I Want To Be Just Like Steve Jobs

Well, at least I sure would like to be able to give a speech like he does. Just in case anyone has been living under a rock for the past week or so, Steve Jobs rolled out the next version of the iPhone at the WWDC 2008 conference. Steve, as always, did a great job of giving the Apple corporate pitch. Clearly he has a nature skill for giving a great speech. We may never be as good at public speaking as Steve is; however, we sure can learn from him. Here are five quick tips from Steve to you:

1. Benefits NOT Features: This is where Steve is at his best. In his speeches he spends his time talking about the experience of using the product, not how the product was implemented. Instead of talking about the 30GB memory size of an iPod, instead he'll talk about the 7,500 songs that it can carry, or the 25,000 photos that it can carry, or the 75 hours of video that it can carry.
   
   
2. Practice and Then Practice Some More: Steve's a CEO of Apple, a board member of Disney, and probably still runs Pixar. You'd think that he'd have a team of speech writers create his speeches and then he'd just grab it, scan it, and jump up on the stage and give it. Nope, it turns out that he spends hours upon hours practicing each speech. A 2006 Business Week article reported that Steve would spend at least four hours going over every slide and every part of a demonstration as he prepars for a presentation.
   
   
3. A Picture Is Worth...: Have you ever seen a picture or a video from one of Steve's presentations? There are either no words or very few words on the slides that are displayed on the giant screens behind him. There are certainly no lists of bullet points. Steve (and his highly paid set of presentation artists) understand that it's really his words that count -- the slides are just there to support his message.
   
   
4. Energy + Enthusiasm = Passion: Every time Steve speaks, it's clear that he loves being on the stage and talking to us. You can almost feel his excitement grow as he gets ready to share with us the next great thing that he has up his sleeves. His passion is contagious and everyone in attendance can't help but catch it.

I'm not so sure about trying to emulate Steve's trademark jeans & black shirt look for your next presentation. However, understanding how Steve is able to do what he does so well will point you in the right direction.

IM Etiquette: R U Good At It?

IM is horrible. Long live IM. Perhaps depending on when you were born, we all have different views of the value of Instant Messaging (IM). If you've ever worked as a part of a widely distributed team, then like me you probably realize that it's an incredibly valuable tool -- if used correctly. It turns out that that's the rub -- IM tools get installed on everyone's desktop and then we're all just left to our own devices to figure out the social rules associated with using them.

Perhaps it's high time for us to discuss some of the do's and don'ts around using IM. The don'ts are the easiest, so here it goes:

1. Don't copy/paste/forward IMs to other people not involved in the discussion: this is just poor form. An IM chat is assumed to be a private conversation between two or more parties. If you become known as a person who shares what was discussed in a private chat with others, then nobody is going to be willing to chat with you anymore for fear that you'll share that chat with others. Small exceptions can be made for very technical instructions or such. Otherwise, summarize the other chat in your own words.
   
   
2. If you don't want it to get around the office, then don't say it in a chat: as the flip side to rule #1, if you'd be embarrassed to see what you wrote in a chat on the front page of your local paper, then it's probably the wrong thing to put in a chat. The guys at Enron (yes, they all seemed to be guys) found this out when their IM records were put on the web as part of the lawsuits.
   
   

Let's wrap up with some do's:

1. Do check your spelling: it's just like you were told in 2nd grade -- spelling and grammar both count. If I have to work to understand your IMs, then I'm probably not going to take the time unless you are my boss.
   
   
2. Do sign off from a chat: just stopping typing is a lousy way to let the other parties know that you're done chatting. Instead, do like the police/truckers do -- clearly communicate that you are done talking: "over & out" is my favorite. "Goodbye" works just as well.

So what are your IM etiquette lessons learned?

How To Write A Speech

I was asked to give a speech for a local company's "high achievers" group a little while back. It had been quite some time since I had actually had to sit down and think long and hard about what message I really wanted to get across to an audience. This made me go do some research on how good speechwriters find ideas that really shine.

Everyone who writes speeches for a living seems to agree about one thing: just get the first draft done. There are countless stories about folks who get hung up on trying to write the perfect speech and who spend so much time editing word after word that they never complete the speech. Just let the words flow and resist the urge to edit. Once it's all out there, then you can go back and have at it.

Write for the ear not the eye. What sounds great on paper probably sounds stilted and awkward when read aloud. For example, we use a lot of contractions when we speak (can't, won't, shouldn't) but we don't use them as much when we write. This difference will show up as a wordy, formal tone in any speech. Solve this problem by reading your speech out loud and actually listening to how it sounds. Then go back and rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.

PowerPoint is not all bad. Dr. John Medina’s book Brain Rules discusses how audiences lose focus after 10 minutes, so shifting gears, telling a story, etc. every 10 minutes will keep them focused and awake. Another rule is that a combination of both auditory and visual stimuli make your message 6 times more memorable than auditory alone. What this means is that if you use it the way that it should be used (as a helper, not a crutch), PowerPoint can boost the impact of your speech. But be careful -- it's easy to go overboard. My favorite saying is "There is a reason that you never see PowerPoint used during an eulogy."

Writing a speech should be an adventure. Often where we think that the effort will take us ends up not being where we finally arrive. However, doing a good job of speech writing will pay dividends that will have a value that lasts long after the speech is done.

Get 'Em To Understand, Get 'Em To Remember

Sigh, so you've spent all that time collecting your information, writing the report, making the slides and even created a great handout. Now how much of your presentation do you really think that your audience will remember 30 minutes after you are done, 1 hour later, 1 day later, how about at the end of a month? Getting our information to first be understood by our audience is one way to be a successful communicator. The other skill that you must have is finding a way to get your message(s) to stick in your audience's memory.

To promote understanding of your message, remember that people DO judge a book by its cover. In technical presentations this means that your audience will assume that if you have more of something in a figure, then the quantity of that thing is greater. Think about if you were trying to present plans for a new airplane and were trying to communicate how far it could fly. If you decided to show this by showing circles that showed how much fuel was required to fly a given distance. The circle for existing planes would be larger than the circle for your new plane. Although you are trying to communicate that your new plane can fly further, your figure is making it hard for your audience to understand this point.

We communicate information by changing things. As we move from one diagram or graph to the next if we've changed something, then our audience expects that that change really means something and we're trying to tell them something. This also means that if you want to communicate to your audience that there is a change in meaning, then you must make a change in the appearance of your figure / graph.

Ok, last point to be made: just like this blog posting, everyone has a limit to the amount of new information that they can take in. If you overload them with information, then they will not understand the message that you are trying to communicate. If you have a lot of information to present, then you can communicate it if, and only if, you present it piece by piece so that your audience can absorb it little by little.

Whew, all this might be too much for one post; however, I though that it was important and so there you go.

Differences Count When You Are Presenting

Ok, so you've got a big presentation coming up and you know that you want to make a difference and have the audience walk away with a good understanding of the complex info that you are going to present. What can you do to really make sure that you key points get hammered home? Setting yourself on fire halfway through the presentation or using trained animals both would be great, if impractical ways to accomplish this. How about two simpler ways that us technical folks always seem to forget as we pull together our presentations?


Audience Attention is drawn to LARGE differences that are perceptible.

Let's say that you've got a slide that contains one of the key points that you want to make to your audience. There is probably other things on that slide (like a title?). You need to make sure that your key point, be it a number, a comparison, a figure, etc. jumps out at your audience. Background images, scrolling text, clipart, video clips, etc. are all swell; however, if they distract from your key point then they need to go away. Keep in mind that PowerPoint's ability to have items join the slide via animation might be a good way to lead up to and introduce the key point.


People group elements into units automatically, which they then remember

The human mind is an amazing thing. We can quickly take in large quantities of information and rapidly make decisions about it. You can make this talent work for or against you in a technical presentation. Things that you place close to each other on a slide will automatically be considered to be related by your audience. A good example of this is labels and the thing that they are labeling. A bad example of this would be a graph that shows that both the price of copper ore and the price of apples have both increased by 25% in the past 6 moths. Both items would be shown closely together on the same graph and the audience would associate them. However, they really have nothing to do with each other (unless you are trying to talk about the cost of copper apples...).

Just a few things to consider when you are making that last pass though the big presentation that you've created -- do your main points jump out or are they buried?

How To Connect With Your Audience

So let's talk turkey: no matter how complex or technical the information that you are trying to communicate is, nor what setting you are trying to communicate it in, just how can you go about getting what you have to say to "stick" in your audience's minds? What can you say or do that is going to get them to talk about it, think about it long after you have completed what you have to say?

There are several things that you have to do an the first is to make sure that you connect with your audience. How to do that is what seems to escape all too many technical folks. Stephen Kosslyn in his book Clear and to The Point lays out a number of different ways to do this. Here are two of my favorites:

Your communication, no matter what form it takes, is going to have the greatest impact when you present neither too much nor too little information.

Think about this one for just a moment. It's very simple to understand; however, it's very hard to do correctly. Ultimately I believe that the key here is to start from the end: what do you want them to walk away with? You should then add everything that will be needed to make this happen and take away anything that does not contribute to this goal.

Your communication requires you to have prior knowledge of your audience's pertinent concepts, jargon, and symbols.

In the end, you've got to know your audience. If you present your technical information in a way that is different from how they communicate, then you are requiring them to work in order to understand what you are trying to say and there is a good chance that they may be unwilling to do this. Assuming that your audience knows more than they do or less than they really do will result in the communication of your technical material falling on deaf ears. Talk to them in a way that they want to be talked to.

Do IT CEO's Communicate Better Than Common Folk?

Greetings from Las Vegas! I'm currently attending a very large trade show that is put on by the giant storage company EMC. This year it's being held in Las Vegas and so far I'm only down about $100 or so; however, the conference goes for another two days so I can financially hurt myself still more!

The thing that I like best about attending this show is that if I move quickly, I can get a front row seat for the keynote addresses that are given by EMC upper level management team. I'm only vaguely interested in what they have to say, but I'm VERY interested in how they say it and if any of it sticks. Yesterday was the big kickoff: Joe Tucci who is the Chairman, Presidant, and CEO of this $15B firm. I had very high hopes: I mean, if anyone could buy their way to being an effective technical communicator, then Joe is the man.

So how did he do? Sadly, I believe that I'd have to give him a C. Maybe a C+, but that's it. He did a fantastic job of delivering a speech from a technical point of view: clear diction, no filler words, very little pacing, and his slides / graphics were top notch (but of course -- he's in charge of a $15B company!). So why does he just get a grade of C? He didn't connect with his audience. He talked for about an hour and must have hit on about 40 different points during his talk about EMC the company and all of it's products and upcoming product. However, I'm betting that 30 minutes after he was done, you could pull aside anyone who had attended and they'd be unable to remember more than one or two things that Joe said. When it was over, it was over -- the world had not be changed. What a waste!

I need to give Joe one little out here: he is in charge of the company. What he says can cause a change in the company's stock price and so he always has to be careful about what he says. However, that doesn't mean that he can get away with being boring.

Complaining is easy. Now how about if we talk about what Joe could have done differently to have been a more effective communicator. #1: know your audience, tailor your communication to your audience. Joe's audience was VERY technical. These are the people who live, eat, breath storage systems for a living. Joe talked at a very high level for his whole speech and thus didn't connect with anyone in the audience. He needed to at least once drop down into their world, show that he knows the types of challenges that they are facing, and then move on.

#2: Where's the passion? Joe delivered his entire speech in a flat, non-emotional tone. Yawn! Come on, Joe's from Boston the home of notorous hot heads. Oh, and he's a sales guy to his core. Get some of that passion to come out -- get people fired up! Tell the audience that HP and IBM make lousy products and that they made the right decision by selecting EMC products. Whatever -- just show that you really care about this stuff.

#3: Tell a story. Nowhere in Joe's speech did he include a story. Story's are how we have always learned. If Joe had included a story, then this is what everyone would have remembered long after he was done.

So to answer the original question: no, CEO's don't necessarily do a better job of communicating than you or I do. Good communication always comes down to the three basics: know your audience, care about what you are taking about, and use stories to give your audience a way to remember what you have said.