« Helpful signs | Main | Information overload? You need this web site »

May 31, 2009

Is “high level” the wrong level?

Let’s say you’re planning a meeting, and you’d like to cover complicated content, but you don’t have a lot of time. You may be tempted to present only “high-level” information: broad strokes, conceptual, not a lot of detail.

The meeting may go well—people nodding in agreement—but you may be surprised to find that there aren’t a lot of questions. Or the meeting may go badly, with people acting cranky because they don’t really get what you’re talking about. But you get through it, and everyone leaves feeling like something was accomplished.

You may be in for another surprise later when you discover that people don’t quite remember what you presented at that meeting. Your surprise may take a nasty turn when it’s time to implement your proposal, and the same people who seemed to be in agreement now raise objections.

What’s the problem? It’s that darn “high level,” of course. Let’s pretend that “High Level” is a person (a tall, thin person) who goes by the nickname “Hi.”

The trouble with Hi is that he’s vague. He talks in abstractions—like “quality,” “strategy” and “values”—that sound good when he says them, but don’t really mean anything. These concepts are hard to argue with, because they’re not tangible. If Hi says, “customer service,” how can you object?

But although everybody likes Hi well enough, he doesn’t leave much of a lasting impression. And when it comes time to get things done, Hi disappears into thin air. Suddenly reality sets. Although “customer service” was fine as a theoretical term, you realize that it means you have to take all your phone agents through seven hours of training. You look around to see who’s responsible for this headache. Where’s Hi? Gone with the wind.

I guess you can tell that I’m not a big fan of Hi Level (or his sidekick, Big Picture). In fact, I think high level is a waste of time. To engage people, you need to back up abstractions with information that’s both tangible and tactile. If you say we need to improve customer service, I want to know: “By how much? How will we know we’ve achieved an improvement? What does ‘improved’ look and feel like? What, specifically, will we need to do differently?”

High level is easy. The hard stuff is "low level" specifics. And that's the stuff that really matters.

Posted by Alison Davis at May 31, 2009 01:55 PM