In two weeks time I’ll be hosting an free webinar on How Executives Can Keep Their Organization Informed via an Online Platform on the INXPO Social Business TV network. I’ll be sharing tips on how executives can effectively inform and engage with their extended teams.

Based on my experience with Silicon Valley technology companies, I’ll suggest ways executives and executive communications managers can use video for everything from virtual Town Hall meetings to recorded customer testimonials. I’ll also review how to use the important Backchannel to engage with employees before, during and after an event.

The webinar happens on Tuesday February 12 from 9:00am – 10:00am (Pacific). Registration for the event is free. Click here to sign up.

Meanwhile, if you have any issues you’d like me to raise or questions you’d like answered during the event please leave a comment below.

Hope to see you online on the 12th!

Melanie Watkins always dreamt of becoming a doctor but when she found herself sixteen and pregnant, that dream seemed out of reach.

Having been raised by a single mother, Melanie knew the challenges single motherhood presented. Despite the uphill climb, Melanie made the decision to raise her child on her own.

Her memoir, Taking My Medicine: My Journey from Teenage Mother to Physician, is the story of a young woman’s triumphs–overcoming the stigma of a teenage pregnancy and embarking on the journey to medical school.

Drawing from pieces previously published in Chicken Soup for the African American Soul, Chicken Soup for the Single’s Soul, Woman’s World Magazine, What I Learned in Medical School: Personal Stories of Young Doctors, her memoir encourages young people to dream and to push beyond their most difficult circumstances. Her book is an inspiring story of faith and perseverance about a teenage mother beating insurmountable odds to create a brighter future for herself, her son and her community.

Melanie Watkins, M.D. is Board Certified by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is licensed by the California State Medical Board to practice Medicine and Psychiatry.

She received her medical training at the Stanford University School of Medicine and completed an internship in Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of California, San Francisco. Her specialty training in Psychiatry was at the University of Nevada, Department of Psychiatry.

She currently is in private practice in Walnut Creek, CA.

Dr. Watkins has experience in treating anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, psychosis, substance dependence, and personality disorders. She has particular interest in women’s mental health, cognitive behavioral therapy and psychodynamic psychotherapy. Dr. Watkins can also provide support for family members and friends of mentally ill patients who require hospitalization and/or ongoing support. She enjoys treating adolescents and adults.

She enjoys long distance running, motivational speaking and reading non-fiction books. She can be reached through her website www.drmelaniewatkins.com. She lives in Walnut Creek. Her son, Jonathan, is 18 years old and is a freshman in college in Reno, Nevada.

Speaker’s Academy Archive

I caught up with Melanie at a National Speakers Association Northern California Chapter meeting immediately prior to the start of the Speaker’s Academy program. To hear what she told me about her speaking program which has taken her from Alaska to New York, delivering talks to students from disadvantaged backgrounds; the story behind her book and the importance of mentorship, click on the podcast icon below.

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NSA/NC Meeting Report: Saturday January 12, 2013

Last Saturday the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association hosted NSA National President Ron Culberson, MSW, CSP and Howard Putman, CSP, CPAE, former CEO, Southwest Airlines.

Howard Putnam: Top-flight speaker

Howard Putnam took a struggling airline called Southwest and turned it into one of the most successful companies in the world. At Braniff Airlines, he was the first CEO to successfully restructure a major airline into, through, and out of Chapter 11. Earlier he spent over twenty years with United Airlines, his final position being Group VP of Marketing.

Howard spent a couple of hours in conversation with Michael Soon Lee, CSP reviewing the reasons he has become one of the more successful celebrity speakers, sharing the platform with such people as General Colin Powell, Laura Bush, Bill Cosby, Terry Bradshaw, Rudy Giuliani, Coach Lou Holtz, Steve Forbes, and Dr. Robert Schuler.

When he retired from his corporate work and decided to become a professional speaker, an early influence was Zig Ziglar — a well-known motivational speaker who sadly passed away in 2012.

Zig advised him to:

• Use the expertise from his past career as the foundation for his speaking career
• Approach audiences from an emotional as well as an intellectual point of view
• Develop substance for his speeches by:

1. Hiring a coach who can give an unbiased outside view of his capability. Howard hired Juanell Teague
2. Writing a book. Howard worked with an experienced writer to publish The Winds of Turbulence: A CEO’s Reflections on Surviving and Thriving on the Cutting Edge of Corporate Crisis.
3. Joining the National Speakers Association.

Working with a Speakers Bureau

Howard shared that he is now a successful speaker booked two to three times a month at fees in excess of $25,000. He outsources the management of his bookings to Holli Catchpole of the Speakers Office, Inc who manages a select group of top-flight speakers.

Michael Lee pointed out that beginning speakers are in a Catch-22 situation with Agencies. Most Agencies will only work with established speakers. One option for speakers with fees at the lower end of the scale is Speakers Unlimited.

Ron Culberson: Funny man

NSA National President and professional humorist Ron Culberson demonstrated simple steps speakers can take to add humor to any presentation that will make their content stick and increase the value of their speech for the audience.

He started with a few observations on the morning, joking that the title of Howard’s book reminded him of his last Taco Bell bean burrito.

Starting with a humorous summary of the meeting is a deliberate technique he recommends for any speaker who wants to let the audience know they are “one of them” who was listening to the event. Too many speakers ignore anything that happens before they speak.

In an era when content is instantly available to an audience able to Google it, speakers must create an experience — the more fun this is, the more memorable. Humor balances the serious information in your presentation. It creates a new perspective.

Discovering humor

Ron advised that material for humorous speeches is all around us in everyday interactions. He encourages us to ask “what might be funny about this?” and shared the humor he discovers in visits to doctor’s offices, family life, street signs, newspaper articles and more.

Think outside the box to discover sources of humor. Consider the many ways that you can answer the question “What is half of eight?”

Developing humor

The “Secret Formula” for developing humor is to look for congruent incongruence — or the surprising ways the unrelated ideas are related. He works with category lists to discover the congruence between topics such as golf and autos. This was in response to the news that Tiger Woods had crashed his car outside his home. A common term was “drive” which gave Ron the idea for a one-liner about Woods and a PGA award for the “shortest drive”.

Ron recommends we check out the Seinfeld movie Comedian. This shows how much effort professionals put into writing humor that works. Ron parsed his own material to show how adding or removing a single word can make a humorous speech work better.

10 ways to deliver humor in your presentation

Ron’s handout listed 10 ways to deliver humor in your next presentation:

Verbal humor:

1. Use funny quotes from people who already said something funny. It does not have to be anything more than “I read so-and-so said…” and if the content is funny you have generated laughter without the need to be funny yourself.
2. Use jokes, but sparingly as they are now much more accessible to people via the internet. That said, Ron struck gold with a joke about a chicken and frog that he delivered to an audience of librarians.
3. Use personal stories from your own experiences. This is most authentic form of humor.

Visual humor:

4. Use funny actions and facial expressions to make your appearance funny. It might be a hat or other item of clothing.
5. Use fun props as visual aids. (Note: Ron’s business partner David Glickman elaborated on this in his 2006 NSA/NC presentation.)
6. Use creative and funny slides.
7. Add humor and funny clip art to your handouts.

Experiential humor:

8. Invite the audience to respond to funny questions or surveys. This can be especially effective in training sessions.
9. Use volunteers to come up front and interact with them in a funny way.
10. Design funny small group activities in which the audience creates the humor.

Ron Culberson’s Demo Video

In order to appreciate Ron’s comic genius and encouragement to audiences to do things well and make them fun, take ten and watch his entertaining and, yes, rather funny, demo video:

Kathy Stershic is Principal Consultant of Dialog Research & Communications. She provides senior-level business and communications consulting expertise to executives at leading-edge organizations, and is especially known for bringing focus and alignment to complex environments. She has worked with many IT companies in various stages of growth, which affords her broad understanding and insights into the high tech marketplace as well as internal organizational dynamics.

Before starting Dialog, Kathy served as Vice President for Cognitiative, Inc., a San Francisco-based consultancy specializing in marketing research and communication strategy for high tech and dot.com clients; she also worked as a Senior Analyst for Jupiter Media Metrix Custom Research Group; and earlier in her career, she worked on staff for several fast growth software and hardware companies.

Kathy recently completed a Master of International Policy and Practice degree at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs in Washington DC, focusing on Information Technology policy. She has held leadership positions in various professional and civic organizations, including the International Association of Business Communicators, Public Relations Society of America, the American Marketing Association, and the World Affairs Council of Northern California.
Kathy’s musings on IT policy can be found on her blog.

Freelance Focus

I asked Kathy about her interest in Tech Policy and what she sees developing in the ways technology companies will advertise and communicate about their products and services. She also shared her thoughts on cyber security, SOPA and PIPA. She’s in business for herself for the last 12 years and if you’d like to hear her advice on how to succeed as a freelancer, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:56 — 1.8MB)

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Having heard Sara Horowitz interviewed on KQED Radio I immediately ordered her book The Freelancer’s Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams – On Your Terms.

An excellent reference for all freelance workers

The primary value of this well-designed 462-page book is as a one-stop reference for new freelancers — or anyone considering alternatives to full-time W-2 work. Every practical detail is covered: from client contracts to daily calendars; insurance to incorporation; marketing to mentoring; taxes to technology. These practical details, checklists and planning tools are enlivened with stories from freelancers Sara has met in her 15 years as the founder of the Freelancer’s Union.

A wake-up call for America

The real value of the book is where is goes beyond the basic reference it does so well. A series of “Advocacy Alerts” encourage freelancer’s to “stand up together to be counted” when it comes to demanding a more freelancer-friendly set of laws. Sara recognizes that we live in society that is still structured for the work-world of the 1950’s: a lifetime of “secure” employment where healthcare and unemployment compensation is geared to support an economy of full-time workers. This just won’t cut it when, Sara claims, a third of all work is being done by freelancers. Unless they band together, freelancers are at a disadvantage in terms of the tax code, misclassification by corporations and unpaid wages:

“In the new economy, our best chance of securing what freelancers need is to provide as much of it as we can ourselves through the groups freelancers are connected to–organizations like Freelancers Union, professional associations, faith-based communities and other nonprofits…and then approaching lawmakers as a collective unit and let them know it’s really getting to be ridiculous that freelancers continue to grow in number, continue to pay all these taxes … yet continue to get no consideration in the safety net discussions where change has to happen at the policy level.”

In very practical ways the Freelancer’s Union provides members a way to share stories on how to avoid being held hostage by deadbeat clients, provides alternatives to employer healthcare (in a few states only) and encourages members to provide each others with discounts.

Nevertheless, in the world of elance and fiverr there’s a real danger of freelancer’s being caught in a race to the bottom with price-sensitive clients. Chapter three is filled with solid advice on building a freelance portfolio where low-price work is only a small element of “a client mix that delivers maximum value for your time and effort.”

Setting a fair fee

A trap many new to freelancing fall into is not knowing the market rate for your services. The Sherman Antitrust Act prevents associations from openly discussing fees. However, there’s nothing to stop freelancers from informally sharing information about pricing with others, which helps all freelancers get paid what they deserve. If for no other reason than this, freelancers should join a mastermind group and buy a couple of more experienced people in your field a coffee in exchange for an honest discussion about their fees.

All together now

Time and again, the book points to the value of freelancers building community: for robust networking in person and online; mentoring others; avoiding isolation and keeping a sense of perspective.

As with all advice books, there’s plenty here that you can adapt to your own needs. To take one example, Sara lists the advantages of having a blog as a great way to market yourself online. I couldn’t agree more. But she says to keep blog postings to no more than 500 words. Works for some, just not for me.

I enjoyed today’s KQED Forum interview with Sara Horowitz, the founder of the Freelancers Union, and author of The Freelancer’s Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Have the Career of Your Dreams – On Your Terms.

The interview, with call-in questions, covered a range of topics such as:

• How do freelancers market themselves
• How to avoid the “race to the bottom” in fees
• How to deal with the inevitable anxiety of not having a regular pay-check
• The need to schedule time off

Sara emphasized that freelance work is the wave of the future. When mass layoffs happen, freelance work offer an alternative to collecting unemployment and waiting for the next “permanent” job offer.

How do freelancers find affordable healthcare?

My one regret is that the Freelancers Union Health Insurance plans are currently not offered in the San Francisco Bay Area. Finding affordable healthcare, or any healthcare whatsoever for people with pre-existing conditions, is a major barrier to successful freelancing in the USA, where one of the quirks of this society is an antipathy to “socialized medicine”. The labor market suffers as a result. Kudos to the Freelancers Union for starting to address this problem and here’s hoping they can kick off a healthcare plan in Northern California sometime soon.

Seven years ago this month, I added this Professionally Speaking blog to my Executive Communications website. Now, on New Year’s Day 2013, which happens to be my father’s 92nd Birthday — Happy Birthday Dad! — I’ve reached the milestone of 700 blog postings. This seems like a suitable moment to reflect some of the key lessons I’ve learned from my experience in providing executive communications support to my clients in Silicon Valley and around the world. You know you’ve hired a world-class speechwriter and communications consultant when they embrace these seven qualities.

1: CEOs need a confident confidant

Sitting in meetings at major Silicon Valley companies such as Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Cisco, I’m often the only person in the room without a few thousand people reporting to them or a multi-billion dollar target to meet. This can be an incredibly useful role that a CEO will come to value. As the speechwriter, I’m the one person in the room the CEO can turn to without an agenda of my own to advance. A CEO once told me “Ian, it’s lonely at the top. I’ve seen every scam that managers can pull to cover their rear ends. I need someone like you who can tell it like it is.”

Key Lesson: Speechwriters with the confidence to speak up become the confidant and trusted adviser of a senior executive.

2: Be an impartial observer

I was once brought in to edit an Annual Report for a European client with four separate divisions. My role was to resolve the different viewpoints of each group. The VP of Communications needed an outside consultant with the independence required to be able to write a cohesive document. Executive communications professionals are in a unique position to be an impartial observer in large organizations with multiple departments and competing interests.

Key Lesson: Take the initiative and tell the truth, no matter what certain executives want to hear. But don’t take sides within a company. We need to keep lines of communication open to all parties.

3: Take complexity out

Companies are filled with subject matter experts (SMEs) in engineering, finance, marketing, and sales. A speechwriter is a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. But that’s our hidden value to a company. It’s my job to know a little bit about everything the company does, and who to talk to when I need details. But lack of detail is rarely an issue. Time and again, I’ve asked SMEs for the background information needed for five to 10 minutes of a speech only to be given enough data for a two-day seminar. My job is to absorb enormous volumes of data and take the complexity out–to find a way to communicate the message without putting the audience to sleep.

Key Lesson: Learn to simplify. Only include what is necessary to convey what is essential. As Einstein said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

4: Tell compelling stories

As others have noted, people may not remember what you did or said, but they will always remember how you made them feel. Audiences forget facts, but they remember stories. Once you get past the jargon, the corporate world is an endless source of fascinating stories. I’ve found the best source of great stories for speeches come from informal chats when you are sitting down over coffee or, as I did one memorable afternoon, sharing a beer and pizza with the CEO in Boston’s North End. We talked about our time there as students. He shared a story about the lessons he’d learned outside the Harvard classroom that I used in a future speech.

Key Lesson: Always listen for stories executives tell about their childhood, family life, hobbies, early career and more. Dig for specifics. As speech coach Patricia Fripp says: “Specificity builds credibility.”

5: Embrace multimedia

The one-hour keynote is an endangered species. Conference organizers know audiences have short attention spans. Given travel budget restrictions, many organizations are turning to virtual meetings. Executives now need to feel comfortable on camera as well as on the podium.

My three years as a communications consultant at Cisco introduced me to the exciting possibilities of TelePresence meetings. I also enjoyed access to fully-equipped TV studios to produce All Hands meetings. But it was just as exciting working with the limitations of a simple Flip camera to capture video that I edited with Windows Movie Maker. These days it’s not enough to write clever speeches, you need to keep current with the latest in multimedia technology.

Key Lesson: Digital media expands the boundaries of executive communications. Suggest it as an alternative to travel; use it to time-shift; create content that includes outdoor shots, audience testimonials and impromptu out-takes; record staff interviews; livestream events; experiment with transmedia storytelling.

6: Open up the backchannel

The audience is no longer silent. They might look like they are sitting quietly, but a raging debate on what Cliff Atkinson called The Backchannel can occur within and beyond the confines of the presentation venue.

I’m amazed at the resistance some speakers have to this. My experience curating Twitter hashtags for specific events shows that there’s a rapidly emerging opportunity to magnify the impact of a speech and increase the reach beyond the walls of the auditorium.

Key Lesson: Learn about and embrace the backchannel. Make sure your executive has a Twitter account and use it for shameless self-promotion and to stimulate a lively debate before, during and after each presentation they make.

7: Learn to ask the right questions

As a communications professional, it’s not your role to out-gun the SMEs, VPs and assorted executives in the C-Suite when it comes to content. Our role is to ask what headline the CEO wants the speech to produce, to find out the audience’s hot buttons, and to uncover the unique point of view the speaker brings to the issue.

If there’s one lesson I’ve taken away from the work I’ve done for clients, it’s to always be ready to ask “Why is that?” when they suggest points they want to make in a speech. When they give an answer, have the courage to ask the same question again. It’s often only after they answer for the third time that the core of the speech is revealed.

Key Lesson: Don’t hurry to get to a final draft. Be professional and respect deadlines, but keep asking questions until you reach an answer that will make the audience sit up and take notice.

What executive communications lessons have YOU learned? Share them by leaving a comment below.

Kathy Hart is President of ClearVision Consulting, Inc., a global company that specializes in accelerating organizational excellence and improving human performance. Kathy is a highly sought after consultant, speaker and coach.

Kathy has worked in corporate environments for more than 28 years. She brings to ClearVision broad leadership experience in the non-profit, banking, manufacturing, insurance, and utility industries. In these leadership roles she successfully promoted and advanced business and industry emergency preparedness, employee safety and health, and implemented enterprise-wide change efforts. In 2012, she was honored by American Society of Safety Engineers’ (ASSE) Women in Safety Engineering (WISE) Common Interest Group for her twenty years of making a difference in the safety, health, and environmental (SH&E) field as part of the WISE ‘100 Women, Making a Difference in Safety’ project.

While Kathy continues to support the field of safety and health by educating and mentoring those in the profession, she now uses her extensive knowledge of individual and organizational change in the field of organization development and effectiveness. In 2005, Kathy founded ClearVision Consulting with the express purpose of promoting the potential of people within business environments. Her work focuses on the alignment of people, processes, and structures to accelerate organizational excellence and improve human performance.

Kathy’s clients know her as a collaborative partner and coach who brings positive energy and innovative ideas to each relationship. When tackling challenges, clients rely on her grace and courage to co-create with them innovative and sustainable solutions. She began honing these skills of “grace under fire” when she became the first woman to integrate an all-male water polo team in high school.

Kathy has been recognized by numerous organizations for her leadership and dedication, and is currently a member of the Organization Development Network (ODN), National Speakers Association (NSA), and the Institute of Management Consultants (IMC). She is a former Board Member of the Bay Area Organization Development Network (BAodn), Admissions Chair for American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), and Chair for the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Crime Prevention and Safety Committee. The later she remembers fondly, as it led to her first formal invitation to a Mayoral Inaugural Ball.

Kathy’s highly interactive speaking engagements include topics on organizational change, leadership and team development. She is an adjunct professor, and has taught and presented at Lao American College, Laos, and the National Hispanic University, San Jose. Kathy holds an Ed.D. in Organization and Leadership from the University of San Francisco, a M.S. in Occupational Safety & Health from the University of Southern California, and a B.S. in Business Administration from California State University-Sacramento.

She can reached via her website.

Pro-Track Profile

Kathy was the first member of the 2012 Pro-Track class of the Northern California Chapter of the National Speakers Association (now re-branded as the Speakers Academy) to achieve full professional membership in NSA. To more hear about her consulting business click on the podcast icon below.

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A decade ago, the tools of communications belonged to a chosen few. Editorial control over newspapers, television and radio was in the hands of those professionals tasked with selecting content deemed worthy of the front page, the headline, the news bulletin. National newspapers and mass media channels were scarce resources. The stories they carried were linear and sequential. The 10 o’clock news was broadcast for an hour each evening at the same time. Important news was on the front page, above the fold.

That was then, this is now.

Immersive storytelling

Today’s world is nonlinear, filled with always-on devices giving anywhere, any time access to media generated by those of us with a WordPress blog and a point of view. Storytelling has come full circle from the logical inevitability of the printed page to the random, emotionally binding, infinitely looping immersive stories of this fragmented age where anyone can create and re-purpose content, as did the bards of pre-literate eras.

The implications of the transition from top-down to user-generated content is explored in detail by Frank Rose in his book The Art of Immersion.

Rose identifies the roots of non-linear storytelling in the popular serials Charles Dickens published in the 1830’s. But it was the creation of the hyper-links of the World Wide Web that blew the lid off linear narrative:

Links change our relationship to information. They empower individuals and destroy hierarchies.

Cinema directors such as Quentin Tarantino, Jean-Luc Goddard and David Lynch create immersive, non-linear forms of film.

The unexpected juxtapositions, the startling elisions, the scenes out of sequence–asleep or awake, this is how we think, in a fast-dissipating vapor.

The implication is that we live in a multiverse, where events occur simultaneously. As the Western-born Spiritual Adept Adi Da Samraj has written about photography:

The human individual in the midst of Reality is like a camera in a room—perceiving everything from a fixed “point of view”. But what does the room Really look like? The room can be viewed from every possible “point of view” in space-time—not merely from any particular “point of view”, or even a finite collection of “points of view”. Therefore, no “point of view” can reveal the room, or Reality Itself, because every “point of view” is limited and essentially self-referring.

Frank Rose explores the art of immersive storytelling and the emerging transmedia methods that the best practitioners are developing in video games, advertising, movies, social media, television and more.

Frank Rose Interview

In August 2012 I met Frank at a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley and took the opportunity to ask him about the implications of immersive storytelling for professional speakers and corporate communications professionals. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

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An astounding story on BBC America this evening about the Korean-born visual artist Nam June Paik, considered the father of video art, who coined the phrase “electronic superhighway” in 1974 while creating works that pushed the boundaries of television.

Cisco might like to claim Tomorrow starts here, but Nam June was building his version of tomorrow’s world a full 10 years before Cisco came on the scene and gradually built an internet backbone capable of handling video in ways that instantiate the artist’s vision.

Paik’s work, which has been put on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, envisioned a future where the transmission of piles of data could happen instantaneously.

Paik, who died in 2006, was the first artist to experiment with the platform of television, seeing it as an open canvas on which many more artists would one day construct their works.

Smithsonian American Art Museum director Betsy Broun says the futurist was “like an antennae that was pointed out into the world, absorbing ideas”.

Smithsonian senior curator for media arts, John G. Hanhardt, speaks passionately about the impact of digital media on the global consciousness in a way that is beyond the boundaries of any one discipline:

You know, I really do feel that 20th century art history is going to be rewritten through the moving image: from film to video and television, to video games, interactive platforms, the Internet. All the arts—whether literature, poetry, dance, sculpture—have changed because of these media as art forms. The whole telling of stories has changed remarkably through the impact of cinema and television and all of these moving image discourses. And they’ve also become art forms themselves, not only as classical cinema but as avant garde film practice, documentary, narrative, video art, installation and performance all throughout the 20th century. The very exciting access to a global history of the moving image through the Internet as well as the mobility of the artist to work and create digitally in a variety of forms and through diverse media platforms. It is really the new paper, the new printing press. However you want to look at it! That changed how we saw information. I do think that artists give us new ways to see ourselves and see the world around us, it is at the center of art history. And Nam June certainly achieved that transformation of video through his art.

Were he alive today, I suspect Paik would be looking 50 years ahead to a future we cannot imagine, where technology that currently seems outlandish is commonplace.