Life After PowerPoint!

A speech should be built around one, and only one, idea. But it has to be a big idea. Something that engages the imagination, the intellect, and the emotions. Something that illuminates complexity without being complicated or confusing. Something that causes people to wonder, to speculate, and ask more and better questions.

Here are three ideas for generating big ideas:

Read a Book

Reading a book — as opposed to browsing a summary, an article, or a website that has been optimized for mobile devices — requires attention, concentration, and sustained thinking. Books don’t just contain big ideas, they also train our minds to think big — to think long and hard and deep.

Nicholas Carr at Rough Type cites three quotations from Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, which show a progression in how he thinks the net affects the way we read as well as the way we think.

“The one thing that I do worry about is the question of ‘deep reading.’ As the world looks to these instantaneous devices … you spend less time reading all forms of literature, books, magazines and so forth. That probably has an effect on cognition, probably has an effect on reading.” 

Take a Hike

Hiking has at least two benefits.

First, hiking make us smarter. It’s a form of aerobic exercise, and as John Medina shows in Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School exercise increases our brain power.

Second, hiking gets us out in fresh air, sunshine, and nature. Which are all good things, not just for the body but for the soul. William Wordsworth, the great English romantic poet, said, “Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.” When I hike, alone or with others, I find myself thinking of things I hadn’t considered before. I wonder as I wonder. And wondering is a doorway into thinking big.

Just Don’t Do Something, Sit There

Silence and the willingness to sit in stillness are probably the greatest counter-cultural “activities” you can engage in. When everything urges you to just do it, it takes moxie not to do it or anything else. Stop cruising the internet. Turn off the TV. Take out the earbuds. Stop going to meetings. Spend less time responding to email. Be quiet and allow — don’t force — ideas to percolate up to your awareness. If you tune out or turn down the volume of all the noise around you, who knows what you might hear?

Where do your best ideas come from?

In the United States today is Presidents Day, a national holiday honoring George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Washington was not as well known for his oratorical skills as Lincoln. His best known speech, simply called “His Farewell,” was more of a letter to the American people at the end of his second and final term as president, which he read.

But before he was president, Washington gave a speech that had far greater impact.

In 1783 officers of the revolutionary army were hatching a plot. They’d heard that the fledgling government was broke and unable to pay them for their past services.

Washington knew that their insurrection would mean the end of the new republic. He walked uninvited into their angry gathering and for nearly half an hour pled for their loyalty. With little success.

At the end of his speech, he opened a letter from a member of congress, which detailed the efforts being made to pay the nation’s debts in full. Washington squinted, held the letter at arm’s length, and then fell silent. The officers looked at one another, puzzled.

Finally, the general reached into his coat and took out a pair of glasses. The officers had never seen their physically formidable commander with glasses. “Gentlemen,” he said, “you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray but almost blind in the service of my country.”

His humbling admission achieved what his rhetoric had not. Some of the officers wept, and in the words of his biographer, “From behind the shining drops, their heads looked with love at the commander who had led them all so far and long.” Talk of rebellion ended on the spot.

Sometimes it’s not our words, no matter how well chosen, but our relationship with our listeners — our mutual affection, trust, and respect — that carry the day.

Many speeches fail because the speaker simply fails to define his or her terms.

One of the problems of being an expert, of being immersed in your subject, is that you take certain key concepts or terms for granted. You know them so well that you assume other people know them too. And since you don’t want to insult your audience’s intelligence by explaining the obvious, you skip right over the most important part of your speech.

Always define or describe or illustrate your central idea, the most important terms, the key words.

There’s a great rhetorical device for doing so. It’s a form of contrast. You explain or illustrate or magnify something by setting it in opposition to what it isn’t.

So, for example, I recently listened to an hour-long corporate presentation about diversity. It was, on the whole, an excellent presentation, but the speaker failed to clarify what she meant by diversity. Finally, in the last five minutes during the Q&A she said, “Diversity isn’t about gender, ethnicity, race, or religion. It’s about attracting, hiring, and retaining the best people for the job.” Aha.

Not this…that. Or not this…but that.

“Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.” (Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 3)

Here’s another example from a book I’m reading (Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot by Peter Dunne): “The only thing that can defeat fear is that thing which is the opposite of fear, and bravery is not the opposite of fear. The opposite of fear is faith.”

Do you have any other examples?

I’ve written earlier about Erroneous Assumptions #1, #2, and #3 that derail speeches and presentations. Today I’d like to look at the Fourth Erroneous Assumption: “People should be fair and reasonable.”

We assume that if people were fair and reasonable as they should be the best ideas (i.e. ours) would win out. Or we assume that our ideas (the best ones) get shot down or passed over or ignored because people aren’t being fair and reasonable as they should be.

The assumption that people are or should be fair and reasonable is a delusion, “a mistaken or unfounded opinion or idea held in the face of evidence to the contrary.” And it keeps us from being as effective as we could be.

People aren’t fair and reasonable, at least not consistently. We — I’m including you and me in this — act out of thousands of motives. Some are contradictory. Some are unconscious. Some are noble. Some are self-serving. Some are frightening. Sometimes the results are wonderful to behold. Sometimes they make the angels weep. Put us in groups — families, neighborhoods, political parties, countries, religious communities, companies, work teams — and the motivations become all the more complicated and inconsistent, marvelous and deplorable.

OK, so people aren’t fair and reasonable. Don’t we have the right to think that they should be? Maybe so. But what good does that do?

“Should” is a denial of reality, of the way things are.

The world and the people who inhabit it aren’t perfect. Maybe they should be. But they aren’t. And expecting perfection is a trap.

What good does it do to protest that people should be fair and reasonable? Or that bad things shouldn’t happen to good people? Or that people shouldn’t lie, cheat, and steal? Or that people should be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent? (That’s from the Boy Scout Law, in case you missed it.)

I’m not against moral standards, mind you, or opposed to striving to be better people. On the contrary, I think we got ourselves into the current economic and political mess because a lot — and I mean a lot — of people acted shamefully.

When we talk to people — either individually or in groups — we’ll have a better chance of winning them to our side, if we get beyond thinking that they’ll always and everywhere be fair and reasonable.