” And this time it took Dr. Seuss just five months to write Green Eggs and Ham.

  Pictures Make the Words Matter—and Vice Versa

  And that’s how I—and very likely you, and just about anyone we know who was born in America in the past fifty years—learned to read: by sounding out simple words that were interwoven with compelling pictures. The magic sauce that Dr. Seuss added to his books not only changed how America learned to read but changed how we think about books: The books that teach us stuff best are those that reach out to both our verbal and visual minds.

  In the end, the magic sauce wasn’t all that magic; it just made sense. One of the great insights of Hersey and the council’s report was that experts and teachers agreed: A child who really wants to learn something usually learns it. “Some educators now believe beginners could absorb as many as 200 words in the first six months provided words are used that the children want to learn.” And what’s the best way to get a child to want to learn? Make it enjoyable to the whole mind.

  What Happened to the Pictures?

  From a combat correspondent’s words to an inspired pair of publishers to an author who liked to draw to millions of children who decided reading wasn’t so bad after all, it’s a great story. Among many other things, it tells us that in learning to read, pictures matter as much as the words they accompany.

  So here’s the big question: If pictures make such a difference in attracting a young kid to an idea, why stop with kids? If pictures played such an important role in motivating us to want to undertake something as challenging as reading, why don’t we use pictures today to motivate us to want to understand the problems we face as adults? If pictures gave us a good way to jump into the ideas then, why have we given up on the pictures now?

  In business, as in politics, education, and life, we’ve left the picture path behind precisely at the time we need it most. Why?

  Isn’t “Thinking Different” Exactly What We’re Looking For?

  The biggest buzzword in business these days is innovation. The business press, business leaders, and business schools can’t say it enough: “Innovation is the key to success.” “We need to innovate our way out of this recession.” “If we could emulate their ability to innovate, we could become the Apple of (insert industry here).”

  66ct="0">When we’re searching for innovation, aren’t we simply seeking a different way of looking at the world? Let’s ask the question of a moment ago again, but now from a different perspective. Why is it that at the moment in history when we most need to see the world differently, we don’t force our mind to look at problems differently? If our goal is to look differently, where have all our pictures gone?

  Why Johnny and Janey Can’t Draw (the Real Reason We Can’t Solve Problems to Save Our Butts)

  The reason we think we’re not visual . . .

  . . . is because just when we were starting to understand things . . .

  . . . they took the pictures away.

  Pictures Aren’t Training Wheels

  We all know the power of pictures as a learning tool. Before we learned to read, we were asked to draw. But then the pictures stopped. Our entire education system evolved to believe that pictures are like training wheels: They’re useful only to get us started reading—and drawing should be discarded the moment we’re able to write.

  That is just so wrong. Pictures are the part of thinking that provides us with guidance and direction. It’s the “big picture” that lets us see where we’re going. Pictures aren’t training wheels; pictures are the front wheel.

  When it comes to thinking, talking, and solving problems, it’s as if we’re all riding around on mental unicycles. Sure, with enough training anyone can learn to ride one, but why bother: We’ll always be faster and more stable with two wheels than one.

  Blah-blah-blah. No wonder no one can explain the world. The rest of this book is going to get us back on both wheels.

  PART 1

  The Blah-Blahmeter

  CHAPTER 1

  Exploring the Land of Blah-Blah-Blah

  ords can be used to describe anything.

  But that does not mean words are the best way to describe everything.

  What Is Blah-Blah-Blah?

  Not all words are blah-blah-blah.

  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.2

  Words are magnificent. When used well, words help us think, make us feel, let us remember, tell us the truth, show us the way, help us understand, unravel the complex, gather us together, and give our lives meaning.

  Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds
of Earth . . .

  Put out my hand and touched the Face of God.3

  When words work, they not only change how we feel about the world; words change the world.

  Yes we can.4

  These are not the words we’re talking about.

  When Words Work

  Words can do all these wonderful things because language is the single most sophisticated, finely developed, and important technology humanity has ever created. Using words is what makes us human.

  But using words and using words well are not the same thing. That’s because, wonderful as the technology of language is, it is also our easiest technology to mess up.

  When Words Don’t Work

  When it comes to words, there are many ways we can break things. When we do, the result is blah-blah-blah: the overuse, misuse, or abuse of the technology of lan Cnollah-blah:guage.

  Sometimes our blah-blah-blah comes from an honest mistake—we have a good idea to share, but we use the wrong words to describe it. Sometimes blah-blah-blah comes from not being clear in our own minds—because we’re not certain that our idea is any good, we use words to dazzle up a lame idea or fog up a mediocre one. And sometimes blah-blah-blah is just plain evil—because we know our own idea is rotten, we use words to distract listeners from what we’re really thinking.

  Not all words are the same; not all blah-blah-blah is the same, either.

  Although the noise makes it difficult to tell, not all blah-

  blah-blah is the same.

  Introducing the Blah-Blahmeter

  Ernest Hemingway, the author most famously associated with keeping language as word-free as possible, once said the best thing an aspiring writer could do was to “develop a built-in bulls**t detector.” What was true then is truer now: We need to pick up on when the bulls**t is heading toward us just as much as we need to be aware when we’re the ones dishing it out.

  One thing we know for sure about the world of blah-blah-blah is that it isn’t uniform. There are all kinds of blah out there: too many words, the wrong words, unintelligible words, misleading words. We’re going to need a lot more than a shovel to sift through it all.

  How About a Built-in Blah-Blah-Blah Detector?

  In a meeting, at a conference, in class, watching the news, tweeting—wouldn’t it be great if we had a device to filter all the incoming words and quickly separate the signal from the noise? What we need is some kind of a blah-blah-blah detector, a quick way to identify what’s worth listening to and what is not. Let’s build one. Let’s build a Blah-Blahmeter.

  The Blah-Blahmeter is going to help us filter the incoming signal and noise into distinct levels.

  What the Blah-Blahmeter Does

  Our Blah-Blahmeter is a device that we’ll use to detect which words are being used effectively and which are not.

  When we point the Blah-Blahmeter at a verbal source, it will pick up the words and process them according to four distinct filters, then present the blah-blah-blah reading on a marked scale. Words that are used well—words that have a clear message describing a sound idea delivered with good intent—will register on the zero (or “no blah-blah”) side of the scale. Words that represent the worst abuse of language—words de Bhe d ilivering a misleading message intended to keep us from noticing a rotten idea—will register on the maximum blah-blah-blah level. In between these two extremes we’ll find words that are simply boring or unintentionally confusing.

  The Blah-Blahmeter scale: Zero blah on one extreme, blah cubed on the other.

  Depending on the measured result, we’ll know whether or not we need to use the tools in this book to improve a particular set of words—and if so, which tools to apply to make sure the real message gets through and gets heard.

  By the time we’re done, we’ll have the complete Blah-Blahmeter available to us and know how to use it. In full form, the Blah-Blahmeter looks like this:

  The complete Blah-Blahmeter. In this and the next chapter, we’ll learn how to use all its features.

  We’ll build and test the full Blah-Blahmeter throughout this chapter and the next, but for now let’s warm up our internal bulls**t detectors with a few sample quotes.

  The “I Get It” Test

  Below are five quotations taken from prominent newsmakers of the past few years. All five were originally stated in public forums where the speaker (or source) knew he would be listened to intently. All five describe important aspects of our lives and cover topics that we all agree are of consequence to us, our families, and our businesses.

  These five quotations will serve as our first test of blah-blah-blah detection. Read through them, noting how each speaker uses words to convey an idea. To help you keep track of how well the speaker is doing, each quote is followed by an “understanding scale.” Read each quote only once (we’ll come back to them later), fill out the scale below it, then move on to the next.

  One more thing you’ll notice: I haven’t named the speakers yet. We’ll save that for the end.

  Blah-Blah-Blah Test: Five Prominent Quotes from Recent Years

  A “Specially formulated with nutrients that enable the body to exert physical power by contributing to structural integrity of the musculoskeletal system, and by supporting optimal generation and utilization from food.”

  I fully understand this

  I sort of understand this

  I don’t understand this

  B “I would say, actually, we defined it [the health insurance ‘public option’] fairly clearly in terms of what we thought would work best. What I said was, is that it shouldn’t be something that’s simply a taxpayer-subsidized system that wasn’t accountable but rather had to be self-sustaining through premiums and that had to compete with private insurers. . . . Now, if you look at the results, the 80 percent of all the various bills that are out there that people have agreed to reflect our—most of the ideas from the start of this process. . . . But the 20 percent that right now is still the holdup would have been a holdup if we had put forward a plan, hadn’t put forward a plan, had left it to Congress, had written it ourselves—because it represents some long-standing ideological divisions in our Congress and, frankly, in our society.”

  I fully understand this

  I sort of understand this

  I don’t understand this

  C “Typically, a position will consist of the ownership of 30–35 S&P 100 stocks, most correlated to that index, the sale of out-of-the-money calls on the index and the purchase of out-of-the-money puts on the index. The sale of the calls is designed to increase the rate of return, while allowing upward movement of the stock portfolio to the strike price of the calls. The puts, funded in large part by the sale of the calls, limit the portfolio’s downside.”

  I fully understand this

  I sort of understand this

  I don’t understand this

  D “‘T Berve="#_Blahe oil spot,’ if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you’re trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out. Of course, down in Helmand Province [Afghanistan] what we sought to do was to build an oil spot that would encompass the six central districts of Helmand Province, including Marjah and then others, and then to just keep pushing that out, ultimately to connect it over with the oil spot that is being developed around Kandahar City.”

  I fully understand this

  I sort of understand this

  I don’t understand this

  E “This is the captain. Brace for impact.”

  I fully understand this

  I sort of understand this

  I don’t understand this

  Connect the Dots

  Here are the five sources for the five quotes above. Write in the letter of each quote above with the appropriate source below:

  General David Petraeus, describing Afghan war strategy on Meet the Press, August 10, 2010.

  President Obama, discussing health care reform with Time magazine, Au
gust 10, 2009.

  Text from the label on the Coca-Cola Company’s Power-C VitaminWater product.

  Madoff Securities Hedge-Fund Prospectus, Barron’s, May 7, 2001.

  Captain Chesley Sullenberger, to passengers aboard US Airways Flight 1549, January 15, 2009.