INSPIRATION

Duckies and Goats

The power of radical simplicity

One of things I have become comfortable with over the years is that I revel in having my own language. I routinely use “uroq” to let someone know they did an exceptional job. “Let me know if you want to rap” to offer up my time for a meeting. “Ain’t no” to express doubt. And perhaps most importantly, “duckies and goats” to indicate the need for radical simplicity.

Over the years though, duckies and goats has taken on a life of its own. That is likely due to the fact that when people hear it for the first time, they typically have no idea what I just said. They do not initially understand that it is a rallying cry, a clarion call for expressing concepts in the simplest terms possible.

The concept of duckies and goats resonates with me so deeply that it has its own address in my brain. The house that sits at that address looks a lot like the image you would capture on paper when you were three years old, and your mom said, “draw me a house” as a boredom cure.

That is wholly intentional, as the objective of getting a concept down to duckies and goats is to make it easy enough for a three-year-old to understand. If a three-year-old can “get it” then anybody can. If a three-year-old can remember it on the first try, then anybody can.

And that is what makes an idea great; its ability to get stuck in your craw. To be the first thing you think about when you wake up, even before you reach out and grab your phone to see what you “missed” overnight. Duckies and goats is your thinking at its essence. And it is when it is at its essence that your thinking is its most compelling.

I have championed duckies and goats since first hearing it out of the mouth of my client John Villanueva over 15 years ago. When I first heard him say it I reacted like almost everybody does: I scratched my head and said, “What?!”

But then, because I love nothing more than a simple, singular expression of a concept, I started using it myself. I revisited it with John recently, to find out if he still uses the phrase as often as I do. “I use it all the time,” he said, “Especially when I’m in new environments or learning new things.”

John is a brand leader, an idea developer, and an operator of complex businesses. In other words, somebody who needs to communicate simply. “Big words are often deemed to be important by those who need to communicate big concepts,” he said. “But they’re not always relevant to those who have the greatest need to understand.”

Whether John knew it or not, he was adding to my unique lexicon that day a decade-and-a-half ago when he first used duckies and goats in one of our meetings. One of the things that often gets overlooked in a service business like an ad agency is how much the agency can benefit from their relationship with the client. I got the best of the agency/client relationship the day I learned duckies and goats.

When you challenge yourself to never be satisfied until what you are suggesting can be remembered by a three-year-old, people will follow. When you challenge your teams to boil their ideas down to duckies and goats, the business will be better than the day before. And simpler.

In that original meeting with John I was not only reminded of the power of radical simplicity but I was taught its new name. And now I’ve passed it along to you. Use it wisely, and use it often.