I’m sitting on the floor watching Winnie the Pooh with my almost-2-year-old toddler. Even though I’ve seen this 2011 movie dozens (hundreds?) of times, one particular exchange grabs me.

Owl: “Now, the customary procedure in such cases is as follows-”

Pooh, interrupting: “Excuse me, Owl, but what does “crustimoney proseedcake” mean? For I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me.”

Owl: “It means ‘the thing to do.’”

Pooh: “Oh. Well, as long as it means that, I don’t mind.”

The point of communication is to be understood. But we frequently use language that is unnecessarily complicated.

And when we overcomplicate things, we fail to inspire change. We can’t move people to action. Because people can only take action on something they understand.

So they won’t buy our product, adopt our mission, donate to our GoFundMe, vote for our campaign, join our community group, or do their chores.

Sometimes people overcomplicate things on purpose, in an attempt to sound smart. Of course, it backfires.

But most often we do it by accident.

The Curse of Knowledge

I recently gave the keynote address to incoming freshmen at my Alma Mater, SUNY Oneonta (State University of New York). The speech crushed and I left the stage on a high.

After a line of students shaking my hand and thanking me, a group of three girls timidly approached. They’d been waiting until everyone else left.

“Excuse me?” she asked. “We were just wondering, what does sookoh mean?”

“SUCO?” I said. “It’s the State University College at Oneonta. It’s what everyone here calls the school.”

“Ohhhhhh,” she said. “We had no idea! You kept saying it and we were so confused. Anyway, thanks so much. It was great.”

I would have never used insider language like SUCO in a speech, but I was literally at the school. What better time to use insider language?

It never even occurred to me that incoming freshmen might not have heard that term yet.

We forget that other people don’t have the same knowledge, beliefs, or desires that we do. So we use insider language, industry jargon, and culturally-specific references.

The result?

People tune out. Most people don’t want to admit when they’re lost. So they smile and nod politely, or pretend to understand in order to avoid looking like an idiot in social situations.

Because of this, most of our communication fails. And the worst part is, we don’t even know when we’ve failed!

So, how do we avoid being misunderstood?

Just say the thing

As Pooh says, he is a bear of very little brain. Pretend your audience is Winnie the Pooh. Adopt the mindset of someone who knows little to nothing about your subject.

How would you explain it to them?

Some people say you should communicate at the level of an 8th grader. That’s a good metric. But there’s an even easier filter:

Just say the thing.

That’s what I tell my clients over and over. Every time their speech script, web copy, email sequence, marketing materials, or social media posts start to get wordy or overly complicated, we strip it all back.

What are you really trying to say? Just say it. We don’t need to know how many words you know. And we definitely don’t need long academic words.

When Pooh Bear says, “long words bother me,” he’s speaking for your audience.

If Pooh can understand you, anyone can. That’s your baseline.