The secret structure of great talks + some great visuals

If you are like me, you need to present your ideas in public every now and then. Then you'd better invest one and a half hours in yourself by watching these two presentations.

First one by Nancy Duarte, a professional presentation designer and trainer, about the secret structure of great talks. In her TEDx Talk from November 2011 she is decomposing the structure of two great speeches, one by Steve Jobs, and one by Martin Luther King. Supported by great visuals and finishing with a very personal story.

The second one is Barack Obama's 2012 State of the Union speech with enhanced graphics. It is very interesting to listen to his speech having in mind how Nancy Duarte just decomposed Martin Luther King's speech. President Obama is using the very same techniques to connect with his audience in a very emotional way. See for example how he refers to his grandparents at around 5 minutes of the speech. And just look at how the visuals have been designed to support the story.

Enough said, at least I have a lot to learn from these presentations.


Nancy Duarte talks at TEDx East


2012 State Of The Union Address: Enhanced Version

State of the Union - Enhanced Graphics

Simplicity

Two years ago I saw Presentation Zen guru Garr Reynolds talk about a new way of presentations. To me it was really eye opening and gave me a totally new of seeing, creating and delivering presentations.

Last summer he delivered the following keynote speach about simplicity. His earlier talk is included in my earlier post Presentation Skills

The presentation is 43 minutes long, and you can read Garr's thoughts about it in his blog. I decided to post it today, because tomorrow Garr is delivering a presentation at Apple Store Ginza.

I will be there tomorrow. Last time I saw him had such a lasting influence on me and I realized that the search for simplicity was a common topic in many books.

Simplicity has became 2nd most frequent tag in my blog. Below some examples:

• Lean can lead to extreme simplicity like at NBK where I visited last summer.
• Management would be awesomely simple without change resistance (and with the right people on board change resistance simply disappears).
• My presentation about Really Simple Balanced Scorecard has exceeded all my expectations in every measure, especially with my simple measure for Customer satisfaction.
• My Mac is about the size of the dvd drive in my old PC. My iPod is smaller than my USB-stick. They simply work!

Let's keep it simple!

A3 - Toyota’s way of solving problems and creating plans

Toyota has designed a two-page mechanism for attacking problems. In July MIT Sloan Management Review published an article about what can we learn from Toyota's A3.

• The A3’s constraints (just 2 pages) and its structure (specific categories, ordered in steps, adding up to a “story”) are the keys to the A3’s power.


• Though the A3 process can be used effectively both to solve problems and to plan initiatives, its greatest payoff may be how it fosters learning. It presents ideal opportunities for mentoring.


• It becomes a basis for collaboration.

Unlike in my presentation, a real A3 plan is formed trough a series of productive dialogue and iterations which serve on building a common understanding and agreement on the situation and planned actions. Common understanding and agreement are always great help when implementing any plan.

Learning from the Best

This time my blog post is a little different. It is a case example of how

I have been trying to teach business strategy to my wife.

She is an elementary school teacher and could not care less about business strategy. But I decided to try, because her situation makes it rather relevant.

She has been a teacher for more than ten years in Finland, which has been ranked the highest-performing country in education. We currently live in Japan, and the Japanese are extremely interested on what is the secret behind Finland's success, and why their system is no longer as effective.

Jim Collins, in his book Good to Great, defines a Hedgehog Concept. A concept which helps you, the hedgehog, to beat your competition, the fox, no matter how hard he tries. My wife has been able to combine the three elements for the concept

1. What you can best in the world at – she is the best expert of Finnish school system in Tokyo


2. What drives your economic engine – what she has done provides small extra income, enough to motivate her


3. What are you deeply passionate about – as any teacher, she is passionate of her job

Treacy and Wiersema describe three strategic value disciplines that can create customer value and provide a competitive advantage. One of them is customer intimacy - cultivating close and long term customer relationships and intimate knowledge of customer requirements. She has managed to do that with Gakken, the biggest educational publisher in Japan. And to some extent with Mrs Itokazu, a member parliament, who is hosting and advertising her next presentation.

On her presentations we have applied the tips from Presentation Zen. You can see some sample slides here. Being her secretary, it is really refreshing to be able to design simplistic slides. Naturally she has a handout to go along with the slides.

Teachers are professionals in delivering presentations. And her presentation is Made to Stick. It has the elements of SUCCESs, it’s Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and is told with Stories.

Her book, The power of Finnish education (in Japanese) was written by a Japanese journalist from a Japanese point of view. It contains Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible and Emotional Stories like in chapters called "My first time as home room teacher – of 33 students!", "Children deciding classroom rules", "Summer holiday without homework" and "Are field trips a nightmare for teachers?".

This is how I see her strategic position. She is not yet convinced about that and still wonders why people are interested to hear her presentation and even pay for that.

The name of this blog post is borrowed from an article written about her and the Finnish education system on page 48-49 on iNTOUCH magazine.

Presentation Skills

Earlier this year I joined one of my colleagues to a presentation by Garr Reynolds, the author of the great book Presentation Zen. During his presentation I realized that

I have given many bad presentations
and
I have seen many bad presentations.

I decided to try a different approach, in the office, and at SlideShare. But as pictures tell a story better than words, I'll show you what I mean.

This presentation by Rowan, or actually the first half of the presentation, best describes bad PowerPoints. Have you seen any?




To get an idea of Presentation Zen, you need to give it a thought and spend some time on Garr's blog, check his presentation tips, buy his book, or take an hour to watch a presentation he gave at Google in March. It's pretty much the same presentation I saw live, and it's an hour well spent!



If you don't have much time now, here is a good example by Justin about points to remember. Not directly based on Presentation Zen, but sharing many of the topics. And nicely simplified!




When was the last time you saw a really great presentation?
How was it done and delivered?

How can we forget such simple hints so often?

Leading Change

There is a lot of talk about the need of change, but much less about

How To Lead Change

John Kotter presented his model of Leading Change in Harvard Business Review in 1996. In 2006 he slightly updated the model in his book Our Iceberg Is Melting - Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions.

I created a presentation about the model, which is rather simple and universal. It can be applied to any change - global or small.

Our Iceberg Is Melting - Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions

SET THE STAGE

1. Create a Sense of Urgency.
Help others see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.

2. Pull Together the Guiding Team.
Make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change— one with leadership skills, bias for action, credibility,
communications ability, authority, analytical skills.

DECIDE WHAT TO DO

3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy.
Clarify how the future will be different from the past, and how you can make that future a reality.

MAKE IT HAPPEN

4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy-in.
Make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.

5. Empower Others to Act.
Remove as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so.

6. Produce Short-Term Wins.
Create some visible, unambiguous successes as soon as possible.

7. Don’t Let Up.
Press harder and faster after the first successes.
Be relentless with instituting change after change until the vision becomes a reality.

MAKE IT STICK

8. Create a New Culture.
Hold on to the new ways of behaving, and make sure they succeed, until they become a part of the very culture of the group.


Can you think of a change process where this model is not valid?

How Do We Educate Our Children?

I believe that the

Foundation for Lifelong Learning is laid at school

Living abroad, we often have to answer the question:

"How do you educate your children?"

Some times people want to know about education when living in a foreign country, but most often about education at our home country. To answer that question I made a presentation, which is my entry to the World's Best Presentation Contest 2008.

If you like it, please exercise your right to vote and spread the word.

Thank you!

Samuli

I made this presentation based on some 20 years of education, and some 15 years of lifelong learning, and with the help of some books I have been reading lately

About creating and presenting a message

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heat and Dan Heat

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds

About distributing the message

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams

The Word of Mouth Manual by Dave Balter and Seth B. Minkin

And as word of mouth is free, the book can be also downloaded for free as a pdf from
ChangeThis.com - spreading important ideas and changing minds.

Skills to Make You an Effective Manager

I have just returned from a Leadership training and to summarize that I decided to write about Management skills. Why? Because the trainer, Dr. Angelo Kinicki, links management and leadership tightly together

The management skills constitute a cycle of
goal creation, commitment, feedback, reward, and accomplishment,
with human interaction at every turn.

In his book Angelo points out that management is primarily about dealing effectively with people – being effective in leadership.

He lists 11 observable categories of managerial behavior, identified by Clark Wilson.

There is a bit of Curse of Knowledge in these books, but if you look close they provide really great advice, so I tried to make a Made to Stick presentation of them:

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Effective Manager

1. Clarifies goals and objectives for everyone involved.
2. Encourages participation, upward communication and suggestions.
3. Plans and organizes for an orderly work flow.
4. Has technical and administrative expertise to answer organization-related questions.
5. Facilitates work trough team building, training, coaching, and support.
6. Provides feedback honestly and constructively.
7. Keeps things moving by relying on schedules, deadlines, and helpful reminders.
8. Controls details without being overbearing.
9. Applies reasonable pressure for goal accomplishment.
10. Empowers and delegates key duties to others while maintaining goal clarity and commitment.
11. Recognizes good performance with rewards and positive reinforcement.

Actually, at the training, Angelo emphasized three topics

1. Goals
2. Feedback
3. Rewards

You could say that the other steps are means to effectively lead and manage your team to achieve the goals.

And there are plenty of tools and techniques for each step, but that's another story. These are the important skills you need to remember to get tools and techniques for.

Simple, isn’t it?

And well in line with my Manager's Toolbox Mission and Vision

Really Simple Balanced Scorecard

My original idea for this blog was to document here “the best practices I have collected trough the years”. In order to “have 5 pages of text and examples of every tool and”

Enough material for 1-2 hours training and 2-3 hours workshop on each topic.

While I was writing my previous posts, I realized that I in deed enough text about Balanced Scorecard as a management system and about building a Balanced Scorecard. But I was missing the presentation.

So I created a really simple presentation about Balanced Scorecard “in order to simplify and remember it - to make them stick.” quoted from the below my logo on the right And in order to exercise presentations according to the 7th Effective Habit.

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If you want to download the presentation, you need to go to my SlideShare page. ;-)

As a hand out, you can print out these posts My Management System and Building a Balanced Scorecard.

I am referring to these books in the presentation:

Made to Stick by Chip Heat and Dan Heat

Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds (whom I’ve met)

Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step by Paul R. Niven (whom I’ve also met. And this is not the complex textbook I refer to!)

Brain Rules by John Medina

And to The Blues Brothers DVD


Now you should ask yourself:

“To achieve your vision, how will you
sustain your ability to change and improve?”

Effective Habits

Another book I have been reading lately is a classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Yesterday Marina had posted this great visual summary of the book to SlideShare.

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I especially like these habits

Habit 1: Be proactive “You are respons-able: able to choose your respons!"
Proactive people focus their efforts in their circle of influence, causing the circle of influence to increase Reactive people focus their effort in the circle of concern. The negative energy generated by that focus causes the circle of influence to shrink.

Habit 5: Seek first to understand, then to be understood
We have such a tendency to fix things up with good advice, but often we fail to take the time to diagnose, to really deeply understand another human being first.

Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
Read, write, relax, exercise, play, love, get involved, meditate …

But all of the Habits are good and necessary.

There's a lot of good stuff out there at SlideShare. It seems to be a haven for people like me, who have seen too many bullet points (and used plenty of them also).

After understanding the problem (habit 5),
I read, view and exercsce new kind of presentations (habit 7)
to start a change within my expanding cicle of influence (habit 1).

Brain Thinks Visual

Garr Reynolds published another great post at his blog. This time about

Delivering a presentation in a way
that will ensure internalization
by the receiving brain

Not surprisingly, he created a presentation around the topic. It is based on the book Brain Rules by John Medina, a down to earth brain scientist. Garr’s presentation is embedded below and can be downloaded at SlideShare.

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There is just one thing I would like to add. Being visual helps you not only on your presentation. Being visual greatly improves your own ability to internalize what you read (before you can create the presentation).

Do you take advantage of your brains ability to absorb visual information?

Do you make notes that are visual?

Do your presentations include visuals?

Do your colleagues’ presentations include visuals?

Are you able to capture your audience’s attention?

Or does the audience resemble the skeletons on Garr’s presentation?

When was the last time you stayed sharp trough a 131 page presentation? Normally you would be feared of death by bullet points before the presentation even starts and you see the total number of slides – wouldn’t you?

Made to Stick

My previous blog post and especially the presentation in it has been an unexpected success.

The presentation was featured on SlideShare front page by the editorial team, has been viewed for over 1200 times in three and half days (that's 15 times an hour, 24 hours a day), and is among the most viewed shows this week. If you read this later, see how it has managed within a month from publishing or even if it made it to all time favourites – which would be another unexpected success.

SlideShare was something I learned from Garr Reynolds' blog some weeks ago and I just wanted to give it a try. His Presentation Zen blog and book have had a great impact on my presentation and visuals since I saw him live in February. Another book, Made to Stick , by Heat brothers has thought me how to clarify the message.

A big thank you belongs to John Spence, who published the text last week. I just added the visuals. He instantly liked my visuals and later blogged the whole presentation. We are both in search of simplicity, his motto is “Making the Very Complex...Awesomely Simple!”

Somehow I managed to put all the pieces together last Saturday - on my first try.

The presentation is Made to Stick

It seems to have all the ingredients of SUCCESsful presentation – it’s Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and is told with Stories.

Actually, the presentation in live would be even more simple – you only need the pictures, the rest is spoken. The actual outline is shown here, SlideShare stand alone had extra slides because it is "mute".

But there was one slide missing - the most important one. The presentation should just be an introduction for discussion and group works. And only that would lead to improvement of the elements and help Achieving Business Excellence.

The missing question at the end is:

3+6=?
How to improve each element at your company?

Achieving Business Excellence

John Spence, whose mission is “Making the very complex ... awesomely simple” has posted a great manifesto on ChangeThis. ChangeThis spreads important ideas and change minds by giving people access to relevant, thoughtful and constructive information through the vehicle of ”Manifestos.”
(Click the picture to go to the original 0,6 Mb pdf manifesto)

John has

Uncovered the pattern
of business excellence
in an 18 page manifesto.

He has been able to summarize many of the same issues highlighted in two good books I read last year: Winning by Jack Welch, and Good to Great by Jim Collins. I was about to summarize them anytime soon. Thanks John for making my task easier!

Here are the topics of his Manifesto:

A few key elements that form the foundation of any successful business.

1. you must produce a high-quality product or service
   All sustainable business success is built on delivering real value to the customer—period
2. you need to have a solid handle on your financials
   if you aren’t managing cash flow, you won’t be managing much for long!
3. change is inevitable
   Markets shift, consumer preferences change, new competitors appear, technology advances—and so must you

With all of these foundations, following are the six strategies on which all the great companies John studied were relentlessly focused.

1. vivid vision:
   A clear and well-thought-out vision of what you are trying to create that is exceptionally well communicated to everyone involved.
2. best people:
   Superior talents who are also masters of collaboration.
3. a performance-oriented culture:
   One that demands flawless operational execution, encourages constant improvement and innovation, and completely refuses to tolerate mediocrity or lack of accountability.
4. robust communication:
   Open, honest, frank and courageous, both internally and externally.
5. a sense of urgency:
   The strong desire to get the important things done while never wasting time on the trivial.
6. extreme customer focus:
   Owning the voice of the customer and delivering what customers consider truly valuable.

I have discussed a couple of these earlier and will definitely discuss all of them in my future posts. In the mean while, you could read the original manifesto and check what else John Spence has to say at his site.

And, as always, some questions to think about:

How many of these 3 elements of foundation + 6 elements of excellence are in place at your company?

Have you reached business excellence?

Can you see the link between these 3 + 6 elements and your company achieving or not achieving business excellence?




Oops... That was my summary of the Manifesto. But during my morning run I realized, I had not internalized it and could not remember the 3 + 6 elements.

So I created this visual presentation to better internalize and remember the Manifesto - to make it stick.

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