Smart Brevity is a book — or rather, a guide — by the creators of Axios. One that could have benefited from the very advice it gives. It rambles through many disconnected sections and, for some reason, seems to think it’s acceptable to use clunky sentence structures in the quest to demonstrate the “power of saying more with less.”
I’m being harsh. There are many valuable lessons in it. But
maybe I’m a snob when it comes to good writing. While I completely see the
value of brevity in conversations and communication, I don’t think it should
come at the cost of well-crafted sentences — or, more importantly, at the cost
of framing thoughts coherently.
I’ll be honest. I need to learn how to communicate more
briefly. It’s been a long-standing piece of 360-degree feedback throughout my
20-year corporate career as a strategy consultant. More recently, as someone
who does a fair number of presentations and has conversations with senior
executives, this is feedback I need to act on. So, I’ve been on a deliberate
quest to learn brevity.
Even more so because my Gallup StrengthsFinder has
repeatedly identified “Input” and “Intellection” as top strengths — the need to
collect, archive, and accumulate information, ideas, artefacts, and even
relationships. I’m also a learner, with a strong desire to grow and
continuously improve. The process of learning matters more to me than the
outcome itself. I love to think (perhaps too much), muse, and reflect.
All this sounds great on paper, but the blind spots are
obvious, in hindsight, of course. Pun and inconsistency intended.
One of the most important watch-outs for me has been phrased
like this:
You might have a tendency to give people so much information or so many resources that you can overload or overwhelm them. Before you share with others, consider sorting out what is most meaningful so they don’t lose interest.
And another, in the same vein:
Some people might think you create needless complexity during discussions and may want you to make decisions faster. Sometimes it’s better to keep it simple and go more in depth later.
How damning, and how true.
This has been an ongoing area of learning for me. Over the
years, I’ve been influenced by Tom Henschel’s advice from The Look and Sound
of Leadership: “Short sounds confident.” That has become something of a
mantra. But as much as I like that little ditty, I like words too. I like
trivia, context-setting, and, above all, a good, powerful sentence.
But the point remains: I need to be brief. So I picked up Economical
Writing by Deirdre McCloskey — a great book with some very smart advice —
though I haven’t finished it yet. The Just Saying podcast by Joe
McCormack has also been helpful.
So when, in June this year, my boss gave me Smart Brevity,
I didn’t waste time reading it. Yes, my manager thought it necessary to gift me
a book about brevity. And no, I’m not that bad — I take it as a positive
gesture.
Anyway, this is a topic I genuinely care about, and I read
the book. While it makes some smart points — like simplifying sentences, making
them catchy, and using labels — the way those points are communicated feels
haphazard. It rambles, trying to connect disparate ideas to its central thesis
in roundabout ways.
Here’s an example. The opening sentence of the book is:
Never in the history of humanity have we vomited more words in more places with more velocity.
It’s a strong line, but reading it aloud isn’t a great
experience, especially without the advantages of proper punctuation.
Other examples include the before-and-after writing tips:
Before: “The coronavirus variant in California is possibly more infectious and might cause more serious illness than the first.”
After: “California COVID-19 strain is more infectious than the first.”
Is that factually correct? Communicating the probability of might
is worthwhile, and it’s lost in this falsely assertive sentence.
Beyond these issues, one stylistic choice really bothered
me: the authors refer to themselves in the third person. I understand that’s
tricky when there are three authors, but paragraphs like this put me off:
BACKSTORY: Jim and Mike started Politico back in 2007 with John Harris, a friend from The Washington Post. John and Jim were bosses and Mike was the on-the-go reporter, scooping news nuggets and building the little-known Politico brand around DC.
- At dawn every day, Mike would write an email to Jim and John with the subject line ‘How we can rock today’. It was a blueprint for the stories the publication should pursue.
- Mike’s email followed a very specific format. It always started with a burst of fresh news or insight — journalism’s holy grail of ‘Tell me something I don’t know.’
This sort of writing goes against the very advice the book
gives: never assume the reader knows who you’re talking about. It’s not
“skim-resistant.”
In summary, Smart Brevity is a book with solid concepts, but the authors’ insistence on sacrificing good sentence structure for catchy, web-friendly phrasing is a drawback. Not everything worthwhile should be sacrificed for brevity. Brevity is more than that.
Finally, I took away the relevant parts of the book. And now, with the advent of AI, I’ve been using a different workflow to communicate briefly and impactfully. I write in my own way, full of ideas and context. Then I ask AI to edit my writing for brevity — without losing any of the detail. It does a fantastic job. It cleans up grammar, removes redundancies, and helps me structure my thoughts better without losing my style or substance.
Win-win.
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