SOFI says KISS
Pardon the Interruption
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Did this headline make you click and read on? Of course it did – originality can peak curiosity. And you probably guessed that KISS means “keep it simple, silly.”
But now what? To lean on the famous meme, the headline has your curiosity, but how do I keep your attention?
Attention is directly proportional to the ability to:
- Eliminate distractions,
- Reduce multi-tasking, and
- Increase focus.
How you speak about a topic is key – and being too original or using too much jargon can make your audience less attentive:
- Using the wrong jargon or too much originality creates a distraction because it is not what your listener is expecting to hear.
- It also makes your listener multi-task – and try to keep listening while they work out what you mean.
- As a result, it takes their mind somewhere else – and away from the point you are trying to land.
SOFI is built and trained using repeatable patterns of speech that have unambiguous meaning. But if you refer to your strategy as “buy and adjust” instead of buy-and-maintain or talk about diversifying across “verticals” instead of sectors, SOFI may not know what you mean – and would have a hard time learning from a pattern it has only seen once.
Another way to create distraction is to loosely use terms like:
- Leverage – but is your fund actually leveraged, or are you using fancy jargon for trying to positively influence a situation to your benefit?
- Impact – are you actually investing to create positive environmental and social impact, or are you forgetting that everything can have an impact, including interest rates on market volatility?
- Engagement – are you engaging with issuers to influence their business practices, or are you trying to get Gen Z interested in their pension?
SOFI not only saves you time and frees you up to be present in your meetings – it also steers you away from gimmicks and ambiguity, and towards jargon that helps institutional investors listen to you more attentively.
