TheMommyBlog

Tuesday, February 08, 2005 Me, Me, Me

Had the most fascinating afternoon at work… we had a speaker for our Senior Staff meeting, and I was just blown away. Who was this charismatic man, you ask? A majorly huge, famous, connected, brilliant Republican. And he came to talk to a room full of Liberals. Balls? Yessir. But I’m sure he’s faced far scarier crowds then us.

Frank Luntz is a leading Republican strategist and pollster. He was the architect of Newt Gingrich’s “Contract With America” in 1994 and influential in framing many national policy debates for Republicans over the past four years. [He came to speak] about what is happening with the American political landscape from his perspective and what he considers crucial to controlling and winning policy debates.

Frank was a regular guy, quite unassuming, and I had no idea he was the speaker until he started talking. He looks just like my ex’s new roommate. I kept wanting to call him Chip.

I have to hand it to him. Although he clearly does his life’s work for the right side of the spectrum, he spends twice the time studying the left than he does the right. He has a unique understanding of the ways in which we’ve gone wrong, and misused our voice, and, not surprising, it sort of came down to lexicon and delivery.

Anyway, I won’t go into it all here. I just wanted to jot down for myself and share with you the one striking concept I came away with.

He was saying that if you want to explain a plan, a concept, or a change to an audience, you have to use the 50/20/30 rule. You spend 50% of your time explaining the Why, 20% on the Therefore, and 30% on the How. It is a fascinating concept.

I liked that fully half of it is the setup. Too often, we dive in with the headline, the change, and people are too busy chewing on that to hear the Why. And I like that the Therefore is brief in comparison. No sense getting stuck there, move along and get to the How so we can all relax. I really liked this guy.

Which is why I felt bad about approaching him afterward, because I think he felt worse for having spoken with me. You see, I told him about my Wow moment, and said that I was going to use that rule in an important communication, and soon. He perked up. “We are going to have to tell our children next week that we are divorcing, and I think that this kind of structure will really help us with the message.” His shoulders sagged. “Oh, don’t tell me that.” He paused. “How old are they?” “Six, four and three.” He winced. He waited a bit and said, “OK. After you tell them, stop. Stop talking. Let them ask questions.” I nodded. “Exactly. As much as we need help with the message, we need help with the boundaries. Thank you very much. I know this isn’t the usual application, but I wanted to tell you that I think it’s brilliant.”

As I walked back to my office, I heard another colleague approach him. “Mr. Luntz?” He let out a sigh. “Don’t tell me you’re getting divorced…”