At the beginning of the pandemic, our dishwasher stopped draining. Around the same time, our boy had started walking and also putting random objects in random places that they didn't belong.
A missing video monitor had been found in the washing machine — after we had run it. So we assumed that the two events were probably related. He certainly looked guilty.
With appliance shops and repairers shut down, there was no choice: It was time for me to learn how to fix a dishwasher, starting from zero. The experience crystallized a few principles about learning and teaching that had application to my professional life.
The challenge today isn't finding sources of information. It's finding a source of good information.
With my dishwasher, the manufacturer's FAQs were no help. TikTok, subreddits and other social media were the same — thousands of results and no solution. Then to YouTube. So. Many. Bad. Videos. That is until I found “Lurgs’ How To Guides.”
A researcher once said that institutional investors have, on average, 17 investment providers. That sounds about right. Factor in the additional investors who want to be providers, and there might be 50 firms sending your contacts their insights — and many more a search and a click away.
How then to separate the wheat of your insight from the industry chaff and create loyalty? Whether fixing a dishwasher or analyzing the impact of an inverted yield curve on cash segmentation, here are three key tenets to creating engagement with content.
1. Break the content silos.
Just as to a hammer everything's a nail, to a writer everything's prose. Video was the perfect way to teach this novice appliance repairer what to do and how to do it. If I had to use written procedures to fix my dishwasher, I’d still be doing the dishes by hand.
The optimal way to communicate is dependent on what needs to be communicated. Form should indeed follow function.
Someone in the process needs to have the experience to decide whether content should be a video, a paper, an article, an infographic or a social media post. This person needs to have the authority to act on those decisions and the resources to make that decision reality.
Otherwise, such factors as legacy roles, a lack of perspective and politics are informing these decisions. Communication is hindered and an opportunity to engage squandered.
2. Know your audience.
Lurgs knew that his viewers were inexperienced, and, thus, his instructions were straightforward and concise. No unnecessary patter yet no steps missing. He goes from step A to B to C to D and on, to the fix because I wouldn't know what step C was otherwise.
Whether repairs or white papers, complexity is sometimes unavoidable. It’s only problematic when steps are missing or unclear. Holistic editing from a non-expert makes all the difference.
Relying solely on a subject matter expert has it backward: That communicator may know innately what step C is and may not see the gaps.
What we call expert-to-expert communication leaves most of us out.
3. Get there quickly.
The instructions start immediately after the problem is cited. Neither a lengthy preamble on the presenter's bio and hobbies nor an oft-used, never-needed branded intro card are getting my dishes clean or my investment content engaged with. That belongs at the end or in the trash.
Whatever the media, the deadline and the internal machinations, create with a disciplined focus on every audience's most valuable resource — time.
And my dishwasher? With the process demystified and deconstructed, it was fixed in 30 minutes. If we deliver insight in a manner that's appropriate for that insight, created for our audience and done as briefly as possible, then good things happen. Everything else is secondary.
And it turns out that my son didn’t break it. A wine glass had broken in the dishwasher a week earlier — perhaps a stress fracture from overuse. It took a few cycles for a nearly invisible shard to make its way from the pan through the filter to the impeller and jam it.
Taking it apart, wiping it with a damp cloth and vacuuming it solved the problem. And now I know what an impeller is.
I reckon I have about a dozen years before I have to learn how to fix a dent in a car. Lurgs' YouTube channel will be the first place I go. He's earned my loyalty.
John Wilkens is managing director, Strategy and Content, of the Rudin Group, which serves top asset managers, private banks and wealth management firms.
(Credit: DANIELMANUEL/Adobe Stock)
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