What it takes to Simplify

Business901 Podcast Transcription
Implementing Lean Marketing Systems
What it takes to Simplify
Copyright Business901
Guest was Irene Etzkorn
Sponsored by
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Transcription of Podcast
Joe Dager: Welcome everyone; this is Joe Dager, the host of
Business901 podcast. With me, today is Irene Etzkorn.
She is a worldwide authority on simplicity and built the
Simplification practice of global strategic branding and
customer
experience firm
Siegel and Gale.
As executive
director of
Simplification, her
clients include the
nation's top
banks, brokerage
firms, insurance
companies,
utilities, and
health care
providers. Irene is
someone who has
taken the term Simple and made it a feature. Irene,
since your work is based on simplification, I may need
you to define what Siegel and Gale do. Are they a
branding firm that just simplifies everything?
Irene Etzkorn: Well, thank you for having me join you today.
Yes, we are a branding firm that works in the realm of
corporate identity and brand positioning more
traditional aspects of branding. We also have my
practice area, which we call "Simplification" and it is a
unique specialization. An area, that the founder and
chairman of our firm and the co-author of my book,

Alan Siegel, really was the inspiration. He realized early
on, that if a brand's essence was about simplicity,
transparency, usability and clarity, which the only way
for customers to experience it was at a tangible
transactional level. That gave rise to focusing on
frequently overlooked touch points which is something
much deeper than logos, signs, uniforms, the traditional
expressions of a brand. He had the vision to look at
things like insurance policies, telephone bills, and the
letters you receive, how useful website is, as a way to
express ethos of a brand. Also, it was a way to make
complicated information more accessible and more
suitable way for customers to interact. So, that's what
we do. We take complicated things and we make them
more transparent.
Joe: Well, you've had a simplification department in Siegel
and Gale for a long time.
Irene: Yes, we have this inspiration about 35 years ago; when
he was given an assignment from City Bank at the time
it was First National City. He was asked to redesign
cosmetically improve the graphic design and the
appearance of a loan note, a legal document. As soon
as he got into it, he realized: "Well, this will make it
appear more accessible", but as soon as you start
reading it, it still going to read like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It's going to be lengthy, it's going to be riddle with
legalized, and it's not going to be consumer friendly.
That was the germ of the idea that it needed to be
written in plain language. It needed it be re-sequenced.
The contents needed to be re-thought and then it
needed to be re-designed.

Joe: With the length of time you've been doing it, why was
now the time for a book?
Irene: Well, now is the time because the proliferation of
information has reached the crescendo, the advent of
tablets and smartphones and, of course, computers in
general has made that we're all bombarded by massive
amount of information. We point out in the book, even
our recreation and our entertainment involved the
luminous choices. Hundreds of channels of television
programming, hundreds of thousands of apps, even the
choices on the menu are in the hundreds. So, it sort of
reached a level where it's necessary for a company to
narrow down the selections and clarify them as it is to
reach consumers. It's just more than anyone of us can
comprehend or have enough time to digest. It is also
the aspect that the advent of social media, Facebook,
Twitter, etcetera, means that consumers now are able
to express their dissatisfaction, their complaint,
sometimes their compliments about companies quickly
and easily. So, now, consumers are pushing back and
sending out tweets and postings that point out when
they think there are hidden provisions in contracts,
hidden fees, unfair practices, confusion, etcetera. So,
we felt that there was ground swell as there was going
to be a change in the relationship between consumers
and companies. We are starting to see that.
Joe: Well, you work with large firms. The US government,
insurance health care providers, IRS, to name a few, is
it possible to simplify organizations or are we just
talking paperwork?
Irene: It's a good point. Most of the major transformative

simplification assignment we work on, we were initial
asked to focus on a customer's experience, follow up by
the paper work or all of the online information
associated with the transaction or an interaction which
leads to what we call governance changes, meaning to
your point organizational structural changes within the
company. For us, a mark of a successful simplification
project is where we have become a verb. If they hired
our firm Siegel and Gale, they'll say they're Siegel and
Galeizing something which is usually a good sign. We
think in terms of the fact that they have internalized the
principles and the approached and look at things with a
different filter. The lens then becomes, could I explain
this quickly and easily to a family member who was not
involved in my industry. Is it something where I am
apologizing a thousand times for the fact that it is not
clear or I have to give a band aid explanation or
something? When a successful organization empowered
the group to push back from a communications point of
view, usually change the balance of power between
legal and communication. Often, we find by default the
legal staff and the company will become a
communication function, which is not what they usually
want to be or what they are most appropriate for. So, it
has organizational implications. The most successful
simplification work has a high level of executive
champions. So, often we find these projects rack their
way up to a high level in a company. So, it can have a
systemic effect.
Joe: Well, you've perfectly led into the next question. I
couldn't ask for a better one. Has simplification ideas
reached the CEO level?

Irene: Yes, absolutely. Some of our projects have been
inspired actually by CEOs who are customers of their
own companies receiving, for example, a trust
statement for investment that they don't understand
themselves. Or, they sign up for insurance, and they are
horrified by their own correspondence from their own
company. It's lack of clarity. Some projects begin there.
Some, it's a case where they have worked with us in
one firm. For example, a CMO of a major fortune 100
company worked with us in one arena, in financial
services, and moved over to insurance and realized
there was a similar need for clarity in his next venture
and asked us to come in there. That is always a good
and successful approach because it makes it clear to all
the subject matter experts within a company that the
intent is not to explain why things are the way they are.
There's always a long legacy and reason for complexity
in an organization. But instead, with an executive
champion, they are empowered to say: "Well, here is
how it could be different". If we took a blank slate
approach, here is how we might begin. That is an
important and progressive step to start at the top.
Joe: What are the secrets to simplification? Is there
something that when you walk in, you see the
complexity? Is there a secret to understanding how to
look at things with simple eyes?
Irene: Yes, there is and I think it lies in the fact that clarity is
best achieved through an intuitive structure of
information. Most often who find people who have a
complicated topic or complicated communication want
to begin by re-writing and/or re-designing. Those are
two ingredients and important skills and certainly ones

that we advocate. They are not place to begin. It is
necessary to begin and look at the process. What is the
data, the content? What do you know about this
customer? For example, if you already know what state
they live in, you don't have to include a lot of "if-then"
clauses that say "if you're in Michigan", "if you are in
New York", etcetera, and have the person deal with all
that. Instead, you can push out to them a customized
communication. Starting further up the chain and
providing a summary to detail approach, will answer
likely questions for 80% or 90% of the readers or the
users upfront? People who have further questions can
continue on in the communication, but you haven't
created an introductory barrier for the majority of
people. In actions, a lot of simplification is about
intuitive organization and structure. Another example of
that is insurance policy. Property casualty insurance,
people do not read their insurance policy, for some,
they are novel. They read them usually at the time of
need when they have a claim. Putting what to do if you
have a loss at the first item in a policy is much more
customer focused. It is a reflection of the organization
of the company that's producing it and becomes a more
meaningful document for the consumer.
Joe: I think you make the great example there because it's
amazing how many times redundancy is built in. I think
of health care right away where I am asked the same
question so many times that I feel that I probably
answered it wrong along the way.
Irene: Absolutely, that's a good example because one of the 3
key principles that we've talked about in the book to
achieve simplicity, one of them is empathy.

Emphasizing with the circumstance of the
communication or the interaction is important when you
mentioned health care, that's a great example. Not only
are you sometimes being asked for the same
information repeatedly, you may be in a state where
half the time you are drugged or you’re ill. Obviously,
for some reason, you're seeking health care. It's not
your finest moment probably in terms of clarity of
thought and emotional state, etcetera. So, it's a good
example where even more so in that circumstance, you
would want things to be accessible, clear and not
redundant certainly.
Joe: Well, you just mentioned there that you talked in the
book about 3 different parts. You mentioned empathy,
what are the other two?
Irene: Distillation and clarity. Distilling is this notion of not just
writing, but writing and then editing; a constant
filtration or condensing of information. On the first path,
you might get all the information, all of the facts out
there. On the second path, you can go through and look
at it with a different lens. For example, when we've
done communication geared towards diabetic, some of
the people with diabetes are brand new to the
diagnosis. They need a lot of information; the whole
notion of testing their blood sugar is an unfamiliar
concept. All of this change in diet, exercise, lots of
information. However, many people are life-long
diabetics, or they have taken insulin shots, etcetera for
years, they don't need the same level of explanation.
They are looking for the "what's new", "what's
different", "what's something" that I'm already familiar
with. So, emphasizing with the circumstances of youth,

the level of knowledge that the person already has, then
just distilling the information down to the bare essence
for those who will be seeking, just this sort of core
content is very important. Then clarifying making it as
written in plain English as possible, using information
design to highly or preview or headline information, a
hierarchy of information so you can easily see from the
structure of a document or screen what's most
important, what's less important, what's detailed versus
what's a headline, etcetera. So, truly those 3 concepts
coming together that we think achieved simplicity.
Joe: I think of the chicken and the egg thing when I think of
simplicity and clarity. Which comes first? Can you help
us define the different between simplicity and clarity?
Irene: Well, we think simplicity is the summation, when clarity,
distillation and empathy come together. We think that
leads to break through simplicity because for us
simplicity is really shortening the distance in whatever
way that's possible between the consumer and a
company or a citizen and the government, etcetera.
And, the shortening of the distance can sometimes have
to do with the timing of information. Many companies
bombarded you or inundate you with information at the
outset of the relationship, but you may not have a real
understanding of the implications of that information or
even a need for insurance being a good example, until
months or years into the relationship. In a similar vein,
that happens often with investment. You will literally get
a hundred pages of information upfront and have very
little sense of what you should be focusing on or what
you should retain of that information. So, simplicity, it is
a very nuance concept that has a number of facets that

for some people its aesthetics, but it is very sort of
Spartan, devoid of clutter, etcetera. For some, it’s all
about clarity, the expression, the language and the
design, the immediate, sort of, visceral reaction that
somebody has. For other it's something that's simple if
it's delivered in the medium or channel that I prefer
meaning like an online mobile device that's opposed to
a printed piece. But it is really, all of those aspects
together which typically leads to something being
perceived as simple and easy to use.
Joe: I think most people will agree with you in, you know,
that things that need to be simplified, but what do we
know is the value of what is not a value? How do we go
about trying to define them?
Irene: Well, the acid test is always consumer research.
Obviously, when you've been working in the field for a
long time as we have and consulting on work from
many industries, many kinds of consumer. We have a
pretty good hypothesis going in, but the real way to find
out is to actually test the comprehension and the
perception of simplicity. We advocate usually using an
online methodology where people are shown "befores"
and "afters" as to interact with a communication or an
obstruction or whatever the item currently is and then
after usually in random order to interact with the
simplified item. Then you can actually ask them to
perform certain tasks or answer certain questions that
would indicate not just whether they thought it was
easy, but whether they understood the implication. For
example, if you don't pay by this date, how much more
will you owe? If you fail to respond to this notice, what
will happen? To make sure that people, that their

behaviour will be affected by the communication not
just that they will say: "Oh I think I understood it".
Joe: This might sound like a silly question, but is there a
time we need complexity? I mean, it may be a better
way to phrase this, can we over simplify things?
Irene: Well, certainly, I would say over simplification is any
crucial messages are left out simply in the interest of
brevity. However, for me there's a distinction between
complexity and confusion. What we're really trying to
eliminate is confusion. Complexity is inherent in a lot of,
modern life. Many investments are inherently
complicated. Many medical procedures are complex
procedures. So, it is not as though we are saying the
space shuttles working are suddenly going to be
simplified. What we are saying is the confusion
surrounding someone's need to interact with that
information is what can be clarified and made clearer.
It's often a case of moving the complexity back up
stream. The company or the organization deals with the
complexity rather than the end consumer. So, if you've
viewed it as a chain or continuum, it would be moving
the complexity. We are not saying that you can
magically remove all of the complexity that's actually an
aspect of, for example, scientific topic, it will be a
complicated topic always, but the expression of it might
be clarified.
Joe: In your book, the title of it, I should mention, is
"Simple". Is it a how to, does it give me a process to
simplify things?
Irene: You know, it really doesn't and that was the conscious

choice. We felt that this book was more of a call to
action and a way of heightening awareness that
simplicity was possible and has been attained by many
large companies and government organizations. It was
something worth striving for. That it has cost benefits
and consumer benefits. The book is not primarily a how
to, I mean as we just mentioned these three principles
we show a number of case studies, we think exemplify
how to use empathy and clarity in communication. So,
by inference, someone could see some of the tactics
and techniques that work. It isn't a primer in terms of
how to because we didn't want to limit it to only the
audience that would be responsible for achieving this.
We really thought it was a topic that needed a broader
discussion in society, even if you are not within a
company responsible for these kinds of touch points. If
you are simply a consumer or a student or patient , you
might want to be more aware of what you should be
asking companies to do on your behalf and how you can
be a more informed consumer.
Joe: Well, simplification is something that is in the eye of the
beholder. I mean, what is simply to someone over here,
is not going to be simple to some else. How do you,
from an organizational view, how do you understand
this? Is it just customer-focused group, customer's
survey, customer's trial and error or is there a way that
they can be simplified for you to understand?
Irene: We have a number of metrics that we work with clients
to put in place. There are a lot of harden fast cost
benefits associated with the kinds of simplification we're
talking about. Very often, for example, we are
consolidating and reducing the quantity of information,

which can lead to hard, tangible savings and printing,
postage and processing. There are other aspects that
are cost saving associated with fewer unnecessary
customer service calls when there is less confusion and
people understand what action to take etcetera.
Something like the IRS, they can track how quickly
people are responding to notices and sending in
amounts due. There are a lot of tangible metric that
clients can use to not just rely on customer perception
that they thought it was simpler, etcetera. There are a
number of those benefits that are beneficial halo effects
for the company and the company brand. In terms of
the company that says that they are looking out for
your interest, for example as an investment firm, we
have a lot of research that shows that consumers trust
organizations that use more plain language and that
have shorter documents. Consumers often feels that
companies are hiding behind legalize or they attribute
some nefarious motive to confusion and complexity
which may not exist, but they tend to think that there
are hidden unfavourable clauses when it's a document
that's, you know, hundreds of pages, has 14 or 15
signatures required, they feel at a disadvantage in the
relationship.
Joe: What did you want someone to take away from your
book?
Irene: Well, certainly I would hope that the companies
launching new products and services would take a step
back and say before we build in all the traditional
gobbledygook before we just hand this over and get
back a 14-page agreement for a rewards program, for a
credit card for example. Let's take a look at it and see

from a consumer's point of view what would the
expectation be? What are the provisions that aren’t
what most reasonable people would expect to be in
there? Let's clarify those if we intend to keep those
provisions. Let's make the information available at the
right time in the right medium. So, certainly from any
kind of starting point, I think it could be beneficial for
companies to think of it from the outset. I mean, Apple
products are, of course, widely touted as having been
designed that way. That the intuitive nature of their use
was always something thought about in the product
design as opposed to an afterthought. I think that would
be beneficial, I think, for many companies to apply to a
whole range of products and services. Companies that
are well established may have quite a backlog of
complexity to consider. They may find unenforceable
provisions, like mutually exclusive communications
going out. It is amazing when you start one of these
large scale endeavors what you find coming out of the
woodwork. Very often, it is astonishing, the company
suddenly realizes they have 5,000 forms, and they don't
even realize that they are maintaining this inventory
that has almost taken on the life of its own.
Joe: I assume your book is available everywhere now since I
listened to it on audio that's usually the last medium to
get it. How long has the book been out and where could
someone find it?
Irene: Well, they can certainly find it on Amazon, Barnes and
Noble all of the online booksellers as well as Bricks and
Mortar book sellers. It's been out since April 2nd, and it
is available on audio. It is available in hard cover
currently, we just launched this week in the United

Kingdom, if plenty of your listeners travel and it is
actually going to be released in Asia next year.
Joe: Is there a book page and what is the best place to
contact you to find out more about the book?
Irene: We have a website called callforclarity.com, all one word
that has information about both Alan Siegel and I, the
authors, as well as a link to the book or, of course, on
Amazon, they can read an excerpt of the book, etcetera.
Joe: I want to thank you Irene. I enjoyed the conversation.
The book's title is Simple, and as you mentioned the
website is called callforclarity.com.
Irene: I very much appreciate your interest and thank you for
having me on.
Joe: This podcast will be available on the Business901 tune
store and the Business901 blog site. So, thanks again
everyone.

Joseph T. Dager
Business901
Phone: 260-918-0438
Skype: Biz901
Fax: 260-818-2022
Email: jtdager@business901.com
Website: http://www.business901.com
Twitter: @business901
Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in
bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and
marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty
years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies
it through Lean Marketing and Lean Service Design.
Visit the Lean Marketing Lab: Being part of this community will
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What it takes to Simplify

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