Writing

Lessons from Presenting

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Life & Career, Working out loud

Last week I had a long and challenging presentation to give. Here’s some lessons that I take away from that experience:

Blogging helped: all the ideas in my keynote had been explored out loud before on this blog. It is so much easier to put together a big presentation when you have ideas that you have worked up, shared and discussed with others. Where I saw gaps in the presentation, I even blogged them to make sure I had worked out what I wanted to say.

Networks helped: a fortnight out from the talk I lost confidence that what I had to say was worth saying. I asked my Change Agent Worldwide colleagues for advice. As ever they were wonderful encouraging me to speak to my passions, tell stories and be practical.

A Role Models helps:: Looking for a role model to emulate, I studied Nilofer Merchant’s TED talk. At once, I saw a way to connect quickly with the audience and to advance my presentation.

Structure helped:With days to go I had my content, but a mess of a presentation. I went back to first principles and used Barabara Minto’s pyramid principle to rebuild the presentation. I discovered my issue. I had forgotten to explicitly make & support my main point. It sounds obvious but your point can get lost in all the action & theatrics. Fixing that helped.

Practice helped: All the way along I had been practising and refining the pitch. There was one more glitch. The night before I delivered the talk I felt my stories were like a laundry list and not very practical. As I grappled with this I realised I needed to add a pattern to help the audience follow the stories. I settled on Idea>Story>So What>Extended Story. This pattern forced me to make the ‘so what’ real in another story of the same organisation. That was good discipline and helped the flow.

Preparation Helps:Because of all the changes I need not have time to commit my talk to memory. I created a bullet point list of key points, lines and transitions. This enabled me to iron out kinks and simplify again. I was very nervous when I woke but the preparation gave me confidence it couldn’t be too bad. Thankfully my nerves vanished as I began to speak.

The audience enjoyed the talk. I couldn’t have been more thrilled that the message connected and people had idea to take away and try.

#Wolweek Day 1 – Start a Working Out Loud Circle

Posted on by simongterry in Working out loud

Day 1 is here

The best way to have an ongoing benefit from #wolweek is to start a working out loud circle.

A wol circle is intimate, personal & private.

A wol circle provides support for your practice of working out loud.

A wol circle will help you discover your purpose.

A wol circle focused you on the contributions you can make.

A wol circle gives you a scaffold on which to build habits and learn.

A wol circle deepens your connection to others.

Gather a few friends and start working out loud.

Social Capital

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

As long as humans have existed, people have sought to disrupt society with terror. Niccolo Machivelli outlined the importance of terror in The Prince seeing it as a means to ensure social stability. Dictators, revolutionaries, terrorists and criminal organisations have resorted to terror to market themselves and project an appearance of power. They cause horrendous carnage and spread sadness with a sole objective of fracturing social capital in their opponents and strengthening their own. Their success or failure in this effort is the secret to their ability to create, grow or sustain their power.

In the essay “Striking at the heart of the state?”, Umberto Eco once pointed out that the Brigado Rossi’s pronouncements on its Italian terror campaigns revealed its lack of understanding of power in society. While you may disagreed with his view of politics, Eco rightly pointed out that ‘the system displays an incredible capacity for restabilising itself and its boundaries’ following an attack. We grieve. We unite. We rebuild. We add security rituals and we go on. These responses are all part of our efforts to unite and restore social capital following an attack. Psychological research reminds us that social capital mitigates the psychological impact of terror. There is strength in unity as more than one politician has claimed in history.

Real power is does not “grow from the barrel of a gun” as Mao remarked. The power and potential of society lies in social capital. Mao’s successors in China know this as they work feverishly to create economic prosperity. Their greatest fear seems to be loss of social stability in society. Organisations that use terror know this too. These organisations invest in social services to replace absent or unaccountable states. They invite conflict and retribution because the ongoing battle unites their supporters and disrupts social capital of other forces in their societies. No doubt they will find the violence that they seek.

At the same time we must recognise, we have better connection, capabilities and tools than ever before to connect people, to develop community relationships and to build social capital. Sustaining and growing social capital is key to our future and of our societies. Let’s not be beaten in the creation and leverage of social capital by any of the forces of violence and darkness.

Practices vs Procedures

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

I have been asked by a few people who have seen the slides only whether the audience at The Change Management Institute found my talk practical. At first the question made no sense to me. How could a talk recommending four well documented practices not be practical?

Some of the issue is missing the text of the talk. You don’t get the whole story through pictures without the accompanying stories and discussion.

Then I realised the point of the question. In the presentation I talked about moving away from rigid process to adaptive learning. It would have been inconsistent with that theme to outline a 5-8 step procedure. The practices I recommended are about fostering mastery. The involve choices and learning. They are not procedures to be executed.

We are so used to the process mindset that a process is seen as the only practical option. I am very pleased the members of the Change Management Institute embraced new practices and saw the potential to learn and adapt through practice.

Learning and adaptation is the only practical way forward.

Talk, Ask & Learn

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

If we don’t discus & ask questions, we don’t learn.

At a recent social event, I heard a husband expressing his mystery as to what his wife was thinking. The more he talked the more obvious it was that they had never discussed the issue in any depth. He continued to wonder when the obvious solution was to ask.

One of the most powerful questions I ask in my consulting is ‘Why are we solving this problem?’ The first answers I get are often a variant of ‘I have been told to solve this problem’. That’s an order not an answer. Taking time to drill into the real rationale reveals richness that improves the project outcomes.

I meet many employees who want to improve their organisations but never discuss their ideas. They want to understand and do better but think it is not their place to ask. Without necessarily wanting to do so, their organisation frustrates the simplest act of autonomy, asking a question.

Without a rich and vibrant conversation about the issues that matter we fail to learn.

What you don’t do

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

We think in life about what we have done and it’s influence on who we are. The flip side is what we don’t do. What we don’t do defines us just as much.

What we didn’t do: the conversation we wanted to have, the followup we missed, the extra effort we could have made, the thought we overlooked, the ideas we never shared, purpose unmet, and the plans left unfulfilled.

What we can’t do: the skills we haven’t yet learned, the practice not yet perfected, the knowledge unknown, the bias & privilege we can’t see, the conflicts avoided, the sponsorship we missed, the advice unheard, and the deadline that’s gone.

What we won’t do: the values we will keep, the choices rejected, the beliefs unquestioned, the paths abandoned and the changes embraced.

Not all of what we do we control. Some opportunities depend on others. Some moments are so deeply held that they don’t feel like a choice. Whether we control it or not, what we don’t do affects us and deserves attention.

Much Loved Tools: Pyramid Principle

Posted on by simongterry in Learning, Life & Career

In a summer job during university I was introduced to Barbara Minto’s Pyramid Principle as a structure for communication. I’ve used the logic ever since. The lessons of that approach dig me out of all sorts of presentation messes.

Here are the big lessons I’ve learned applying the Pyramid Principle approach to fix communication:

– Remember to have one message: it is surprising how often you see a presentation without a message. These presentations forget to make their point succinctly because they are overfilled with ideas and with elaborate introductions, narratives and evidence
– Structure promotes simplicity: Structure clarifies thinking. Structure clarifies for the listener too. Best of all understanding the structure also makes you more adaptable to change. Only got 5 mins for your half hour presentation? Knowing your key points will help you home.
– Support ideas with evidence: Others forget to support their assertions. In those that do use evidence, in many cases the charts usually tell a different story to the text. Make it easy for your audience to see your evidence.
– Pyramids beats chains: Many presentations are long fragile chains of logic. I’ve seen someone fly around the world only to have the presentation fail at the first question. That presentation depended on all of a long chain of premises. The failure of one idea left all the work bereft. Pyramids stand on other support when one element falls.

The Purpose of Procrastiwork

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Procrastiwork is a term coined by Jessica Hische to describe the work you do when you are avoiding the work you should be doing. This blog often forms a part of my procrastiwork. I love the opportunity to work out loud, to clarify my ideas and the conversations that are spun up from these blog posts. I learn so much from my procrastination that it can be quite addictive.

Jessica Hische’s point in coining the phrase is to point out that procrastiwork is a great hint to the work you should be doing. If you choose that work, it speaks to you. I’ve experienced the power of finding purpose in the work. This blog is a big part of my personal purpose of making work more human and it was through posts here that those ideas were surfaced from my work.

Procrastination can be purposeful if you ask yourself the right questions. Work out loud on the work you do to avoid work. The repeated process of transparency and reflection will help you find insights as to purpose.

The Diversity of the Change Agent

Posted on by simongterry in Uncategorized

Change agents aren’t all alike. Organisations that fail to embrace the diversity of the change agent fail at change.

Change agents are a diverse bunch. 

Organisations tend to lump them together in an ‘outsider’ bucket. When change agents don’t think & act in the way of the majority then it is assumed their different way is shared. Yet change agents often find collaboration challenging when they don’t understand that a common desire for change can be driven from diverse motives and methods. 

Adam Morgan of eatbigfish describes 10 challenger narratives in The Challenger Almanac.  These narratives that give a sense of the diversity of motivations and approaches to change: 

  • People’s Champion – standing up for the exploited or overlooked
  • Missionary – ethical or ideological advocate 
  • Democratiser – challenging elitism and exclusivity 
  • Irreverent Maverick – the provocateur 
  • Enlightened Zagger – the deliberate contrarian 
  • Real & Human – advocating for the human 
  • The Visionary – transcending current ideas 
  • The Next Generation – improving fitness to the future
  • The Game Changer – rewriting the rules
  • The Feisty Underdog – battling the winners 

Few change agents fit cleanly in one narrative. Often many narratives will be woven into a unique personal approach. There are plenty of opportunities for conflict as to the objectives and methods in the diversity of narratives. 

Change agents and the organisations that seek to foster their work need to concentrate on building connection as to what is in common. Ideological debates and fractious debates as to approach can illuminate the diverse paths but they tend to delay action. 

Change agents need to embrace the action of others, learn from diverse perspectives and leverage alignment of narratives. Broadening the toolkit of change benefits both the change agents and their organisations.