Words Matter

As we go into Labor Day Weekend, I’m captivated by the carefully scripted rhetoric and oratory of the prior week and anticipating that of the next: Some of the words I write below may be controversial to you, but know this: words matter.



There’s no free lunch. Things cost money. If you want change, it costs money. Heck, if you want money it costs money. But like a good pitch from a high-tech startup with nothing but a vision of the future: a strong pitch can lower the cost of capital. How? By moving people to do stuff for free. Take two CEOs with the same stock of assets and employees and market opportunity—and I’ll put my money on the one that commands attention and motivates and inspires his talent to win. Operators sell investors to be stakeholders. Salesmen sell their customers to be users.



Here’s the obvious thing: motivated people move. Look back at history from civil rights (MLK) to public service (Kennedy) to putting a man in space (Kennedy) to galvanizing allies against Nazism (ie. Churchill and FDR) to galvanizing allies against Communism (Reagan's Brandenburg Gate speech): Words matter. And motivating words move people. They echo and recruit--and many for free. Think about the oversimplified science of this: chemicals across synapses connecting firing networked neurons triggering thought into muscle movement in the chest into vibrating particles of air projected from a mouth to ear where the process converts in reverse: as the ear turns vibrating particles and sound waves back into electrical pulses processed as thoughts. Whether those thoughts trigger muscles: a cheer, a pumped fist, a march—depends on the words. Words move you.



When it comes down to it, here’s the truth: voters naively think (or hope) that one man has the right answers in the right plan. It's not possible. Presidential policies are way too simple in a world way too complex to be prescriptive with any certainty in their consequences. Stuff happens.



I believe the only thing a single man can do before an audience is this: get their attention; move them to action. Influence. Change their psychology. Make them positive, make them hopeful, inspired, make them motivated. Make them act. We don't have to agree with the words of history's greatest orators, but we can't deny they moved people. Mostly for the better (Cicero (before senate in Rome), Jesus (Sermon on the Mount), Patrick Henry (liberty or death), Lincoln (Gettysburg + Inaugural Address), FDR (fear speech) Churchill, Kennedy (Ask not and Moonshot), MLK (I have a dream), Reagan, even—Al Gore created an entire movement, with a slide-deck).



Make no mistake: history is littered with corrupted power, jingoistic rhetoric, misguided promises and words wielded with malicious intent from galvanizing speakers (Hitler, Stalin, Castro, Chavez) who took a broken people and raised their spirits and moved them to action--and to atrocities--in the completely wrong direction.



But a country's strongest asset is its strongest speaker. As the most widely read book in history starts: In the beginning was the word. And the word was...