Detail and specificity add credibility, they add colour and they teach us about situation, context, perception, views, behaviours, capabilities, and much more.
This seemingly obvious question stared me in the face a few years back. A close, very dear friend of mine handed me a very nice leather-bound version of the Bible. He is a practising Christian and I guess he wanted to awaken the Scandi Lutheran in me. I was touched by his gift, but must admit that I have not yet finished reading the Bible; the first books are rather gory and violent, so I got fatigued after a while. What I did learn, however, is that contrary to widespread belief, my own included, Jesus was actually born somewhere around 6–4 B.C. NOT 2019 years ago.
This bring me to the topic of today — DETAILS and SPECIFICITY. If I were a Biblical scholar, the fact that we do not know exactly when Jesus was born could take up my entire career. This not being the case, I was still very surprised to find out that he was, in fact, not born in year 0. How could I not know this fact? It seems quite important, even for a non-scholar.
Detail and specificity add credibility, they add colour and they teach us about situation, context, perception, views, behaviours, capabilities, and much more. That is, WHEN we pay attention to the details. As Malcolm Gladwell has put it, “Interesting things often include brilliant levels of specificity.” He speaks more from the point of view of the narrator or the writer; I picked up his concept thinking more about interpersonal relations.
Artists pay great attention to details. They may have what looks like a messy process that is unintelligible to the outsider. But if you watch artists work, you will see an obsession with details. Lucian Freud, the famous British portrait painter, was known for extended, long, painful sittings where the subject felt that Lucian ended up staring right into their soul. Which maybe he did. He then proceeded to reflect his findings with his brushes and paints, using his particular technique and style, and it could take him months to finalise a painting.
I happen to have two teenage sons. They are 15 and 18, so they spend a considerable amount of time out of the house. One Sunday morning, the older one rolled up to the breakfast table, sorry, the lunch table, which is when he usually makes an appearance on week-ends. As a curious parent I asked him, “So, where were you last night? “Oh,” he answered, “I was out with Pierre and Tanmay.” Two things: 1) Not a lot of detail there, and 2) he did not answer the question “Where?” Hmm, this immediately increased my curiosity. “What had they been up to?” I asked. “We went to catch a movie.” And so it meandered on, as those of you with teenage kids know how that line of questioning can continue. If my son had wanted to spare himself from the misery of being interrogated by a worried parent, he could have said, “Pierre, Tanmay and I went to catch Interstellar at the Pathe cinema next to the station. I loved that movie, especially the part when he comes back to earth and finds himself older than his mother. Wow. That was really weird. Afterwards, we went to the bistro “Bardot” next door, I had a couple of their homebrewed beers, which are awesome, and Pierre and Tanmay had some red wine. I came home in an Uber at 1:30 am.” This is a totally unrealistic way for most teenage boys to answer their parents, and, for sure, unrealistic for my teenage son, but you see what a difference specificity, detail, and context matter to the credibility of and insights into the prior evening’s events.
“I happen to have two teenage sons. They are 15 and 18, so they spend a considerable amount of time out of the house. As a curious parent I asked him, ‘So, where were you last night?’”
People divulge information on purpose, by accident, or unknowingly.
Once, we interviewed a consumer services company that was growing really fast in an organic way. We requested the latest growth data from the CEO. After a brief pause, he hesitantly said, “I can give it to you, but it is from Thursday of last week.” We were discussing this with him the following Tuesday. Now, whatever was in the data, we knew that likely, based on his answer, we were dealing with a founder obsessed with metrics and consumer engagement. We felt that we needn’t worry so much about whether the Founder took his data seriously in our diligence work.
“Now, whatever was in the data, we knew that likely, based on his answer, we were dealing with a founder obsessed with metrics and consumer engagement.”
Another time, we interviewed a marketplace company in another segment. The founder, when asked the same question, went into a 15-minute monologue about the principles and concepts of consumer metrics and data, and ended up not providing a specific answer to a simple question. We had our answer right there and then, but to a different question than the one we had asked.
When you pay attention to the way people answer your questions, you get a surprising amount of information to digest. Often, people will veer off topic and end up not really answering your question. This either can be due to their nature or by accident, or it can be a deliberate way of avoiding answering. I mostly try to bring people back on topic when it is important. Your questions can be open, but remember also to add specificity to the questions. The How, What, Who, When, Where, and Why questions are always a good way to add detail and specificity. Or ask questions in a chronological sequence, which can help bring structure to the discussion in a different way.
“Often, people will veer off topic and end up not really answering your question. This either can be due to their nature or by accident, or it can be a deliberate way of avoiding answering.”
Back to the artists. When drawing, they sometimes start by drawing empty space. What does that mean? For example, if you want to draw a table or a chair, you may start by drawing a box that frames the space between the legs, literally framing the empty space. Salespeople or founders that are great at promoting their business have an uncanny ability to focus your attention on all the great things they are doing. It is our duty as the recipients to think about what is NOT being shared or NOT being presented. What is the “empty space?” Or, to use a Swiss metaphor, what are the holes in the cheese?
You all have different methods of constructing your perception of a situation, company, or individual. Said in a simple way, the assembly or the collection of all the specificity and details ends up creating the total impression that will lead you to your conclusion or decision. That, of course, still excludes your potential biases or anchoring. So, when a consumer services founder tells us we can have the data, but it is 5 days old, we can infer that he is obsessed with metrics. However, we had better still triangulate in other ways to determine whether or not our perception is correct.
Remember Jesus was NOT born year 0 — or so we think.
