Nuke the Bullets!

Great advice in this video on SUPPORTING your talk with a presentation (Powerpoint, Keynote, etc), not leaning on it.

Oriental Rugs & Business Writing

True story: I was once written up for using college level vocabulary on the job. Yes, it was in a written performance evaluation. No, I was not writing for a living at the time; was running a line of business. You might not guess that my employer was a bank, where most workers had some college and many had MBAs. Go figure. Just one of the reasons I’m forever freelance.

There’s a place for arabesques in writing — that place is usually literature or narrative nonfiction. When I write for business I’ve learned to use them sparingly (or link to the definition!).

Business writers need to err on the side of spartan communications. Well-written, engaging and action-oriented, while spartan.

Trim the fat

Teaching by example, I edited the opening sentences of this WordPress blog post to rid it of verbal flourishes and the loathsome passive voice. I kept “nascent” for the paragraph’s arabesque.

It is with extremely great pleasure that I point you to the first post at the new I’m pleased to introduce you to the WordPress Foundation site. Not only am I excited about the things that will happen under the auspices of the Foundation, I’m proud of what the Foundation will do, and excited to see a site running the 3.0 development version and the nascent theme called 2010.

In the edited post above, “extremely great pleasure” and “under the auspices of” belong in a royal decree, not a business message.

Boilerplate blight

Since business communications are usually intended to sell something — an idea, product, feeling or investment — stick with the big picture or high concept.

I’ll make my point visually, with Oriental rugs (below). The closeup on the left shows intricate detail, but you can’t see the whole rug, whereas the photo on the right gives you the big picture at the cost of the individual motifs.

There’s an ideal use for each photo. If you were a rug merchant who had to choose between the two, you’d use the larger one to entice your prospective client into the store to examine the design and craftsmanship. Same with business communications, which are ultimately designed to sell anything from a product to a feeling to an investment. The goal of written communications is usually to get people to make the next step, which might be making the purchase or calling for more information.

Financial communications often require the equivalent of both photos (detail and big picture). If you’re writing something with boilerplate requirements, write less and use visuals like sidebars, graphics and headers to keep the reader’s attention on your pitch and off the fine print.

Visual perspective

When you look at the closeup of the rug to the left, you know you’re not looking at the entire rug because there are enough visual cues that it’s a part of the whole (no border, no symmetry of design, etc).

The photo to the right might be the rug’s border or the entire rug, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a closeup of the border because if it were the entire rug the right and left ends wouldn’t be chopped off.

This photo clearly shows the entire rug, but you have no way to know if it’ll fit in your dining room. If it had been photographed with a dog, human or piece of furniture — better yet, a dining room table and chairs — you’d have a clue.

Whole-brain communications note: this post taught about writing but did so in a visual manner.

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Low-Jargon Financial Blogs & Newsletters

I write blogs and newsletters for attorneys, advisors and accountants. These professionals often need to provide complex information without making their clients’ eyes glaze over.

Professionals  with compliance/malpractice concerns  too often navigate the middle of the road where nothing meaningful is communicated. Some admit they hope readers will pick up the phone and call for clarification “on the clock.” Bad strategy.

Everyone faces this challenge of writing thorough-yet-understandable communications  from time to time. Here are writing tips for newsletter or blog writers who aspire to communicate without using jargon on one hand, or dumbing down the message on the other.

It’s a conversation, not a treatise

• Provide links to jargon, technical definitions and 50-cent SAT words like “treatise.” This way, everyone can get as much info as they need on their own and your writing doesn’t bog down
• Don’t mistake your articles for term papers!
  • Use headers, bolds and links to enable (gasp) skimming
  • Avoid passive voice; use active voice
  • Write to the appropriate reading level of your audience
    • Run your copy through a fog index calculator (tells the number of years of education needed to understand what you’ve written)
    • If you use Google Docs, click Tools>Word Count and find the analysis at the bottom
• You’re not a professor
  • Don’t try to tell everything you know about the subject. Pare it down to the essentials
  • For weighty topics, write a series of short articles
  • Provide an intro to the topic in your newsletter and link to your blog/elsewhere for details. If you can find a video (or make one yourself) your audience will be grateful. Here’s how one of my clients does it
  • Leverage industry videos and handouts (be sure to comply with licensing and copyrights)

Engage readers

• Invite them to leave comments and comment on those of others
• Offer a free worksheet to help them apply the information to their lives — invite them to review the information with you off the clock, if appropriate
• Ask readers to weigh in on a topic by linking to a survey that gives them the option to see how their answers compare to those of other respondents
• Poll readers for future articles on similar/related subjects

Brains need variety

• 

  This infographic is from a parody site

  Use stories – our brains are wired for stories -and people “find” themselves in them.

• Use case studies for the same reasons

• Link to a narrated presentation deck or video to stimulate the story-receptive part of readers’ brains. One of my clients does this very well

• Use  infographics or produce your own charts and tables. FlowingData is a great resource to learn about them and you might find one to use there

What techniques have you or others used to make complex information digestible? What have you seen out there that turns you off? 

Brains Need Stories

Evidently story-loving is a function of our brain’s development. We’re biologically wired for them.

In a Washington Post story I learned: “Roughly around age 4, psychologists say, a child develops a ‘theory of mind.’ The child suddenly grasps that other people have feelings, thoughts, just like the child’s own. From this great mental leap comes a secondary, almost accidental talent: We can get inside the heads of people whom we never actually meet except in stories. This is why fiction works. Huck Finn and Harry Potter seem real enough.”

Is this why Steve Jobs is the world’s greatest keynoter? Because he’s a great storyteller? In the new book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs we learn his three-act methodology:

• Act1 is to create a story with seven tips (chapters or scenes) in crafting a great story behind the presentation
• Act 2, delivery of an experience with six scenes for adding appealing visuals to a presentation.
• Act 3, refine and rehearse and rehearse some more with five scenes discussing body language, verbal delivery, and using appropriate dress

I wrote a post on PowerPoint and effective presentations a couple of months ago that got excellent traction with readers. Join the discussion.

Prompts for Professionals

Next time you’re trying to deliver a memorable presentation try:

• Aesop’s Fables
  • When you want to make a point that appearances may be deceiving try The Cat, the Rooster and the Young Mouse
  • When you want to illustrate the power of positive versus negative influence, try The Wind and the Sun
  • You’ve probably heard the phrase “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”– here’s a fresh approach: The Dog and His Reflection
• In this economy, many CEOs and companies could be compared to Icarus
• And when talking about messes that need a dramatic approach, refer to Heracles and the Augean Stables or The Gordian Knot

Collaging for Answers

Every business should periodically examine its market position. This summer I spent time with artist and consultant Catherine Anderson, who guided me through a process of collecting hundreds of images and snippets of text to make a series of collages about my life, work and clients. Toggling between collaging and the more traditional marketing exercises in Book Yourself Solid I clearly determined the kinds of people and projects that energize and satisfy me most.

This whole-brained process sharpened the focus of my business: I ghostwrite for financial professionals — advisors, accountants and attorneys — who are too busy with their own clients’ work to research the best communication channels and write their own newsletters, blogs, presentations, articles and books. They can’t trust their professional reputation to a rookie, which is why they work with me, a former financial services executive who writes like an English major. As a result of partnering with me, my clients solidify relationships, gain referrals, increase their self-confidence and have better scripting to use when talking about their work — in person, print and presentations.

If you need a sounding board as you sharpen your professional focus, give me a call.

Corporate Bankruptcy Word Cloud

Here’s a free word cloud maker:  www.wordle.net

Simply copy-paste your text or give Wordle an RSS feed and let it work its magic.  When it spits out your custom image, you can play with the layout, fonts and colors to your heart’s content.

I took the two (so far) responses to “Corporate vs Personal Bankruptcy Attitudes” and fed them through Wordle and got this result:

Financial Word Clouds

Catching up on reading this weekend and came across two great word clouds in Pat Allen’s Rock The Boat Marketing blog.

For those new to my blog, I post word clouds because they’re valuable whole-brain communications tools; a brief glance tells you what’s important to the author.   Use them in presentations, websites and white papers.

Tell me, please, where you’ve employed a word cloud.

Fidelity’s July US economic update

Oppenheimer’s Weekly Market Review

“I loved the way he used PowerPoint”

The anti-PPT bandwagon doesn’t have room for another rider. My only addition to the chorus  is that a bad PPT-based presentation is like a bad dog — blame the owner!

PPT isn’t inherently bad, but, like a Rotweiller, can be placed in the wrong hands and do real damage.

I generally agree with the authors of Real Leaders Don’t do PowerPoint: How to sell yourself and your ideas, “You are the message. Who you are–your character, experience, values–shapes the message your listeners hear.”

Dan Ariely, PowerPoint master

Last year I heard Dan Ariely, bestselling author and professor at my B-school (Fuqua — Duke) speak on behavioral economics and his first book Predictably Irrational.

In staccato diction, he regaled us with tales of our irrational behavior — like why we won’t pay $3000 for a leather couch in the family room while we will pay the same amount for a leather interior in our family car — and he did it with the delivery skills of any comedian’s aspiration.

If he’d been a rock star we’d have whipped out our cigarette lighters and stomped our  feet until he gave an encore.

And yes, he used PPT, including a slide with an x-ray of Homer Simpson’s brain.  See?  I remembered that one.

In defense of PowerPoint

Recall a time when someone gave a terrific, memorable, actionable presentation WITH PPT, as Professor Ariely did.

I’ll wait.

OK, I can’t wait all day.

If you did have the good fortune of attending such an event, you’ll recall that PPT didn’t make it great — it was great because the speaker had something to say and said it with conviction; they knew their stuff cold, engaged the audience, told stories and stayed ON POINT.  Did the PPT help?  Maybe, after all, who knows how it would have gone without the screen?

Reasons for PPT:

• Leave-behind for those who couldn’t make it to the live event
• Guided handout for taking notes
• Satisfies the need for visual stimulation
• Illustrate points graphically

Bottom line:  No one says “I loved the way he used PowerPoint;” but if you’re a good presenter they’ll say “I’d go see him speak again.”

Malcolm Gladwell speaks

A friend of mine had the good fortune of attending The Foundation for the Carolinas’ annual meeting.  You can hardly drag me to one of those, but I wish I’d gone to this one.  Why?  Bestselling author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell did the keynote.

According to my friend, Gladwell took a wireless mike and roved the audience, telling stories about a town in (I believe) Pennsylvania and how and why it prospered and failed.  My friend, a public relations pro who is not easily impressed, was awed.

Just the opposite of Ariely, Gladwell is soft spoken.  Where Ariely is irreverent, Gladwell is earnest.  Both can bring the house down.

I’m not a qualified speaking coach — my specialty is the content — but to me this is the bottom line:  You don’t have to be “dynamic” to get your message across.  The book mentioned earlier, Real Leaders Don’t do PowerPoint: How to sell yourself and your ideas, got good reviews and the website and book Presentation Zen is chock full of great stuff. And I’m always here to help.

It’s easy to bash PPT, and you’re welcome to bash away in the comments section.  I’d really like to hear from you about a presentation that thrived WITH the visual support.

Play Piano, Outrun Mean Dogs: All in your Brain

Turns out my parents could have saved the money they spent on a piano.  I could have learned to play almost as well in my imagination.

In a chapter of The Brain That Changes Itself, I learned about an experiment where a “mental practice” group sat in front of an electric piano keyboard for two hours a day and imagined playing a sequence of notes and hearing them played, while the other “practice group” actually played the music on the keyboard.

Both groups had their brains mapped before the experiment, each day during it, and afterward. When each group played the sequence of notes they’d been imagining or practicing, the computer measured accuracy.

By the third day, the imagined group played as accurately as the practiced group. By the fifth day the practiced group made gains, but those gains were overcome by the imagined group with a single two-hour physical practice session.

What this means to business communicators

This goes way beyond the so-called power of positive thinking. The book reported on a study where the subjects who did physical exercise of a sort increased their muscular strength by 30% while those who only imagined the same exercises increased theirs by 22%.

This has real implications for business communicators. For example, if you were selling widgets or sports drinks to kids in tough neighborhoods, instead of making general claims like “Widget will make you run faster & jump higher,” you should try “Buy Widget to outrun mean neighborhood dogs — even while jumping trashbags and open manholes.”

Not only would more kids try Widget, the visual image of them navigating the urban obstacle course might convince their brains they could do it.

What’s next for Widget? Maybe the kids would start a viral marketing campaign…

Beware the Fart Joke

Catching up on reading this week at the beach, including past issues of my favorite magazine, The Atlantic.

The November 2008 edition carried a fascinating article that touched on neuroeconomics, or the neurophysiology of economic decisions. I love this stuff.

According to Yale professor of psychology, Paul Bloom, “…remembering something is easiest while you are in the same state in which you originally experienced it. Students do better when they are tested in the room in which they learned the material; someone who learned something while he was angry is better at remembering that information when he is angry again; the experience of one’s drunken self is more accessible to the drunk self than to the sober self. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

Bloom’s research underscores why effective business communications need to take people to an emotional place in order to cement the message. Warren Buffett did this well in his 2009 annual letter to shareholders when he drew a parallel between derivatives and venereal disease:  “Participants seeking to dodge troubles face the same problem as someone seeking to avoid venereal disease: It’s not just whom you sleep with, but also whom they are sleeping with.”

If that gives you a creepy feeling, the Oracle from Omaha met his objective; he hates derivatives.

More Buffett bon mots:

• Tony and I feel like two hungry mosquitoes in a nudist camp. Juicy targets are everywhere.

• By year end 2007, the half dozen or so companies that had been the major players in this business had all fallen into big trouble. The cause of their problems was captured long ago by Mae West: “I was Snow White,but I drifted.”

• If merely looking up past financial data would tell you what the future holds,the Forbes 400 would consist of librarians.

• The tennis crowd would call my mistakes “unforced errors.”

• Upon leaving, our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: “I liked you better before I got to know you so well.”

• Investors should be skeptical of history-based models. Constructed by a nerdy-sounding priesthood using esoteric terms such as beta, gamma, sigma and the like, these models tend to look impressive. Too often, though, investors forget to examine the assumptions behind the symbols. Our advice: Beware of geeks bearing formulas.

Advice for speakers

Back to Paul Bloom in The Atlantic story,  “Good smells, such as fresh bread, make people kinder and more likely to help a stranger; bad smells, like farts (the experimenters used fart spray from a novelty store), make people more judgmental. If you ask people to unscramble sentences, they tend to be more polite, minutes later, if the sentences contain positive words like honor rather than negative words like bluntly. .. All of these studies support the view that each of us contains many selves-some violent, some submissive, some thoughtful-and that different selves can be brought to the fore by different situations.“

Next time you’re delivering a presentation, keep this in mind.  The oft-repeated advice to open with a joke should be tempered by what you just learned about neurophysiology — don’t make it a fart joke.

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