Theory of Omission
By Adam Coughlin, Managing Partner at York IE
Ernest Hemingway coined the writing philosophy known as “The Theory of Omission.” Explaining this he once wrote, “if a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”
To summarize that in a far less eloquent way: you don’t always have to say everything. Sometimes it is important to let your audience do the creating. But you can only do this if you truly know your stuff.
I think about this a lot when it comes to two very important elements of a startup’s success: corporate messaging and the sales pitch.
Corporate messaging is never easy for a company at the beginning of its journey. In many ways you’re trying to nail down Jello. You need to be specific enough so that a prospect can immediately contextualize what you do and decide if it is relevant. While simultaneously remaining future proof enough to evolve and grow with your customers’ needs because startups rarely nail their actual value drivers or use cases on the first pass. This is a difficult challenge. But it can be helpful to remember The Theory of Omission. The intent of your elevator pitch or boilerplate is less about tightly wrapping every element of your company into a box and more about evoking emotions within your audience so they can connect the dots themselves. By doing this, you can avoid drowning in the weeds and buzzwords. Of course, you can only do this when you are an expert in market-in research. As Hemingway wrote, “A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.”
On the sales side of the house, The Theory of Omission can prevent a major problem for startups: misaligned expectations. I know this personally from pitching my own startup, York IE. In the beginning, I had a tendency to over promise and expand our scope of offerings beyond what we were actually worldclass at. This happens all the time. Then the customer gets upset because you’re not delivering what you promised.
In a sales call there can be a fear of silent pauses. And so you combat that by talking and talking some more. It happens because you’re not confident in your story and feel the need to add more details. But if you follow Hemingway’s thinking, you’ll say what you have to say and be confident to know that it is enough.
Kyle has previously told a great anecdote about how remaining completely silent on a call — allowing that silent pause to extend to the point of bursting with uncomfortableness — once led him to closing a massive deal. There is often as much value in what you don’t say as there is in what you say.
In a world of noise where the name of the game is to be louder than the next person, please remember that there is still power in omission.
