The Thumbnail Executive

mlns='> Don’t get caught in its simplicity trap [View Message in Browser]( / [Add Us to Safe Sender List]( Weekly News 9.3.21 Connect With CMI [The 3 Strategic Pillars Behind Every Winning Content Strategy]( Explore the strategic decision-making behind four winning B2B and B2C content marketing initiatives – including the who, how, why, and bottom line for each. [Read more]( By Jodi Harris More of this week's best stuff: - [13 Brainstorming Techniques to Spur Creativity in Content Marketing Teams]( by Darren DeMatas - [How To Get Content Marketing Measurement Wrong: Do It Like a PR Person]( by Ann Gynn - [22 Content Marketers Share Their Take on TikTok, Clubhouse, and Trendy Social Spaces]( by Ann Gynn - [3 Hot Takes: The (Always-On) Show Business of Content]( by Content Marketing Institute Team Want To Be Featured on the CMI Blog? Fill out [this short form]( to share your opinion about any exciting, unique, puzzling, or eyebrow-raising content example, idea, or trend you’ve seen this week (including pieces you’ve created). We’ll credit you as the source (and include your commentary) if we include your submission in an upcoming Friday article.  The Thumbnail Executive Mind if I rant this week? I’m noticing an annoying trend in the world of business communications – I’m calling it the Thumbnail Executive. Here’s the way it works: A company’s executive – let’s say the CMO, CEO, COO, or really any Senior VP of Blah Blah Blah – needs to review a new, innovative plan or weigh in on an important decision affecting a new program or initiative. Their schedule is highly protected, and their time is precious. You dare not waste any of what you’ve been granted. But that’s not the annoying part. To protect the sanctity of the executive’s time, any new plan, proposal, or research presented to this executive must be watered down to the point where it can be delivered “as if you were going to explain it to a five-year-old” (an instruction I received recently). But believe it or not, that’s not the annoying part either. The annoying part is that, increasingly, this need for over-simplification is treated as a kind of heroic virtue. It’s as if today’s executive is an entirely new kind of person – one with such a special gift that they shouldn’t be expected to listen to or handle anything resembling a complex detail. Now, to be clear, this is not a trend born of the need for brevity or efficiency. Jeff Bezos [famously replaced PowerPoint]( presentations with six-page memos that summarize meetings. Amazon also has its [two pizza meeting rule]( meaning that no meetings will take place if two pizzas can’t feed everyone attending. Other companies, like Google, have adopted a “[buck stops here]( approach, where the key decision-maker must attend every meeting in which decisions will be made. For the record, I’m fully on board with all of these. Efficiency and brevity are incredibly important when dealing with executives who have little time for bloated PowerPoint presentations or endlessly circular meeting discussions. My frustration is with the aura of virtue that’s being placed around simplification to the point where it becomes almost impossible to involve executives in presentations or discussions on any kind of complex issue. For example, one marketing director I know can’t put a complex marketing plan in front of their VP of marketing because she’s been told that exec is, “too busy to understand all the ins and outs of marketing planning.” Instead, she’s expected to build out her plan as a series of images, so the executive can approve it in stages. Another content director I know struggled to get CMO approval to move her content strategy forward because each time she got time on his calendar to present it, she was asked to go back and simplify it and then reschedule. This escalated to the highest levels of absurdity, where the content strategy was ultimately whittled down to a single slide with three bullet points: - Content team needs reallocation of resources - Content technology project needs new sponsor - Better measurement is coming The result? The CMO came back to her asking for “more details on the money and resources part.” In my experience, 100% of these overly simplified presentations end up going badly. Why? Either the executive gets annoyed that there are missing details (meaning their supporting team has vastly overestimated their desire for simplification), or it’s because the executive hasn’t taken the time to understand even the most basic elements of the concept being discussed. Thus, the only way to teach those fundamentals would be to go into details that the executive would not have time to spend on. Now, again, I don’t mean to say that all executives should have an in-depth understanding of every sophisticated business process or concept. Business is more complex today than it’s ever been – and dealing with the details is, ideally, what the executive’s direct report specialists are for. But (to steal a phrase from Family Guy’s Peter Griffin) what really “grinds my gears” is the indifference to complexity and its positioning as a virtue that stems from an executive need. As managers of content – or anything else business-related – it’s always incumbent on us to clearly and efficiently present new, complex concepts so they can be easily understood. But I believe it’s just as incumbent on the leaders of our organizations to want to understand those concepts – even if it requires more than a cursory glance at a thumbnail sketch. It’s your story. Tell it well. (And [tell us your thoughts](mailto:cmi_info@informa.com?subject=Feedback) about Robert’s note.) Robert Rose Chief Strategy Advisor Content Marketing Institute You're getting this exclusive article from Robert Rose as a perk of your newsletter subscription. Do you have colleagues or friends who would benefit from Robert's weekly updates? If so, please invite them to [subscribe]( here.  A Word From One of Our Content VIPs Content Operations Best Practices Webinar Modern content teams are facing unprecedented pressure to drive growth by scaling content delivery across an exploding number of platforms. Watch the webinar for actionable ways to optimize your content production pipeline to help your team achieve agility, alignment, and scale. 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