Teaching What You Know | WT #167

If you can’t explain your decision to a high school student, you don’t own it yet.

Truth: If you can’t explain your decision to a high school student, you don’t own it yet. Clarity is the test of understanding.

There’s a test that makes seasoned executives uncomfortable: explain your most important principled decision in seven minutes, to an audience that includes a high school student.

Why does this work? Because complexity is often a hiding place.

When a leader says “the synergistic value proposition of our restructured operational framework,” they might be obscuring the fact that they haven’t figured out what they actually mean. A high school student cuts through the fog. They ask: “But why?” “What happened to that person?” “Would you do it again?”

Those are the questions your conscience asks at 2am, stripped of professional language.

If you can explain why you made a decision — the real why — in simple language, to someone with no context, and they understand it? You own that decision. It’s moved from your head to your bones.

If you can’t? That’s data too. It might mean the decision was complicated. Or it might mean you haven’t been honest with yourself about why you really made it.

Clarity is the test of understanding. Understanding is the foundation of integrity.

This week: Explain a recent significant decision — out loud, in under three minutes, using no jargon. If you stumble, that’s where the growth is.

Photo: AI-generated illustration created with OpenAI image generation tools using prompt created By Darren Smith