“The audience only pays attention as long as you know where you are going.”
Philip Crosby
It was a once-in-a-lifetime trip: visiting London that summer, staying in cheap hotels, and mixing leisurely enjoying the city while also trying to make the most of every moment. The sun was still up around 9 p.m., slightly disorienting as it felt more like late afternoon
As we entered the tube station, I heard a busker playing in the distance. First the unmistakeable intro, followed by the iconic opening lyrics : “Today is gonna be the day…” In retrospect, hearing one of the biggest songs by one of the biggest British bands in the world, Oasis’ Wonderwall, seems like a natural choice for buskers literally in a tube station. I could feel that moment would linger in my mind forever.
We tossed in a few coins and kept walking. After we passed, he went quiet for a few seconds, and then he started again.
I assumed he would continue the song, but he did not. He replayed the opening a second time!
At first I thought maybe he had made a mistake and just wanted to give it another go. Then, while we were waiting for the tube, we heard him restart and play the opening again. This time, we laughed because we had a suspicion that he knew what he was doing.
The Part That Mattered
His audience was not sitting in a theater.
They were tourists walking through a station, carrying bags, watching signs, looking for the right platform, trying not to miss the next train. Most had only a few seconds to notice him, and in those few seconds, the part of the song everyone knew was the part that mattered.
He was giving people what they wanted.
He was giving people what they wanted.
If people had stopped to listen, maybe the right thing would have been to play the whole song. But for people passing by, the best version of the work was short, familiar, and timed to the situation.
Respecting The Moment
I think about that busker more often than I would have expected.
Partly because it was funny. Partly because it was a tiny bit brilliant. He was not trying to prove he knew the whole song. He was not asking the room to become something it was not. He noticed the moment he was in and played the part that would actually reach people.
In a few seconds, you recognized the hook, you recognized the lyrics, dropped your coins in his case – and enjoyed those few moments on your way to the next part of your travels. And after you had passed, it would be time for a new group of people to hear the same thing, and have their own moment.
At Present
I wrote this years ago as a small travel story, but I think about it now most often in engineering leadership.
There are times when I want to give the whole explanation: the context, the constraints, the tradeoffs, the history of how we got here, and why the obvious answer is not actually obvious. Sometimes that is exactly what the moment needs. If the group is deep in the work and trying to make the right call, the details matter.
But if the goal is alignment, the moment may need something different. People may need the decision, the risk, the cost of waiting, the tradeoff, and the ask. A project update, a planning conversation, a business case, or a hard change in direction can fail not because the reasoning was weak, but because the useful part never became clear enough for the room to act on.
That does not mean dumbing it down. It means respecting the room you are in. Sometimes communication is not complete when I have said everything I know. It is complete when the other person has what they need for the decision in front of them.