The ANZA Technology Network conference is taking place in Silicon Valley Monday to Wednesday this week.

Today’s presentation coaching by Dan Sapp took the visitors through some powerful executive presentation coaching prior to their 5 minute pitches to VC’s and potential partners tomorrow. It was fascinating to see how Australian executives, as much as their counterparts in the US, need to amplify their communications with body language to connect with their audience.

Dan does a great job teaching people how to talk with an audience not present at them. He encourages people to experiment and take risks with their presentation style. When they amplify beyond what is comfortable it’s just about right for the audience. He shows people choices they can make with stance, tone and pitch of voice and pauses that deliver powerful presentations.

Dan stressed that Powerpoint and visuals should only be used to explain something if the audience would understand more if you use it. Especially when pitching to VC’s, people tend to over-inform. Investors don’t need to understand everything, just enough to be intrigued to ask for a follow-up meeting. Knowing this, the impression you make in the first 30 seconds is crucial. This judgement is formed by how the presenter looks and sounds, not by the slides.

There’s more than a dozen cool Australian companies with great technology to share. Check ’em out.

Thanks to Hal for pointing me to an awesome website that is a wonderful repository of visualization tools for data. Gapminder is a non-profit venture for development and provision of free software that visualize human development.

Check out their animated charts on Human Development Trends for 2005 (just press start on the main webpage) and see how the visual display of quantitative information can be done well. I hesitate to show the simple static image below, the beauty is in how they animate these charts to make the data come alive, so please click on the link to Gapminder above and explore for yourself:

They also have some well-done static charts, like this one on CO2 emissions by country:

A picture sometimes really is worth a thousand words.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…

–E.M. Forster, Howards End

My recent visit to the Liminal Group seminar in New York alerted me to the phenomena of mash-ups. The VC pitch given by Oren Michels of the nascent company Mashery highlighted the promise of this Web 2.0 phenomena. So what is a mash-up? And what’s the relevance for the future of executive communications?

A mash up is a website or Web 2.0 application that uses content from more than one source to create a completely new service. Much the way blogs revolutionized online publishing, mash-ups are revolutionizing web development by allowing anyone to combine existing data from sources in innovative ways.

One great source of mash-ups is those that combine Google maps with other services. This service combines a combination of apartment listings from Craigslist with a Google map and rental details:

This shows crimes in a Berkeley neighborhood:

I predict that mash-ups will become a new feature in executive presentations. Savvy speakers are already moving beyond static PowerPoint charts to using live web links as an integral part of presentations. Mash-ups allow the speaker to instantly show the connections between disparate sources of information and make the audience sit up and take note.

Sales Tips stays with the same general topic as my last review of Steve Mertz’s Sales Presentation Training.

Laurie offers Sales, Skills and Presentation Skills training information from her main website which contains a wide range of two and three page Automotive and Real Estate sales and service articles and encourages people to “visit my blog for more great info”. So here’s a nice example of blogging as a natural way for an information broker to engage in multiple ways of communicating. OK, let’s take her up on the invitation and see what we find….

Blogging since: February 27, 2005
Posting Frequency: once a month, with gaps
Post Length: 500 words average
Aesthetic Appeal: Bare bones Blogger template: none of the branding found on her main website
Graphics: Hardly any
Categories: None
Tagline: Sales tips to help people no matter who they sell to or what they sell
Blogroll: 6 assorted links, including one to fellow NSA financial wizard, Kim Snider
Target Audience: Anyone – we are all in sales
Comments allowed: Yes
Trackbacks: No
Alexa.com traffic ranking: N/A
Sites that link to this blog: N/A
Yahoo Links: 17
Google Page Rank: 3/10

Review:

It’s a pity Laurie does not post more frequently. She’s been silent since June 26 and there are often month-long gaps between posts. There have been times she posted weekly. So all this leads me to think she leads a busy life and her blogging must happen when there’s time. This is quite understandable. And what a delight to read the quality of the posts when she does find time.

She blogs on the sales lessons found in a wide variety of situations: from bed bugs to book returns; from Personality inventories to Prada; Restaurants to Banks. Laurie shows us how sales can be won and sales can be lost by simple customer service interactions. She has taught sales skills for over 20 years and her advice rings true.

Her main web site highlights Laurie’s skills in face-to-face sales training:

Clients and participants agree: Laurie Brown is a dynamic, warm, funny speaker who energizes and motivates her audiences to discover the best in themselves and show it to the world. With more than twenty years experience in working with international and culturally-diverse groups, she connects easily with everyone. She offers highly customized, practical and relevant content that make the difference. She provides a fun, engaging presentation and she is dedicated to YOUR success!

She certainly communicates this warmth in her blog. It’s chock-full of stories about her own experiences with friends and family as she comes across everyday situations that illustrate sales lessons:

These conversational phrases make her blog come alive.

Then she lists the sales lessons: the dangers of upselling; the secrets of exceptional customer service; the importance of multiple thank-you’s. Here’s an example of the sales advice she offers:

Many salespeople think it is best to leave the objection buried. Perhaps if they ignore it it will go away. But, when you do that, it eventually will come back to haunt you. Like any infection left untreated, it will only grow and grow. Your job is to surface it, clean it and move on in the sales process. Unanswered objections lead to lost sales or the need to lower the price to keep the sale.

Putting resources into a re-design of the blog to match the branding of her web site would be a worthwhile investment.

My hope is that Laurie finds the time to post more frequently. One suggestion would be to capture discussion from her frequent training classes (a digital tape recorder and transcription service would do the trick) and post some of the classroom Q&A.

She’s been published in a dozen magazines and has a great list of articles and is rumored to be working on a book. Her writing skills are not in question. Writing Down the Bones would be a good book to read to find the inspiration for frequent posts.

After all, don’t they say success in sales is a numbers game?

Now you’re smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
.
.
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

Joan Baez Diamonds and Rust

Wednesday morning I really did smile out the window of a building over Washington Square. But it wasn’t a hotel, and Joan Baez wasn’t gazing at me from the bed (in my dreams). No. I was on the 10th floor of the NYU Student Center in a mirrored room with 250 of Manhattan’s movers and shakers. Gotham sparkled under clear Autumnal skies.

I was attending the Liminal Group’s half-day Articulate Executive seminar. Coming hard on the heels of Saturday’s NSA Northern California meeting, this was a study in contrasts for me, illustrating cultural differences between the West and East Coasts:

The crowd – was different in very predictable ways. I saw more neckties on power-suited men (both bsd’s and bsd-wanna-be’s) than I’ve seen in a year in Silicon Valley and more attitude on power-suited women than I’ve heard since Carly left HP.

The event – Big Apple prices ($482 for a half-day) contrasted with sub-$100 cost for a full-day at the NSA. For the money we got a catered breakfast and lunch and complimentary copies of the FT, Business Week and a free book. On the other hand, Fripp gave us two free CD’s and discount on her DVD. There was more structure to the program in NY. Toogood & Rose — the names alone sound like a Wall St investment firm — complimented each other. An outline of general rules was followed by the specifics of pitching VC’s. NSA’s coaching session was all Fripp all the time. Not a problem if you like one-woman riffs.

That said, the event organizers in NY were bedeviled by a/v gremlins. They spent big bucks on an a/v crew in vain. Dual pro-video cameras at the back of the room, a roaming steady-cam, a hyperactive still photographer, and still the sound guys could not get a working lav on Granville no matter how they tried (at one point he had triple redundant systems strapped to his belt and the sound was still a problem!).

These contrasts aside, there were more similarities than differences. Both events drove home the point that it’s counterproductive for senior executives to hide behind their PowerPoint slides and effective communications relies more on how you emotionally connect with an audience than just speaking quickly and delivering a boatload of facts.

So it was six of one, half a dozen of the other. Both events showcased professionals at the top of their game. Both audiences came away delighted with unique insights into the mystique of Executive Speech Coaching.

Speech coaches make better lovers

Staff in Corporate Communications departments in the Fortune 500 are like faithful spouses. We’re kept on hand to service the needs of one executive in one company, monogamously supporting a single C-level exec quarter-in, quarter-out, in, ‘till death (or the next re-org) do us part. Meanwhile, we do the housework: clean up your PowerPoint; take out the garbage from the business groups; put daily fare on the table; fact check and nit-pick. We enjoy close access to those in power (the corporate breadwinners) and that’s got its own rewards. But frankly, my dears, things sometimes get a tad….stale. It’s hard to keep the spark alive when you see so darn much of each other.

Gentlemen, he said,
I don’t need your organization, I’ve shined your shoes,
I’ve moved your mountains and marked your cards.

Dylan, Changing of the Guards

Then there’s the professional speech coach. Skilled in the arts of the podium, sharing special talents you can’t get at home. Charging more by the hour than we make in a week. A four-hour session makes you feel like a new man. Not afraid to spank you if you need it (oh, how you’ll need it); transforming your weaknesses to strengths; putting lead in your pencil; some zing in your thing. Here today, gone tomorrow. Don’t ask where. You are lucky to see them once a quarter. Whatever the coach does behind closed doors, stays there. Utmost discretion assured (not like those gossiping fishwives in the cubicles). There’s no question. Speech coaches make better lovers.

Granville Toogood Creating the Blockbuster Presentation

He’s not Italian-American but he’d like to be. He trades Greek quips so I’m guessing there’s more Onassis than Vito Corleone in his family tree. Silver hair swept back, worn long on the collar. A consigliere to the CEO, able to go mano-a-mano with Jack Welch (“It took me five years to change his mind…�). Granville is a piece of work. His advice comes straight from the trenches. Hard won and hard bitten:

His wisdom on what executives need to do to make an impression on stage is priceless. Buy his book The Articulate Executive in Action: How the best leaders get things done and read it, twice.

The principles of what he terms Communications Value Add (CVA) are a series of systematic changes that executives can implement to become instantly more effective in front of an audience. There are five keys in his POWER formula:

P – Punch up your opening with one of eight options:

1. An anecdote or illustration
2. A personal story
3. Begin with the ending, make a strong statement. Tell them the bottom line or sum total of your talk up front.
4. Ask a rhetorical question “What’s the worst that can happen to your business?�
5. A quotation “As it said in today’s FT…�
6. A future projection “My hope is that the new system will reduce costs�
7. A look into the past “Five years back it took 6 hours to provision…â€?
8. Humor – used carefully, best based on a true story.

Fripp added a 9th – an interesting statistic to captivate the audience.

O – Make sure you have One clear theme which you can discuss in many different ways.

W– Windows, or examples, anecdote that provides proof.

E – speaking for the Ear – conversationally, don’t ‘speechify’.

R – aid Retention in any of the following six ways:

1. Summarize key point or points
2. Loop back to the beginning
3. Ask the audience to do something specific
4. Project into the future
5. Deliver good news/bad news
6. Tell a symbolic story that embraces your message

Granville claims that learning and using the POWER formula “could be the single most important decision you will ever make in your working life.� (I wonder if Jack Welch agrees?).

Other tips:

Using PowerPoint (Assuming it’s a necessary evil that your corporate culture forces on you):

Be aware of the 18 minute wall. Adults turn off after listening to one speaker for more than 18 minutes. To counter this, either deliver your message in fifteen or intersperse videos, cameos from other people onstage, panel discussions, audience interaction or just tell ‘em a story.

As valuable as these tips are, frankly, anyone can read them in his books. What made the event worthwhile for me was seeing him in action — coaching volunteers from the audience. He showed how difficult it is for any speaker to actually implement systematic change, to step out of their comfort zone. This, assuming the strong cultural barriers in your organization to considering radical change in presentation style have been breached to the extent that a coach is permitted to work with executives.

There was an absolutely astounding session with a lady in the Investment Banking business (who dripped New York attitude) where he first observed her current pitch to investors. And then, “like squeezing toothpaste from a tube until you see what comes out of the nozzle at the end� he ran her through his drill. He asked first for a 3 minute version, then a 2 minutes version, then a 1 minute version, then a 30 second and finally an 8 second version of the same speech. This is his ‘8 second drill’. He rarely put words in her mouth, apart from occasional reminder to keep a strong opening and a single theme. We saw how utterly effective this discipline is in distilling the essence of a speech. The beauty is, anyone can run this exercise with a buddy at work. How many will? In under an hour the results will surpass countless meetings to outline the essence of a speech.

I did disagree with one recommendation. Granville stated that he does not spend much time coaching executives on body language or drilling them in gestures or stage mannerisms:

“I’m not into charm school, how you walk on stage. That’s cosmetics.�

This ignores the distraction of a speaker who paces (as Mr. Toogood himself does from time to time) and the way mannerisms, mirrored gestures, fidgets and other outlets for nervous energy dull the power and impact of a speaker. Knowing acting techniques and being aware of the effect of body language is a must.

One nit — his book on page 5 attributes to a quote to my ex-boss, Sun CEO Scott McNeely (sic). I doubt his ex-boss Jack, umm, Welsh appreciates his golfing partners’ name being mangled.

At the end of the day, Granville is too good to ignore. Forgive me. I resisted using that obvious pun for 1,500 words.

David S. Rose, Successful Business Fundraising

Successful entrepreneur, angel investor, David Rose puts his money where his mouth is. He specializes in taking the dozens of start-ups who pitch his New York Angels group each month through a presentation boot camp. He makes this a requirement. They all suck at presenting. If this isn’t a niche for presentation coaching I don’t know what is – the future of a start-up rides on a 15 minute pitch. They might not be able to afford high-fee coaches, but can they not afford to invest in communicating a clear message before they ask others to invest?

David addressed the familiar problem of Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) using too many jargon-laden slides that give too much information and fail to communication the basic message a VC needs to hear. A good VC pitch has 10 requirements:

1. Integrity – show us we can trust you.
2. Passion – show us you care about your company.
3. Experience – Experience is a hard school and some will learn through no other (Ben Franklin)
4. Knowledge – show us you know your onions.
5. Skill – show what skills you already have and where you’ll recruit those you lack.
6. Leadership – exude it or fail.
7. Commitment – will you follow through?
8. Vision – show what your aims are.
9. Realism – show you know what is realistic.
10. Coachability – will you listen, especially to a presentation coach!

It’s interesting to compare this with the famous 10/20/30 Rule for pitching VC’s proposed by Guy Kawasaki – 10 slides in 20 minutes in no less than 30 point font that cover:

1. Problem
2. Your solution
3. Business model
4. Underlying magic/technology
5. Marketing and sales
6. Competition
7. Team
8. Projections and milestones
9. Status and timeline
10. Summary and call to action

His coaching of Oren Michels, ex-Feedster VP, now CEO of start-up Web 2.0 Mashery, was awesome. He took him apart piece by piece and put him back together again. Wordy slides (Michaels: “You probably can’t read this�) were transformed into bold, simple text that conveyed the essence of the company. Less is more.

Here is your throat back, thanks for the loan.

Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

I was blown away by Mashery’s business plan. But that’s a topic for another blog.

Debbie makes a great point when she says most people don’t have a clue what RSS is or even care:

eMarketer notes that “merely 2% of US employees subscribe to RSS feeds and only 9% know what such feeds are.”

OK, you 9%, here’s a Handy-Dandy Guide to get you from a state of knowing to a state of subscribing.

As for the other 89%, ignorance is bliss.

Thanks to Michael for pointing to a useful tool that predicts the popularity of the topics and categories you choose to highlight in your blog. Under Tools click the Keyword Selector Tool to find out ahead of time who’s searching for what categories.

I ran the numbers on my own blog Categories for the number of keyword searches done in July across the internet:

 105,753  global warming 
  75,969  blogging 
  12,280  public speaking 
  11,143  business communication 
   2,982  culture shock 
   2,614  speech writing 
   1,441  cultural differences
     356  blog review 
     349  international communication 
     255  keynotes 
     199  speechwriting

Interesting to see how many more people are searching for keywords that would point them to my posts on the Global Warming debate vs. my posts on international communications. And my posts on Al Gore are indeed in the top five for page hits for the last three months in a row.

In a wider sense, this tool would also help executives and speech writers choose presentation topics that are of greatest interest to their audience.

Note to self: start using the tag speech writing rather than speechwriting.

Thanks to Kare for a pointer to Josh Hallett’s extensive list of tips on how to blog a conference. I wish I had known this before I attempted to blog the recent NSA National Convention. Josh highlights how effective conference coverage needs a coordinated team of bloggers. His tips include planning a pre-conference strategy to effective use of video and audio for podcasts and more. I look forward to a day when more blogs offer first-hand impressions of conference speeches as well as a rich source of resources:

What additional information can you get from the speaker? Is the speaker willing to provide copy of the handouts or some other elements of their presentation? Upload them and link them. Did the speaker show a video? Can you link to it on YouTube or get a copy of it from the speaker?

It would be fantastic if the members of the NSA Bloggers Group covered the 2007 Convention in San Diego as a team.

He that is proud eats up himself: pride is
his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle;
and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours
the deed in the praise.

Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida: II, iii

The main task of a CEO is to communicate the essence of a company. Leaders are in a unique position to see the whole elephant and best convey the mission, vision and strategy of the entire company. As leaders, their personal integrity and style is inseparable from that of the company. In their hey-day Jobs embodied Apple; McNealy, Sun; Welch, GE. As with Presidents, Premiers and Prime Ministers, they embody the state — as Louis XIV said: L’État, c’est moi.

I’ve recently come across a series of articles that have me thinking about the challenge CEO’s face in cultivating a healthy ego and the risks for those who run amok in Narcissistic absorption. The articles I read raise questions both for leaders and those who provide communications counsel to them.

It’s All About Me: Narcissistic CEOs and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance

Francesco Guerrera’s insightful article (subscription required) in Saturday’s FT started the ball rolling: Forget the salary packages, look at the size of their egos evaluates Arijit Chatterjee’s and Donald C. Hambrick ‘s Penn State University paper It’s All About Me: Narcissistic CEOs and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance .

The FT article was blogged by none less than Richard Edelman. He makes four great suggestions to achieve balance between ego gratification and self-effacement (dare to win; don’t focus all company communications on the CEO; keep a constant long-term message; partner for success). However, I think he misses the real critique of Narcissistic CEO’s when he takes Guerrera to task for suggesting CEO’s be more bashful. The core issue, especially in fin de siecle economic times, is how an audience can judge the message a leader communications in terms of a balance between individual hubris and real company vision. What will they perceive when he speaks? Guerrera states the dilemma:

The problem is that one man’s egomaniac is another’s visionary and investors
have no way of precisely gauging a CEO’s vision or weighing up their egos.

But there’s a straightforward yardstick by which to understand them. First we must be clear about the myth of Narcissus. I know of no better definition than that offered by Adi Da Samraj on page 94 of The Knee of Listening:

He is the ancient one visible in the Greek myth, who was the universal adored child of the gods, who rejected the loved-one and every form of love and relationship, and who was finally condemned to the contemplation of his own image–until, as a result of his own act and obstinacy, he suffered the fate of eternal separation and died in infinite solitude.

Edelman picked up the clue that the Narcissist avoids relationship. Judging a CEO by how effectively he builds partnerships (with his management team, employees, suppliers and customers) can reveal the extent to which the leader recognizes the contribution others make to the success of the company.

Next, the extent to which the vision and mission of the organization exists independent of the CEO’s ego is simple to determine. Ask how far down the organization the defining vision of the company has percolated? Does the CEO rise to the challenge of internal communications? The guys with the outsized egos often don’t like mixing with the troops. Do they obstinately refuse suggestions they leave the eternal separation of the C-Suite to speak to the cubical crowd? The best won’t miss an opportunity. Hint: Ask how often the CEO eats in the company cafeteria.

Of course, judging a CEO’s effectiveness in terms of the myth of Narcissus is only one way to look at things. Equally rewarding is the well-known concept of the alpha male.

The Alpha Male

The next FT article I came across (I don’t get all my ideas from the FT, just most of the better ones…) was today’s review of the book Alpha Male by Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson. This husband and wife team are executive coaches who’ve worked with 1,500 CEO’s. They see the need for those at the top to exhibit confidence and charisma. But they warn:

A great deal of wreckage is caused by boys behaving badly. The healthy ones – well-balanced human beings in full command of their alpha strengths – are natural leaders who are trusted by colleagues, respected by competitors, revered by employees and loved by Wall Street. But other alpha males are risks to their organisations – and sometimes to themselves.

Women CEO’s (like those I profiled here) are not the problem. “Alpha women want to lead, but they don’t necessarily need to rule,” the authors say.

Warning signals to look for in your organization include the way the leader runs meetings (a red flag if they are like an episode of The Apprentice). Beware of a leader who creates a climate of fear and suppresses disagreements and stifles open communication.

There’s more tools available from the authors here.

Alternatives to overblown egos

For every Ted Turner and Dennis Kozlowski (who must appreciate infinite solitude more than most these days) there are plenty of examples of decent CEO’s who don’t confuse their identity with the name on the headquarters building. I came across a couple of articles that showcase the best of the breed – strong leaders who make their biggest impression via bottom-line results.

Jurgen Hambrecht CEO of BASF was profiled in the FT on Monday:

Mr. Hambrecht describes his role as that of a “conductor” who makes existing parts and players cohere, not a composer who makes and sells something new. “A chemical company doesn’t need a pop star boss,” he says. Indeed, there is no apparent flamboyance to Mr. Hambrecht, who turned 60 last week. With a gaunt runner’s physique, he is used to straight talking. . . “You can’t really associate anything BASF has done in the past three years solely with my person,” he says.

Of course, it could be argued that Germany has an extreme aversion to leaders with outsized egos since things went pear-shaped for the last major player on April 30, 1945.

One of the classic case studies in contrasting management styles has to be playing out at Hewlett-Packard.

Management consultant Tony Paradiso cast a critical eye on some outsized ego’s in a recent article. He then observes the stark contrast in style and performance between the current HP CEO and his predecessor:

After ridding themselves of the self-absorb (sic) Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard hired Hurd. That was a priceless decision. Unlike his predecessor, Hurd didn’t feature himself in an advertising campaign. In fact, he purposefully kept a low public relations profile. Silly Mark; instead of directing his PR department to hype his arrival, he simply did his job. That involved laying thousands off and restructuring the company. The result: Exceeding financial expectations for five consecutive quarters.

In Conclusion

My hope is that fewer of the captains of industry will fall prey to the cautions of Agamemnon and more will heed Beatrice’s wisdom:

What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.

Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing: III, i

I’m currently enjoying a great series of podcasts delivered over the past year at the Stanford University School of Engineering and sponsored by the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, BASES (a student entrepreneurship group), Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and the Department of Management Science and Engineering.

You can find this series on the iTunes Music Store under the Education category (second screen, 4th row down) or via this direct link.

There are 25 hour-long presentations on file. All available for free download. The presenters and topics they cover offer a fascinating look at the personalities and checkered history that makes up Silicon Valley. The audience of Stanford students hears from and asks questions of executives who have been there and done that in terms of surviving and thriving in the Silicon Valley ecosystem — a place where failure is a badge of success and people talk of ‘dog years’ of experience.

I’ve started by listening to three amazing women CEO’s:

Carol Bartz, Executive Chairman of the Board and CEO of Autodesk for the past 14 years, reflecting on her experience of running one of the largest PC software companies in the world while finding a balance between her career and personal life. She also stresses the importance of continued learning and addresses the challenges of succeeding in a global market.

Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource describing her twenty years of experience in developing software in Silicon Valley including Java development with Sun Microsystems and the open source community.

Janice Fraser, CEO and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, discussing the entrepreneurial leadership qualities that have contributed to the success of her user experience consulting company.

I worked in Carol Bartz’s sales organization at Sun back in the 1990’s and also saw Kim present at Sun when she was the original Java Product Manager before she went off to found Marimba.

All three women executives admit to being ‘girl geeks’ who embraced science and technology in college and often followed a serendipitous career to the top.

All share incredible insights about starting and growing a high-tech company. They speak with clarity, from the heart, about what motivated them and what they’ve observed. Things as simple as asking the customers what they use the product for (which Bartz says precious few of the staff at Autodesk knew before she arrived and started asking). Issues around the ways to partner for success in the world of Web 2.0 and Open Source (which Polese and Fraser are adept at). The importance of networks, intuition, planning, listening, leading, arguing, anticipating.

Rather than try and write a précis of each person’s material I’d just encourage anyone with an interest in executive communications to simply download and listen. Here’s some killer quotes to whet your appetite.

Bartz:

Don’t be afraid of doing a lot of lateral things. A career as a ladder is a very unsteady concept compared to a pyramid — you have no foundation.

Polese:

There’s nothing more fun than being on a mission together with a team of people building something innovative, breaking new ground and really making a difference in the world. What could be more fun? Not many things in life. And that’s one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is such as great place to build a career and just to live and be.

Fraser:

Being an entrepreneur is not a job, it’s a way of life. It’s a mission more than it is a job. I’m not employed by a company I’m employed by an industry. I’m employed by an ecosystem of people who believe in me and who support me and who I support in turn.