18 I’ve Got Some Good News
First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me. —Steve Martin

Long story, short. Sharing good news briefly highlights the success and leaves people wanting to hear more.

Pay the Favor of Brevity Forward
It may seem surprising that there is a chapter in BRIEF about sharing good news. Certainly brevity applies to bad news. But why do we have exercise brevity when sharing good news?
Everybody loves to hear something positive. But consider that your role is to deliver the headline and let it sink in, not pile it on.
Those moments when you share a success story or an accomplishment need to put you and your company in a positive light. Especially in these instances, discipline and choice details give people a good impression without making them feel as though you’re bragging or overconfident.
It’s a time for clarity and humility.

Let the Brilliance Shine Through
Coming up with a new product idea is a great moment to spread some good news. Just be careful to be clear.
Bruce Smith is a top designer for global office furniture company Steelcase. After 27 years at the company, Smith knows that having a good design idea doesn’t always mean that others will get it. And when the design team sought to create something top of the line and tech savvy, like their new chair, Gesture, they need to communicate the big ideas behind the design direction clearly and quickly.
But with all of the research and testing that goes into making some of the most elegant and efficient chairs on the market, Smith and team encountered challenges in narrowing down the team’s message. The sheer amount of research available to the team was daunting. And with all these data points and reports, it was critical to express a resulting singular concept.
“We would ultimately focus on some pretty simple ideas as key to the design problem,” Smith said. “But the process of refining our thinking, to grasp what we were trying to accomplish was messy, and until complete, difficult for others to rally around.”
The team determined that the physical postures adopted by people at work were the most concise expression of new behaviors. So they began to sort and categorize thousands images of people at work interacting with new technology.
The result of this work was a ‘taxonomy’ of posture–30 simple images of people at work, 30 postures–that “sum-totaled itself in one simple page,” Smith said. “We could have told a lengthy story about all kinds of significant changes.”

So they packaged their findings in a clean chart: a simple, abstract diagram, a cartoon of sorts that showed 30 different postures. They turned good ideas into a clear picture.
“All we had to say was this: ‘Technology, along with a new demographic in the workplace, is changing our behaviors, and here’s the output: this little chart of 30 postures.’ And boom. People just got it,”
Smith said. “It was beautiful.” Smith said Steelcase’s design briefs have shifted away from a dissertation format to a cartoon-book style: “We’re using words, stories, and cartoons to make what might be complex, simple, and tangible.”
Briefly telling Gesture’s story means Steelcase did all the work to make its new product great news—and make sure the key audiences readily understood it. Steelcase’s ideas have always been well researched and well documented; now, the company is just more discerning about how simply it is explained.
What’s more, making ideas tangible is crucial especially if they are complex. Smith said getting the message into others’ hands is often problematic; it can be like the “telephone game,” in which a line of people whisper a phrase in each other’s ears and end up with a radically and hilariously different message at the other end.
“Regardless of how simple and how clear you make the message, there’s always the opportunity for it to be distorted,” Smith says. “The chances of that happening go up dramatically when your message isn’t brief, simple, and understandable.”
Ensure that your ideas are clear enough that they don’t get lost in translation when it’s time to pass them along.
If you fail to do this, says Smith, “It’s likely that you yourself don’t have a clear understanding of your idea of goal–and that the idea will not communicate well and may fall apart out of your control. But if you’re diligent and disciplined, you have an opportunity to clarify a message.”

Speak the Language of Success
David Meerman Scott is an international marketing strategist for technology companies like HubSpot and GrabCAD. Author of the revolutionary best seller The New Rules of Marketing & PR, Scott redefined how businesses share their success stories.
“The new rules of marketing and PR are to create great content on the Web and that serves to generate attention,” Scott said. “You’ve got to pick and choose the best way to deliver content, whether it’s a very brief version or whether [someone wants] to go with long-form content.”
Unfortunately for most businesses, telling the stories of their success gets lost in translation. They choose to speak an unintelligible language that is more confusing than compelling.
“It tends to be just the same words that everybody else uses, to the point where that those words like ‘innovative’ or ‘cutting-edge’ are just completely meaningless,” Scott said.
Being creative with your content is vital, yet Scott aptly warns against letting your ideas wander too far from the main point. Analogies can help simplify your idea—if they accurately reflect your core message. Otherwise, “all these metaphors do nothing but confuse people so that the message doesn’t get across,” Scott says.
The PR and marketing material that clogs up the airwaves today is largely ineffective, because companies aren’t doing their research. Failing to study your customers is like shooting arrows without a target.

“They don’t understand their marketplace [or] their potential customers. [So] they end up taking product-based information and making it sound important with this gobbledy-gook language,” Scott says.
Scott has angled the language at HubSpot to talk directly to the company’s target audience. This keeps their brief message from getting lost in unfamiliar terms or turns of phrase.
“They’re communicating in the language of the people they are trying to reach,” Scott explains. “They’re using the journalistic technique of understanding their audience. Some organizations muck up their communications with words that vaguely sound impressive and important. But at a company like HubSpot, all of the marketing people are required to constantly be in the marketplace, talking to people, whether it’s on the phone or electronically and through social networks. So they’re not guessing the language that the market uses,” Scott said. “They’re communicating like human beings—because when human beings have a conversation, they don’t use that impressive, overused language.”
Get into the Habit of Saying, “Thank You”
Brevity plays an important role when expressing gratitude. When you’re thanking people for what they’ve done and highlighting their successes and accomplishments, give them the chance to enjoy the spotlight. Let them enjoy the moment of a short and sweet thank you.
It’s about them, not about you. Say it and let them enjoy it

End your speech early and leave them wanting more
P. T. Barnum and Walt Disney are often attributed to the famous saying “Always leave them wanting more.” The wisdom is clear from an entertainment perspective, but the lesson also carries over to business: see your communication as a performance. Executive communications coach Jeff Berkson says, “All business is a form of acting. Don’t overdo it.”

Taking out a pen and a card to send a person a thank-you note, for instance, is an age-old practice that many people have abandoned. But it’s a great opportunity to be authentic. You can say things from the heart by just jotting a few poignant lines of gratitude. People love getting a short note that’s personal and real.
Look for moments to share good news and thank others for the good work that they do. It’s the hallmark of any successful executive; after all, no one succeeds by themselves.
An executive told me that the best people he’s ever met in his career—the highly successful people—always take time to praise others thoughtfully.
Long story, short. Sharing good news briefly highlights the success and leaves people wanting to hear more.