Sesame Street is celebrating its 40^th anniversary today, and the Os in Google’s Logo are the distinctive eyes of Sesame Street’s greatest gourmand, Cookie Monster.

Since its beginnings, Sesame Street’s main purpose has been to use Madison-avenue style techniques to give kids the information that they need in a manner that they can understand.  The show was set in an urban environment to mirror the urban environments of most children that did not have access to preschool, and they always made sure that they understood their audience.

One of the most memorable events in Sesame Street history – at least for me, anyway was the death of Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper.  Rather than broach the topic by having another actor take his place, or having Mr. Hooper “go on vacation,” Mr. Hooper was also to die.  In that episode, the CTW producers took every precaution not to upset the audience – children.  They avoided using euphemisms such as “passed away,” for example, dealing directly with the issue and not confusing the audience.  They researched the concerns kids have after a loved one passes away, found that kids worried that their immediate needs wouldn’t be taken care of, and they made sure to include information that Big Bird would still have someone to make birdseed milkshakes for him.  They aired the program on Thanksgiving so it would be very likely that parents would be around to watch the show with their children.

Additionally, the show has continued to evolve over its 40 years, so much so that the original 1969 show was put on DVD with a disclaimer that the show was for grownups reminiscing and not for today’s preschoolers – the 1969 show shows Cookie Monster smoking a pipe as Alistair Cookie in Monsterpiece Theatre, Oscar not just a grouch but also plain mean, and a scene where Gordon invites a little girl (without her parents) into his house for milk and cookies – innocent enough, but by today’s standards, a little creepy.  But that’s the point – the show has adapted to changing needs over time.

It should also be noted that Sesame Street is just the American version of the show.  “Sesame Tree” is the show in Northern Ireland, and the first episode had Potto and Hilda learning that you can’t just split the Sesame Tree up – you have to share and get along.  Tantan, Moman, Putri, and Jabrik talk about cultural diversity in Indonesia’s Jalan Sesama.  The documentary “The World According To Sesame Street” deals with adaptations in Bangladesh, Kosovo, and South Africa.  In short, the show has always addressed some of the most complex issues that children have to deal with and explained them in a way that a child of a particular culture can understand.

“The Sesame Workshop is a not-for-profit organization that goes to different countries and says: ‘Tell us what your children need.’ Then they have meetings and seminars where they bring together child educators and child psychologists and children’s artists and animators and all of these different people who work the world of children, to create education and entertainment for them. In that way, the people on the ground within a certain country, for instance Bangladesh, get to create their own curriculum and their own puppets and their own street, and so then ‘Sesame Street’ is no longer an American show—now it’s a Bangladeshi show.”

Now, obviously, network engineers typically don’t have to deal with children very often.  (That’s a job for the help desk – kidding, of course!)

More seriously, though, we’ve taken so many life lessons from Sesame Street over the years, and I see no reason to stop simply because we’re “grownups.” And that lesson is this: When you’re presenting something complex to an audience that may not understand it, you have to tailor your message to that audience.  Give the audience the information that they need, and don’t make it either over-complex, or over-simplified.  For example – when talking to C-level executives. 

In some cases, reports are literally filled with red/yellow/green traffic lights, in an oversimplification.  It’s a great way to explain networking performance to a typical watcher of Sesame Street, but… for a CIO CEO, it’s oversimplification.  What executives typically want is information that’s summarized, not simplified.  For example, it doesn’t matter what happened on one particular day for one particular link – it’s more important to know the trend over the month for that link. 

And sometimes meaning trumps accuracy.  At the ground level, at the engineering level, guesswork and estimation are not very useful to the network engineer.  Heck, it may even bother you.  But at the summary level, at a broad view, that can provide very meaningful information, even though it's not 100% accurate.  To take a note from Cookie Monster, moving to “Cookie is a sometimes food,” note that Cookie Monster doesn’t bombard the viewer with how many calories are in a cookie – nor does he note that the “anytime foods” he eats, such as bowls of fruit, also have advantages and drawbacks in the nutritional area; and that everybody’s nutritional needs are different – but he still gives the viewers information that they can use.  “Cookie is a sometimes food.  Fruits and Veggies are an Anytime Food.”

“Well, me known for eating cookie,/When me don't, they shout,/"Look, he trying to throw loyal fans a curve!/What he doing eating fish,/Or vegetable dish?/Man, he sure got a lot of nerve!"

Well, me answer you straight,/When me filling up plate,/Taking only cookies is all wrong!/'Cause you also got to eat/Fruit or veggies and meat/If you want to be healthy and strong!”

And explain what needs to be done – add actionable items to the report.  You notice that every time Sesame Street introduces a letter, like for example, “C”, they actually give examples of its use – such as “Cookie.”  It’s one thing to say “The link to Houston is suffering from poor performance” – tell the CIO what he can do to improve that performance, whether it’s a new server, recoding the application, or more bandwidth. 

I guarantee you that you’ll get a warm and fuzzy feeling inside if you do.