01. The Food Scoop Rule
“See how flat your head is, like the bottom of a food scoop.”
I read that in a book and immediately went:
Oh. There I am.
The book was talking about Yorùbá rhetoric.
And no, I did not identify with the specific act of comparing somebody’s head to kitchen equipment.
It was the precision of it.
Flat head.
Bottom of a food scoop.
Done.
You can see it.
No additional paragraph required.
And suddenly I had a name for something my brain has been doing my entire life.
I thought I was just making jokes.
I do this constantly.
Somebody will be explaining something complicated and eventually my brain goes:
Oh. It’s like this.
A website with a terrible checkout process?
You built a store and put the cash register in the stockroom.
A company where nobody knows what is happening?
Six people are showing up Tuesday morning with six different versions of Tuesday morning.
A process with twelve unnecessary steps?
We are carrying the bucket back and forth even though the sink is right fucking there.
I always thought that was me being funny.
Sometimes it is.
But reading about Yorùbá rhetoric made me realize the joke is not actually the important part.
The important part is:
Now you can see the problem.
That’s different.
The image is doing the thinking.
One of the things that grabbed me about what I was reading was the use of metaphor, proverb, comparison and concrete imagery to hold a much bigger idea.
Not twenty sentences explaining the concept.
One image that carries it.
That felt wildly familiar to me.
Because I don't really use metaphors to decorate an idea after I understand it.
A lot of the time, the metaphor is how I understand it.
There is a big cloudy mess in front of me.
I poke at it for a while.
And then suddenly:
Oh.
The cash register is in the stockroom.
Now I know what is wrong.
And usually everyone else does too.
Which brings me to business language.
Business language is absolutely incredible at doing the opposite.
It takes something painfully obvious and turns it into fog.
“We need to improve cross-functional communication and operational alignment.”
Okay.
What happened?
Sales promised something and nobody told operations.
There it is.
“We're seeing friction in the customer journey.”
Where?
People cannot figure out how to book.
Great.
“We need to improve change-management procedures for field teams.”
What actually happened?
The floor plan changed and nobody told the crew.
THAT.
That is a problem.
I can do something with that.
You cannot fix “operational alignment.”
You can absolutely fix the floor plan changed and nobody told the crew.
Simple does not mean stupid.
I think this is where businesses get themselves into trouble.
There is this weird belief that if something is important, it should sound important.
So instead of:
Nobody knows who is responsible for this.
we get:
There is an opportunity to clarify ownership across key stakeholder groups.
Jesus Christ.
Just say nobody knows who owns it.
The simpler sentence is not less intelligent.
Usually it means somebody finally understood the problem well enough to stop hiding it inside language.
And once you can name the actual thing?
You can start fixing the actual thing.
But there is a second half to the Food Scoop Rule.
And this is the part I am personally terrible at.
When the sentence lands:
Stop talking.
Because my instinct, once someone understands me, is apparently to make absolutely fucking sure.
So I explain it again.
Maybe from another angle.
Throw in an example.
Perhaps a small diagram.
Would anyone like a supporting appendix?
No.
Donna.
They got it.
The head is flat.
The scoop is flat.
The food scoop did its job.
Move on.
So that is the Food Scoop Rule.
Find the sentence that lets people see the thing.
Say it.
And trust them enough to stop.
Because the goal is not to sound smart.
The goal is not to demonstrate everything you know about the problem.
The goal is for the other person to go:
Oh. I see it.
Once they do?
Shut up.
