Do you teach checkers or chess?
Most content published to teach someone how to be better addresses the work like it’s checkers. The content is written to the audience as if to tell them, don’t worry, there are only a few moves for you to make, and a simple way to win, so “just” follow my/our tactics, and you’ll succeed.
The problem is, there are near-infinite moves to make, and just as many ways to win (it all depends on how you define winning — or whether you believe there is even such a thing when it comes to business and career).
But that sounds hard. And it doesn’t sell as well, or rank for xyz keyword, or appeal to enough people. Those people are playing chess, but they really want someone to tell them its checkers. This is a form of hiding.
Because some marketers know about this desire, they pander to it. They start by wondering what will sell, or rank, or appeal broadly — rather than what the audience most needs to hear, the value they require to actually change for the better. As a result, the average content published by the average marketer will never acknowledge that the game is in fact chess, not checkers. It refuses to acknowledge that, yes, it IS hard, because nothing meaningful is ever easy, so maybe we should focus less on telling others it won’t be hard, and more on equipping them to look a hard task and say, This is worth doing anyway.
But marketers who pander don’t want to burden their audience with a complex thought, or a moment of silence. The moment complexity creeps in, they lace it with specific tactics to follow. “Don’t worry, we have a prescription for that.” The moment things grow quiet, they rush to fill it in with a call-to-action or the Key Takeaways section.
Anything that requires the audience to chew on it and let it simmer (which is every foundational, transformative thing they might need to hear), the average marketer won’t publish.
And that’s precisely why we should.
Sure, there are times when even we want someone to tell us the answer so we don’t need to think about it. We don’t need to spend hours upon hours learning about the technical wizardry inside a microphone. We just want to someone who’s done that work to tell us the best option within our budget so we can get back to podcasting. That’s because we’re not in the business of microphone technology. We’re in the business of having an impact on others.
To have an impact — a real, lasting, memorable type of impact — we can’t lie to others and tell them they’re playing checkers. We can’t give them an exact prescription, because there are so many more rules in chess, and so many more ways to succeed, and so many variables unique to someone else’s context that we can’t access.
So what can we do? We can help them see better, think better, and approach the work better, regardless of the specific move they make or tactics they use. That’s what great teachers do. That’s what we should do too.
Ask yourself: Do you teach checkers or chess?
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