Life After PowerPoint!

In Emotional Structure: A Guide for Screenwriters, Peter Dunne makes an interesting distinction. He writes: “The plot provides the action: the film’s motion. And the story provides the reaction: the film’s emotion.”

Plot is what happens to the main character. Story is what the character becomes as a result.

GI Joe Cast

Action movies — think Transformers, GI Joe, X-Men — are heavy on plot. One action careens into another, sometimes logically, sometimes not. The characters may or may not change, but whatever change they do make is relatively minor and always subordinate to the action.

I make a similar distinction. I think that a speech’s content is its information and ideas: what the speech is about. And its message is what the content means: how the information ties together in a way that the audience can understand and use.

Technical presentations can be a lot like action movies. They are often heavy on content: more PowerPoint slides that can possibly be adequately addressed in the time available and — always — too much information for the audience to understand and absorb. Too often the message, if there is one, gets overwhelmed by the content. How many times have you walked away from a presentation wondering what it was about?

You — and your audience — should be able to sum up your message in one sentence. The content is there to substantiate, illustrate, or explain your message.

What do you think?

I work with a lot of technical teams as they’re preparing oral proposals for large contracts. The contracts may be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Scores of people may be engaged in the process for weeks or months on end. And the presentations may involve hundreds of slides. Somewhere along the way someone — usually the capture manager or the person in charge of shepherding the proposal through the process — will ask “What’s our story?”

I’m not quite sure what the question means.

This much I know. People who ask “What’s our story?” are not thinking about story the same way I do. I think of a story, in its most basic form, as a narrative about a person (a character) who goes through a series of actions (a plot) that results in a change of some sort (the resolution), usually to the character but sometimes to the situation.

When people involved in a large technical presentation talk about its story, they’re talking about something else. (I believe that even — or especially — highly technical presentations can be improved by telling a story in the sense I described above. But that’s the topic of another post.)

Here’s what I think technical people mean by a presentation’s story. Or, at least, here’s what I hope they mean. The presentation’s story is the thread that ties everything together into a unified, meaningful, and desirable whole. It is a one-sentence summary of how you — your team, resources, knowledge, approach, tools, products, technology, etc. — can help your audience get from where they are to where they want to be.

Before I elaborate on this idea, let me ask for your input. Have you heard people use the term story in this way? Do you use the term yourself? What do you mean by it? Is it something like what I’ve described?

I’m not going to analyze the content of President Obama’s acceptance speech in Oslo, other than to say I enjoyed the fact that it was substantial enough to merit discussion.

(For the full text of his speech, go here.)

Instead I’m going to use his speech as a jumping off point to discuss three points about how and why leaders give speeches.

First, leaders speak all the time, and most of their speeches can be grouped into three categories:

1. Stump speeches are speeches that leaders give over and over again. Politicians on the campaign trail may give their stump speech four or five times a day — word for word the same but to different audiences. Leaders in other arenas — in nonprofit circles, in the corporate world, in the public sector — do the same thing. They develop a speech (maybe two or three) that sets out their main themes or principles. They refine and polish that speech, and they more or less commit it to memory.
2. Ceremonials are mini-speeches that leaders are frequently called upon to deliver. Welcoming visitors, accepting or giving an award, proposing a toast, introducing a dignitary, speaking at an induction ceremony, a graduation, or a retirement — all such events are ceremonials. Experienced leaders save themselves a lot of time by a) using a simple template for each different type, and 2) incorporating the themes or principles from their stump speeches into their ceremonials.
3. Policy statements are one-time-only speeches that set out a leader’s thoughts about some important event, development, or occasion. When a CEO announces a new direction or a major acquisition, when the executive director of a nonprofit agency launches a new initiative, or when a community leader addresses a governmental body, they are making policy statements. They are the most labor-intensive type of speech a leader gives, because they require so much thought, so much is riding on them, and they will only be given once.

Obama’s speech in Oslo earlier this week was a policy statement.

Second, leaders give speeches for one of three reasons.

1. To shape a group’s identity — Leaders are constantly telling their audiences who we are, what we value, where we have come from (our history), and where we are headed (our mission). A significant section of Obama’s speech was devoted to telling his audience about what it means to be an American.
2. To influence who the audience thinks and feels about an important issue — Leaders aren’t primarily concerned about communicating information. They don’t want to add to the audience’s storehouse of knowledge; they want to shape how the audience perceives what they already know. The bulk of Obama’s speech does this. He devotes at least two-thirds of his speech to discussing war, the necessity of using force, and the conditions of peace.
3. To inspire the audience – Leaders call their audiences to act in a way that is consistent with their deeply held beliefs and values. (For my discussion about how inspiration is different from motivation, go here.) Obama ended his speech on an inspirational note: “So let us reach for the world that ought to be…”

Third, leaders don’t do PowerPoint.

Okay, so that just so happens to be the title of my book, but I can’t see how Obama’s speech would have been improved in any way by PowerPoint. Save PowerPoint for presentations, when your main objective is to communicate information. Whether you’re giving a stump speech, a ceremonial, or a policy statement, whether you’re speaking to identify, influence, or inspire, stay away from PowerPoint. Trust yourself and the power of your words.

Let’s not get into a political discussion here. There are other blogs devoted to that. But I’d love to hear what you took away from Obama’s speech.

In case I haven’t mentioned it often enough I’ve written a book, Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint. It’s published in the U.S. by Crown Business. And it’s been brought out in Brazil, the Netherlands, China, Australia, and the U.K.

It is being published this week in India by Piatkus. (You can buy it online through IndiaPlaza here.)

Here’s an excerpt from the chapter titled “Content Is King.”

It’s true that some perfectly good ideas have been ignored or discounted because they were poorly delivered. And, conversely, some bogus ideas have made more of an impact that they deserve because they were so well delivered. So I’m not saying that delivery is unimportant. Far from it. A masterful delivery is one of the cornerstones of a great speech.

But clearly the words you use and what they mean are more important than how you say them. Content is king. Delivery is merely its helpful, or unhelpful, servant.

When my clients need to spruce up their appearance, I refer them to an image consultant I know. She’s accustomed to working with business professionals, so she doesn’t go for glamour or glitz. “I don’t want people to look at someone I’ve dressed and say, ‘That’s a great tie’ or ‘I love that blouse,’” she explains. “I want them to say, ‘You look sharp.’”

Similarly, you don’t want people to go away from your speech saying, “You used great vocal variety” or “Your gestures were truly outstanding.” Instead, you want them to get the big picture. You want them to see things the way you see things, to feel about them the way you feel about them, to want to act the way you want them to act. You want people to pay attention to your message, to remember it, and to be changed by it.

I visited India for two months some time ago (as in 20 years ago) and had a great time. I hope to return in order to see more. To my readers in India, namaste.