Back in August 2006 I speculated if we’d ever see bards in business class to entertain airline passengers with poetry and epic stories on long-haul flights.

I was pleased to read in Tuesday’s FT that Yorkshire-born poet David Whyte is helping stir imagination in the workplace. He has made it his mission, through corporate speaking tours and seminars, to help businesses harness the insights and metaphors that poetry can offer to broaden their language, improve interaction within the workplace and stir imaginations.

He’s worked with blue chip companies like AT&T, Microsoft, NASA, Boeing and Kaiser. Thus his muse has helped people reach out and touch someone; know where they want to go today; reach for the stars, line their dreams and thrive.

Of interest to corporate communications staff and speechwriters, Whyte stands for precision in language “listening and talking to a group until he is able to articulate an uncomfortable and unspoken truth.”

As I noted in my article on The Medieval Speechwriter, aspects of modern corporate life recall life at Court. Whyte agrees:

“All these organizations are like Shakespearean plays writ large, with the nobles telling their truths from the podium while the gravediggers are telling it like it really is in the bathroom. And every epoch ends with a lot of blood on the floor”.

He sees real value in poetry as a tool to help managers make sense of their work. It enables novice managers, overwhelmed, desperate, hungry for some ground in a world gone mad, to analyze things:

“The idea is to get deeply into experiences where they have different images and metaphors to use out of the poetry. A lot of the images will have to do with being lost, with not having the usual bearings, and therefore looking at the world in a different way.”

Whyte has a new book, The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and Relationship. In it, he explores three commitments we have in life: to our partner; our work; our self. He calls for perspective to keep grounded in oneself.

Thanks to Antoni for showcasing this excellent presentation on advertising from The Economist of Nov 22, 2008 ‘Managing in the Downturn’. As stunning as the graphics are, the conclusion (slides 56/57) is worth repeating:

There’s never been a better time to steal market share than in a downturn.Advertise consistently and intelligently, speak to the right people, and you can gain an edge over your competitors.

To win, you need to be an Ideas Person: with the right mindset, you can treat the downturn as an opportunity. With the right flexibility, you can change the game.

Win not by surviving the storm, but by changing the game.

…would you read an interview conducted over lunch in Ljubljana with a provocative Slovenian Marxist philosopher called Slavoj Zizek. After munching on medallions of veal and lamb with thyme the “perpetual thought machine in manic motion” offers his interpretation of the current financial crisis:

The ruling ideology is trying to shift the blame from the global capitalist system as such on to its accidental deviations – such as overly lax regulation or the corruption of big financial institutions. In some respects this has allowed capitalists to assert their values even more aggressively: while bailing out Wall Street they are shredding collective bargaining agreements at General Motors and relegating the problems of global warming, Aids and hunger.

“The problem is today that when you have chaos and disorder people lose their cognitive mapping. So it is an open struggle as to whose interpretation will win,” he says. “Never forget that this is how Hitler won.”

According to Zizek, the reason Hitler came to power in the 1930s was because he offered the most attractive interpretation of disastrous events. He simply flattered the Germans by claiming that their army had been betrayed in the first world war and by laying all the blame at the feet of the Jews.

We order fruit salad.

And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

– Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach

Freelance speechwriter Mike Long was interviewed by Mark Ragan at the recent Ragan Speechwriters Conference. Mark asked Mike to share some ideas about the ways speechwriters should conduct research.

Mike shared his tips on:

• The value of mining existing speeches for content.
• Why you should connect with subject matter experts inside a client’s company.
• The best reason to use Google as a research tool.
• Some pitfalls to avoid when quotes and his technique for finding unique quotations.
• The secret of using statistics effectively in speeches.
• Why it’s important to put numbers in context.

Kudos to HSBC Chairman Stephen Green for acknowledging a mistake in a direct manner:

“HSBC has a reputation for telling it as it is. With the benefit of hindsight, this is an acquisition we wish we had not undertaken.”

Green was letting investors know that the 2002 acquisition of Household Finance – a Chicago-based consumer finance business focused on subprime consumers with patchy credit records, now HSBC Finance Corporation – has destroyed around $10bn of shareholder value.

This direct approach, as I recently outlined in the first of 10 tips for giving speeches in tough economic times, is the best way to communicate bad news.

He communicated in a simple, direct and honest way about a mistake, even though it was one that had been made by his predecessor who placed too much faith in quantitative analysis of the risk the bank was taking with the Household acquisition:

Executives led by Sir John Bond, then the bank’s chairman, talked regularly about the bank’s team of more than 100 employees who had PhD degrees and were experts at predicting consumer behaviour. But they did not predict the collapse in the US mortgage market.

Hopefully the PhD’s are now being asked to measure it as it is.

NSA/NC Meeting Report: Saturday February 28, 2009

Marketing expert and larger-than-life character Ford Saeks flew in from Wichita, Kansas to share his ideas on how to use Social Media to make money.

Ford is best known for positioning people and their products and services for profit through proven marketing and innovative publicity campaigns.

The sold-out crowd at the National Speakers Association Northern California Chapter meeting were treated to four hours of Ford’s high-intensity ideas on how to start making money on the internet and leverage Social Media Marketing to build influence, reputation and brand within communities of potential customers. Some core principles:

“What problem do I solve that people will pay to make go away?”
“The purpose of business is to generate a customer. The purpose of a customer is to generate a profit.”

‘Nuff said. Here’s some of what Ford shared.

Creating an online cash machine

Speaking and training + Digital and physical products + consulting and coaching = a fully-rounded revenue model. Web 2.0 places a dialog with customers and prospects at the center of business today. Sharing opinions, comments, and other content in the form of audio podcasts, video, links, bookmarks, articles and slides makes a site successful.

Research the top keywords for your niche and use them relentlessly to help the search engines find your site when a customer is looking for your solution to the pain they are feeling. Learn the all-important modifiers that people use to focus search results.

Know the answers to three core questions about your business:

• Why should someone pay attention to you – what is your message?
• Who are you trying to market to?
• How are you getting the word out – what is the method?

It’s a FEATURE if it’s about you, your products or services or your company. Ask “Which means…” and you get the BENEFIT that describes an emotional or intangible result the customer gets.

Social Media Marketing

• Helps you expand your internet footprint
• Makes it easier for prospects to find you
• Improves your search engine ranking
• Establishes you as an expert
• Improves communications and feedback
• Builds relationships and networks
• Drives a steady stream of prospects to your online business

There’s a gazillion (or so) Social Media sites listed at go2web20.net. Ford recommends you start by:

1. Building a blog with WordPress.org – hosted on your own website to optimize SEO
2. Establishing your Channel on YouTube – peppered with relevant keywords
3. Building a profile on Facebook and LinkedIn – with posts from your blog and YouTube videos
4. Experiment with Twitter. Start by reading Randy Gage’s recent assessment of the uses of abuses of Twitter.

If you’d like to see the slides he used, Ford has kindly made them available. What you won’t get from the slides, or this report, is any of his incredible energy and specific insight into the ways these tools can work for you today to make money on the Internet.

For that, you had to have been there.

Today’s Financial Times reports that executives from the largest hotel chains have written to members of the US congress warning that companies are canceling meetings because they fear being criticized.

This follows President Obama’s recent comments that companies receiving government bailouts should not “go to Las Vegas on the government dime.”

Meeting cancellations threaten 250,000 US travel related jobs this year, claim the hotel executives.

The 4,000 members of the National Speakers Association are no doubt finding that meeting cancellations are affecting their bookings. As face-to-face meetings decline, options such as teleseminars and Cisco TelePresence Suites are emerging as alternatives.

Although it’s probably too soon to say that “What happens in TelePresence stays in TelePresence.”

A speech is more than a collection of dry facts. Stories make your talk come alive. Storytelling is a powerful way to drill your message into the listener’s mind. Stories are a great way of emotionally connecting with an audience. Stories engage the audience and raise their levels of motivation, acceptance, and approval. No matter how dry the topic, a personal story will build trust with the audience since you’ll come across as human. These 10 ideas will help you give a talk that connects with an audience, moves them to action and leaves a positive impression.

1. Power Opening. Start your story with a bang! Captivate and create an emotional bond with the audience. What is the one idea you want the audience to hear, remember, and act on? This one idea is the thesis of the speech. Introduce it early in a powerful opening.
2. Embrace Humor. But never tell jokes. Self-depreciating humor works best. The audience who smiles with you is more sympathetic to your argument. Make sure that you connect humor to the point you are making. Keep it short and sweet, not long and drawn-out. Avoid saying, “This is a funny” before you speak. Avoid offensive and off-color humor.
3. Learn theatrical techniques. Doug Stevenson (www.storytheater.net) shows speakers how to tell stories using powerful performance techniques. Doug teaches how to tell stories in present-time, stepping IN and OUT of your persona when on stage.
4. Make the audience the hero of the story. Turn the ‘I’ in your story into the ‘we’. Use metaphors and analogies to help explain new concepts. Analogies are best taken from common experiences that everyone shares.
5. Develop a compelling plot. Keep the story-line simple. Build a story arc. Consider starting the story in the middle – this is a real attention-grabber. Set the scene and introduce the characters. Stories with conflict are interesting. Create an obstacle, then describe and how it was overcome.
6. Develop Case Studies. A good case study is more than just a description. Discuss the issues involved. List the options – the range of possible solutions. Highlight the dilemma faced – make it interesting. Explain how a decision was arrived at. Summarize with a conclusion.
7. Be authentic. Authenticity is crucial. Your story must be congruent with your tongue, feet and wallet. Put yourself into the story. Tell compelling stories which are grounded in everyday reality. Make the story something you care about, something from your background.
8. Connect with the audience emotionally. The best way to engage an audience is to tap into their emotions. A story is the emotional fast lane to the brain allowing people to feel genuine emotion. Don’t just present dry facts. Deep learning takes place when the audience experiences stories that create triggers the listener feels emotionally, not just thinks about conceptually.
9. Ground the story in the context of the moment. Prepare your story to fit the climate, culture and mission of the audience without losing the spirit of your message. Show, don’t tell.
10. Use Specific details. The more specific, concrete, details you include, the clearer the situation will be to the audience. Leverage a known name or brand. Instead of a bar of soap say Irish Spring. Use the largest unit of measurement. Over a quarter century is a more compelling statement than saying 25 years.

Speakers who use some of these ideas in developing their next speech will connect with the audience in ways they would not dream possible. Don’t just read stories to your kids. Tell us a story.

Fifteen members and guests of the National Speakers Association Northern California Chapter paid a visit to the Cisco TelePresence Suites in Santa Clara yesterday.

Cisco has publicly available suites available for hire by the hour at two locations in the US (Santa Clara and Boston) and seven in India. “Hundreds more” will come online in 2009. They’re not cheap – rates start at $299/hr a room (and you need to rent at least two) up to $899/hr for a room that seats 18 people. Compared to the price to flying 18 people to, say, India, this is of course a huge bargain, not to mention way more environmentally friendly.

We are, needless to say, in the ‘early adopter’ phase of the product life-cycle. Remember what you paid for digital cameras when they first came out? Expect the price to drop as Cisco roll out more locations and competitors like the HP Halo rooms open up to the public.

Right now, these rooms are corporate jet replacement options (how timely!) HP, Cisco and other multinationals like P&G, Pepsi and Dreamworks are the main users as a cost- and time-effective option for CEOs and senior managers to hold meetings from their own office instead of flying across the country or around the world. Cisco CEO John Chambers mentioned in the speech I profiled recently, that his company is a heavy user of these studios for internal and customer meetings.

So what did the NSA/NC visitors think of this?

“Awesome experience”; “Wow!”; “Much more impressive than I expected”; “Totally immersive”; “Can you, like, teach karate in here?”

While many public speakers and individual entrepreneurs teaching a class (probably not karate, perhaps Ikebana) or presenting a seminar might still be priced out of this market, NSA/NC are now ahead of the curve – knowing what is possible and, like Wayne Gretzky, skating toward where the puck is going. As well as a lower price-point, we’d benefit if (when?) Telepresence is available in auditorium-sized theaters, not just small conference rooms. Expect the technology to become more attractive over the next 12-18 months.

Meanwhile, Cisco are willing to host groups and individuals for a free demonstration hour at their Santa Clara facility. Contact Bret Chesman bchesman@cisco.com – tell him Ian sent you.

“Everything we do is around Social Networking.”
– John Chambers, CEO, Cisco

Building the Next Generation Company: Innovation, Talent, Excellence

MIT World Lecture, Oct 15, 2008

Cisco CEO John Chambers gets Social Networking.

MIT reports:

In the 1990s, he predicted that networks would transform the way the world works, becoming platforms for communications and other IT, and Chambers placed Cisco at the center of that transformation. Today, he envisions a Web 2.0 premised on collaboration and social networking that will similarly transfigure all business life. Since 2001, he’s been positioning Cisco to catch this massive market transition, and indeed, is “betting the company’s future on it.”

In “phase two of the Internet,” says Chambers, “Content will find me; I will not search for it.” Any device, anywhere, will be able to receive any kind of content. We will be dealing with licenses for things like music, rather than worrying about compatibility issues between our digital tools and what’s streaming through them. Web 2.0 will also bring “effective collaboration,” by which Chambers means network-enabled visual tools, which will make “working together for a common goal truly possible.” Expect much faster business processes and revved up productivity, says Chambers.

Based on Cisco’s own experience in the past several years, organizations will completely restructure around these new capabilities. Indeed, he offers up his company as a paradigm of this vision. Once a hierarchical, command and control-based organization, Cisco is now much flatter, a company running “off of social networking groups.” Councils with cross-functional responsibilities suggest and take on many more projects (from emerging markets, to video, and smart grid boards); from one to two major ventures per year, to this year’s 26 launches. The next generation company is “built around the visual.” Cisco employees do non-stop teleconferencing with collaborators around the world. The company hosts 2500 such virtual meetings per week. It also employs Webex, Wikis and blogging to move work along.

With this kind of communication and carefully managed process to match, “operations can be turned on a head,” says Chambers. It’s the recipe for market-dominating speed and scale. Chambers is “loading the pipeline” with projects that assume other companies will want what Cisco has and makes. “If we’re right, we’re developing a huge wave of revenue opportunity.” Perhaps this is one reason why he’s “an optimist on global productivity, global economy and our ability to handle the challenges.”

This video supports the December 2008 Fast Company profile painting Cisco as a Revolutionary San Jose company – a socialist enterprise at the level of a democratized style of decision making; probably less so with compensation packages or an iron rice bowl.

Highlights of the video are when Chambers describes upper- and mid-level management resistance to the new culture of collaboration (17:40) and reveals that 20% of upper management left because they could not let go of the command and control mindset they learned in B-School (43:00).

Chambers reveals how the company used to be run by the top 10 executives who reported to him. Now it is the top 500 who make the decisions, soon to be the top 2,500 (24:00).

His evaluation of the effect of the radical introduction of Social(ized) Networking is that after a period of initial resistance, a balance has been achieved between command and control and self-managed boards and councils using collaborative technology (54:23).

The question, as Fast Company asked, is if Cisco-style collaboration really works elsewhere? They used to ask that about web pages and email when Web 1.0 was taking off in Silicon Valley. Would it play in Peoria? I’m not betting against Web 2.0. It’ll just take a little longer to catch on.

See Chambers in action and decide if these innovations are right for you.