#220) Why the ABT is so important: The Definitive Signal-to-Noise Tool for Communication

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PROBLEM: The Information Maelstrom (today’s world of too much information) EVENTUAL SOLUTION AND ONLY REAL HOPE: The ABT

The string puller, talking about his prize pupil, our President.

Getting to Fully Know the ABT

Over the past decade I have written 12 books about the ABT as we have trained dozens of organizations (you can see the requisite stack of logos on our website) and thousands of folks in the “ABT (And, But, Therefore) Framework” (I still hate the term “framework” but had to call it something). And yet, it’s only in the past month I’ve been hit by a huge realization which is that IT’S ALL ABOUT SIGNAL-TO-NOISE.

AND, AND, AND (AAA) is noise. ABT (AND, BUT, THEREFORE) is signal.

In 2011 I knew in an instant when I first heard about the dynamic of these three words (AND, BUT, THEREFORE) that it was important. I heard the South Park co-creators mention it, then I tracked its origin back to a speech in 1986 by legendary screenwriting instructor Frank Daniel (from whom they probably learned it indirectly). BUT … its taken almost 15 years to see the full context of its importance.

Here’s why it is so important.

Narrative Is Everything

I’m no fan of Steve Bannon, BUT … at an analytical level, I’m pretty sure he understands American society today better than anyone. Better than all the communications professors, the news pundits, the bloggers, the influencers — on and on. Analytically, none of them hold a candle to him. Why?

Media production. He helped produce 18 Hollywood movies between 1991 and 2016. That changes the brain.

Dr. Michael Crichton (biomedical researcher-turned-filmmaker), as I argued in Ensia 3 years ago, also understood American society today better than anyone. Why? Same thing — media production. He directed 7 Hollywood movies and wrote the novel for another little movie called, Jurassic Park.

These characters have real world media production experience.

They’re not just drawing on media studies, media critiquing, or what they think they’ve learned from being interviewed by the media — all the standard things that cause academics and journalists to think they understand how society works — they don’t. It’s only through MAKING media that you can develop the VISCERAL (not CEREBRAL) grasp of how it works, and even then, you probably still don’t know. Why?

We Are a “Media-Driven” Society

We are not an “academic-driven society.” We are not a “democratic-driven society.” We are not definitely not an “intellectually-driven society.”

We are a MEDIA-DRIVEN SOCIETY as great thinkers like David Halberstam tried to make clear in monumental books like, The Powers That Be.

Narrative Is Truly Everything

And, if you look at the quote above from the “unsettling” interview David Brooks did with Steve Bannon last year in the New York Times, you see Bannon mention the same phrasing that hit me a few years ago. He says, “Everything is narrative,” I titled my 2019 book, Narrative is Everything.

It is.

It’s now out of control. Misinformation (= noise) is everywhere. We are in “The Information Maelstrom” that Marshall McLuhan predicted (and not surprisingly Bannon in that interview cited McLuhan in reference to Trump). Noise is now the enemy of society. Signal is the only hope.

AAA is noise. ABT is signal.

And THAT is why the ABT is so important.