By Jason Lim
General Colin Powell, the retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who was also the first black man to become the U.S. secretary of state, is known for his inspiring leadership.
Powell's 18 leadership lessons along with explanations of how they apply to business were the subject of a famous article in the December 1996 issue of Management Review by Oren Harari, a professor of management at the McLaren Graduate School of Business, the University of San Francisco.
Although all 18 lessons are pearls of wisdom, the 14th lesson strikes me most personally. It reads: ``Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.”
In expanding upon this leadership lesson, Harari adds, ``Effective leaders understand the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid. They articulate vivid, over-arching goals and values … their visions and priorities are lean and compelling, not cluttered and buzzword laden.”
This lesson echoes loudest for me because of my past experience as an interpreter and facilitator of important dialogues between Korea and the U.S. during my work for an international NGO. One incident comes immediately to mind.
It was May of 2005 when I was asked to interpret in a roundtable discussion for Choo Mi-ae, the well-known former national assemblywoman who was then at Columbia University as a visiting scholar.
The venue was the Heritage Foundation, and the issue was North Korea’s nuclear threat and the ongoing Six-Party Talks, topical today as it was then.
The event presented an interesting contrast because Choo was one of the leading liberal politicians in Korea and the Heritage Foundation was the leading neo-conservative think tank in the U.S. As such, the roundtable was filled with intellectual heavyweights and retired diplomats, all experts in East Asia.
Sitting expectantly in the audience were other researchers, fellows, and academics that had crowded into the room to hear what Choo had to say, expecting a lively debate to emerge from the clash of viewpoints.
After the introductions, Choo began to speak. Whether you agreed with her or not, Choo’s position was cogent and intellectually impressive, since North Korea’s nuclear problem is a very complex and technical issue involving treaties, military actions, and negotiations with constantly changing international players.
It was also obvious that she wasn’t reading a position paper prepared by some staff; she had delved deeply into the issue herself. When she had finished, the audience around the room waited with baited breath at how the heavyweight conservative intellectuals might respond to her daringly liberal suggestions.
However, when the first response came, it came in the form of a question that shocked me with its brevity and drove home the leadership lesson that I mentioned before.
The question, asked by a woman in a sweet, Georgia accent, was: ``Before we go into all the political and technical details, can you tell me one thing? Is Kim Jong-il a good or bad man?”
There was an awkward silence for a second, with no one knowing what to say. Choo must have been taken aback by the seemingly extraneous question, but she passed it off with a smile and skillfully redirected the conversation back to the political and technical details of resolving North Korea’s nukes.
But, for me, the question continued to echo silently throughout the session. In fact, the question cast a shadow of irrelevance over all the sparkling geopolitical strategies and technical details bandied about at the roundtable.
In other words, the question’s plainness cut through all the logical brilliance and arguments like hot knife through butter. Even today, although I barely recall the intellectual arguments of that day, I do remember being buffeted by the power of its simplicity.
This is just one experiences among many that reminds me that even the most complex issues can be boiled down to a simple choice. And that today’s best leaders are the ones who, utilizing the KISS principle, can communicate complex issues simply and plainly because simple is always more powerful than complicated.
But make sure to do this without being condescending or pedantic to the audience. KISS stands for “Keep it simple, stupid,” not “Keep it simply stupid.”
In your leadership journey, remember to KISS in order to grab people’s attention and get an opportunity to persuade them to your point of view. And leadership, after all, is all about persuasion.
Jason Lim is a Fellow at Harvard Korea Institute researching Asian leadership models. He can be reached at jasonlim@post.harvard.edu.
