The Virgin Way: Everything I Know About Leadership by Richard Branson Page A

that way. Getting into the habit of looking at your business from the outside in will tell you a lot about how long those good results are likely to continue – or not!

Chapter 4
K - I - S - S AND TELL
    Simplicity wins every time
    ‘Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand.’
    Colin Powell
    The key to this statement by Colin Powell is that great leaders are not just simplifiers but that they can communicate to their entire audience in terms that are universally understood. You can’t always be listening to your people as sometimes they need to be listening to you. Whether he falls into the ‘great leader’ category or not may be debatable, but one of Powell’s contemporaries, former US president Bill Clinton, is certainly a good example of a politician with a gift for delivering understandable, no-nonsense messages. In fact, after Clinton had delivered a masterful address at a 2012 Obama election campaign event, I had to chuckle when I heard the White House incumbent jokingly say that maybe he should appoint Clinton as ‘the Secretary of Explaining Stuff’.
    KISS is an acronym for ‘Keep it simple stupid’ that is believed to have originated in the US Navy in the sixties. It was directed at system designers in recognition of the fact that most battle systems work better when kept as simple as possible, whereas complexity builds in nothing but problems. Unfortunately, however, the KISS principle is something to which a lot of business leaders and politicians do not seem to subscribe.
    In my own case, having grown up facing the challenges that come with dyslexia, simplicity in communications has always been more of a necessity than a nicety for me. But whether in our professional or private lives, developing the art of simple clear speech is something that every one of us, and everyone with whom we associate, can only benefit. For some people, like Bill Clinton, the ‘gift of the gab’ comes with an innately intelligent and concise delivery; for others, however, it can be anything but concise and frequently utterly unintelligible.
    One such aggravating example is to be found in BBC Television’s brilliant comedy series, Yes, Prime Minister . I don’t watch much television, but this showhas long been a favourite of mine – it was reportedly also one of the late prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s few ‘must watch’ TV programmes. There is one wonderful character in the show, Sir Humphrey, who is the absolute antithesis of everything KISS stands for. Paradoxically, my old English teacher at Stowe School would probably have described Sir Humphrey as ‘the quintessence of verbosity and polysyllabic pomposity’, which we always joked would have been a fair description of that particular teacher as well! In simpler terms, however, Sir Humphrey is a perfect caricature of the kind of person who loves to talk at great length but does so without actually saying anything remotely intelligible.
    In case you’re not familiar with Yes, Prime Minister, here is a snippet of Sir Humphrey at his best – or perhaps more accurately – at his worst.
    ‘Questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts with responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy.’
    SHORT AND SNAPPY WINS EVERY TIME
    Whenever I run into a real-life Sir Humphrey, it’s all I can do to prevent myself from grabbing them by the collar and yelling, ‘Life’s too short! Get to the point, will you.’ When the person in question happens to be a revered diplomat or captain of industry such an ‘in your face’ approach isn’t always the smartest way to go. But you can take steps to avoid falling into similar bad habits yourself, and in my own case this has meant trying