I love Bond movies. I love their existential over-the-top silliness. I love that the UK is still the center of the universe in Bond movies. I love that one person can still save the world in them. I even love all the Bond actors and the slight variations they brought to the role, from the enormous Sean Connery to the diminutive Daniel Craig. I love most of all that the formula never varies.

That Bond movie formula is well-established; so well-established, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine variation even being possible.  But there’s good reason for the inflexible start, for example, of a Bond movie.  We begin, always, with five or so minutes of murder, chases, and explosions.  After that, the credits run.

Now, those credits are a whole world unto themselves, with an original pop tune, dancing guns and women, and a look particular to the moment.  I personally find them a little on the tedious side.  But it’s the opening I want to consider.

Why start with the story instead of the credits?  The reason is obvious to anyone with popcorn and a soft drink:  the movie makers want to hook you right from the start.  Action is promised, and action is delivered.  No variation from that contract with the moviegoer is allowed.  Quantum of Solace, the second in actor Daniel Craig’s Bond run, has one of my favorite opening sequences.  It’s a classic car chase, first inside a tunnel, and then across a construction site, at high speeds, with oncoming cars and trucks, and lots of gunfire.

What’s not to love?  You can’t look away, it gets the adrenaline pumping, and it sets up the story to follow.  Expensive cars are destroyed.

It’s all good.  What does it have to do with public speaking?  Only this:  you need to start your speeches in the same way.  For the same reason.  Just as the producers of Bond movies are afraid of losing the (short and fickle) attention spans of their audiences, so you should be afraid of losing the attention of your speech-going audience.  And you should provide it with the Bond-opening equivalent.

What would that look like?  Not a little bit about you.  Not a little bit about your company.  Not an extended set of thank yous to the audience, your introducer, your host, your mother, and anyone else you can think of.  Not a description of what you are going to talk about in the rest of the talk, aka an agenda.  That would be like Daniel Craig coming out at the beginning of a Bond film, nicely dressed, smiling, and politely explaining that you would soon see a car chase, lots of explosions, pretty women, and a really terrible villain.

Ridiculous, right?  So why do speakers do it?  We don’t want an introduction.  We want to get into the action.

Tell us a gripping story.  Ask us a challenging question.  Cite an astonishing statistic.  Whatever you do, plunge us right into the idea.  Think Bond.  Give us explosions.  Grab us from the start.  Don’t run the credits – yet.