More and more the call is for short speeches.  Of course, the popularity of TED and TEDx talks is one cause, but the impatience of the times is another, along with our shrinking attention spans and all the other distractions competing for our mindshare.  Keynote speeches, which used to be 90 minutes, are now 60, and our clients regularly report that they are often asked to give a 20- or 30-minute version of their keynote speech – and sometimes on the fly.

So you’d better have a short version of your talk ready to go, along with that splendid, full-bore, detailed, 60-minute masterpiece.  How do you shrink what you have to say into a 20-minute miniature version of itself?

The secret to saying something memorable in 20 minutes is to resist the urge to say too much.  Changing lives in 20 minutes takes focus.  And that’s something that most people have a hard time doing.  In 20 minutes, you can say roughly 2500 words, give or take, and that’s not very many if you’ve set yourself the task of changing the world.  So you’ve got to narrow the field, resist the urge to say it all, and pick your details judiciously.

A good 20-minute talk presents one idea, tells one story, and asks one question. 

Begin by choosing one idea.  Try to make it an idea that has universal interest, but where your specific expertise can usefully be applied.  Then, narrow it down and focus it until you can sum it up easily in an elevator pitch of a few sentences:

As a neuranatomist, I study the difference between normal brains and the brains of the mentally ill.  One morning, I suffered a stroke, and experienced a mental disorder of my own. I was fascinated to learn from the experience.  Here’s what I learned while I was dying, especially about the differences between the right and left hemisphere’s experiences of reality. 

That, roughly speaking, is what Jill Bolte Taylor might use as a guideline for preparing her TED masterpiece on her “stroke of insight.”  It’s one idea, her expertise is highly relevant, it’s focused and it’s inherently interesting.

Next, pick one story to go with the one idea.  Make it a story only you can tell.  And make it a story with a point, or lesson.  In the Taylor example, her story focuses on the drama surrounding the moment of the stroke, and what follows from that.  The insight Taylor brings to bear on her stroke lets her tell the story in a way no one else can.  The lesson she derives from the story is all about learning to live, especially in that right-brain, non-judgmental world of affirmation, and in the end it’s her affirmation in the face of such a harrowing life-event that makes her perspective powerful and unique.

Note that your story doesn’t have to be as dramatic or life-threatening as a stroke, but of course it doesn’t hurt.  The further down you are on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the more viscerally you will grab your audience.  The safety level is the best place to be, but don’t fake it.  If your speech is not about life and death, don’t distort it to try to make it so.  Just tell it in the way that only you can.

Finally, ask one question.  A good talk poses a question, for which it has an answer that might be sketched quickly at the beginning of the talk, but for which the talk itself is the fuller answer.  Don’t be afraid to make it a big question.  In Taylor’s case, the question she asks is “Who are we?” – plenty big – and the answer is that we are boundless beings that channel and embrace the energy of the universe – but that have the physical body to do something with that energy.

Audiences always start out asking why – why should I care, why is this talk important, why should I listen – and it’s good to give a provisional, brief answer at the top of the talk, so that the audience relaxes and listens to the whole talk as the fuller answer.   Taylor cheats a little on this one, opening with the statement that she studies the brain because her brother suffers from mental illness.  So she studies the differences between brains like hers that allow her to dream her dreams and yet bring them into reality, whereas her brother’s dreams never become reality.  That does answer the question why, but her speech is not really about normal v mentally ill brains.  Rather, it’s about the universal and differing experiences of reality offered up by the left and right brains.

But by the time we get to the end of the speech, most of us have forgotten that entry point, so compelling is her story.

One idea, one story, one question.  That’s  how you focus your thoughts to produce a coherent, potentially powerful 20-minute speech.

My Stroke of Insight