What’s wrong with TED?  There’s no question it has been an extraordinarily successful venture.  It has transformed the world of public speaking in a number of ways, most of them obviously for the better.  But it has had some subtler negative effects too, and that’s what this post covers.

It’s hard to remember now, but there was a time, before TED, when it was difficult to get the measure of a professional speaker.  Some had websites, to be sure, but not many put an entire speech online.  YouTube itself dates only from 2005.  Speeches were something you had to see in person.  Or perhaps on a tape or a DVD.

Now the whole world is online, and so too its speeches.  Every speaker has at the least a sizzle reel on his or her website, and often a good deal more.  Everyone either has a TEDx talk or will have one soon.

And let me be clear before I start criticizing TED:  it has done the world an enormous service.  It has raised the level of public discourse.  It has made ideas both sexy and worthy of discussion.  It has made a flat, didactic data dump of a speech an unacceptable form of public torment – at least in many places around the world.  It has upped the ante on authenticity and personal disclosure, mostly for the better.  It has provided a platform for ideas, many of them important and world-changing.  It has brought new talent to the world’s attention and created careers – richly deserved – for some wonderful speakers and thinkers.  It has re-introduced the idea of storytelling as more than just a nice thing we do for pre-schoolers along with milk and cookies and a blanket.

I am a huge fan of TED as a result.  It is like a never-ending round of Christmas-present opening for me, a (busman’s) holiday every day of the year.  I watch TED while having my coffee in the morning, while on lunch break, regularly for professional reasons with clients during the day, while working out, and while falling asleep.

And yet.  What has TED wrought?  I’ve got two problems with the results of the TED invasion of the world of public speaking.  Both are fairly subtle, so bear with me.

First, by sheer force of example, TED has greatly increased the likelihood that your keynote speech will be 30 minutes, or 20, or even 15, not 60 (or 90 minutes – 90 minutes was typical a decade ago).

And second, TED has greatly increased the likelihood that your keynote speech will tie the personal revelation of a life story or a piece of it to the idea the speaker wants to get across.

What’s wrong with shorter, personal speeches?

What’s wrong with shorter speeches is that you can’t persuade people to change in 15 minutes, because you can’t make them emotionally uncomfortable enough with the status quo to be ready to embrace something new.

That decision is made at the unconscious level, and the unconscious mind works slowly.  It takes it 15-20 minutes to get uncomfortable, then another 15-20 minutes to embrace the new idea.  Emotionally, not logically.

So the success of TED means shorter speeches, and shorter speeches means speeches we can – for the most part – hear and forget.  We will not be changed by them.

What’s wrong with personal speeches?  Nothing at all.  I’m a big fan of them.  Except when the idea is not best served by personal revelation.  Sometimes the idea – the point — can become a sideshow, with the audience distracted by the personal story because it’s so heartbreaking or graphic or even funny.

TED then becomes an exercise in sharing our personal stories, with the ideas coming in a distant second place.

To get people to act on ideas, you have to make them uncomfortable with the status quo, then give them a path forward to act on that discomfort.  You have to leave them incomplete unless they act.  Too often, we feel complete after hearing that wonderful personal TED story.  We’re done.  The TED speaker lives happily ever after.  We’re satisfied.

A great world-changing speech should only the beginning.  President Kennedy’s speech on “Urgent National Needs,” given on May 25, 1961, propelled the U.S. to the moon.  As wonderful as TED is, my fear is that its particular format makes it too easy for us to watch TED and stop there.

We need TED.  Now that we have it, it’s hard to imagine life without it.  But we still need longer, thoughtful, world-changing speeches too.