The following lessons are part of my “ReInventing Series” of posts from TEDxPennQuarter:

If You’re Explaining, You’re Losing

Julian Mulvey gave a talk on “Reinventing the Political Campaign”. He spoke about a political campaign he was working on where they were put on the defensive having to explain several instances that had been over-genearlized by the opposition. Describing this, Julian said something along the lines of, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” This stood out to me as an excellent take-away!

A few days ago I shared the insights of Rohit Barghava in the post “Don’t Just Share, Be Shareable”. When creating a movement, advancing ideas, or starting a business, we as leaders to distill our messages so that they can easily spread. Similar principles are stressed in Malcom Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and the Heath brothers’ “Made to Stick”.

What Julian brings to the discussion, is that we must constantly be ahead of the news. Increased transparency and authenticity allows us to build stronger relationships with our constituencies. We never want to get caught in a lie, have to backtrack, or explain ourselves after-the-fact. Get out in front of the news, and break things down so its easy for people to understand and explain to others. I think with the rise of social media, we are facing a world of increasing transparency and the rapid spread of ideas. We can either choose to leverage this to our benefit, or let it run us over. But I see this societal shift as a huge opportunity for high-impact leaders and ideas, as it gives us an opportunity to build loyal and personal relationships with large constituencies, engage them, and bleed authenticity. If you take one thing away, it should be that authenticity wins every time.