Chris Brogan recently wrote in a blog post about his struggles with writing a new presentation for every occasion versus using a version of the same speech over and over again. He mentioned my work with him in the post. Guy Kawasaki opined, in a recent HBR piece, that you should customize a speech by talking about the conference or event or host for the first 3 – 5 minutes of your presentation before going into your stump speech. He went on to say that you had to give a speech 20 times before you learned it.
Somewhere between completely new speeches and a couple of minutes at the top is the right amount of customization, surely. Are there any guidelines that we can establish to help find your way between these two alternatives? Following are a few suggestions to help you with this tricky subject.
First, everyone thinks their problems are unique. Every group I’ve ever talked to, and every client has talked to, thinks that their situation is special. And they are, in the real sense that every human is unique. That means that you have to customize your presentations. You have to address their particular problems. How much is the operative question.
But from your perspective, they are more similar than different. If your expertise is in leadership, say, then what you have done is extrapolate from a specific set of experiences to a general rule (or three) about that topic that allows you to hold forth with authority on the subject of leadership. Not just to farm workers in Edison, Indiana, but also to airplane manufacturers in Canada and software engineers in India. You see the similarities; therein lies your expertise. You’ve developed some rules about leadership that cross boundaries. Otherwise it wouldn’t be even remotely useful.
To develop expertise means to think – at a meta level – about how something is structured, how it works. From the very start, then, you’re generalizing.
The client is hiring you for, in part, your brand. That means repeatability. The client wants the same high-quality experience that some other group got from your presentation replicated at their own. Someone has said to their meeting planner, “You should hire Malcolm Gladwell to speak to your group because he’s a great storyteller. That thing about tomato sauce is amazing. Make sure he talks about that.” The whole point of fame, and demand, and brand, has to do – at least in part – with repeatability.
Or think about bringing the Rolling Stones in to sing at your high school graduation. (Never mind the expense for the moment.) You don’t want them to sing a song that no one has ever heard. At least not more than one or two. What you really want is Satisfaction. That’s the nature of fame and brand.
But they also don’t want you just to phone it in. Because we crave authenticity and rawness of experience, if your branding gets too slick and your performance too perfunctory, you’ll be rated as less successful. So you have to give at least the appearance of spontaneity – without the attendant messiness.
So what about Guy Kawasaki’s 3-minute rule? I think it’s too mechanistic. You should look for opportunities throughout your presentation to steer it toward the particular, the specific, and the local. That means a thought here, and a sentence or two there. Perhaps a case study (chosen from several you have ready to go) that fits the industry better than another one. B2B people are always asking for B2B examples rather than B2C; if you work in B2C, but want to speak to B2B, have at least one case study ready to go that’s B2B.
The 80 – 20 rule makes more sense to me in this case. In the end, you need to be keeping most of your presentation the same in order to honor your expertise and brand. But just adding a few minutes of chit-chat at the beginning doesn’t seem like enough to truly get at what is individual and special about the audience in front of you. I think the 80-20 rule is closer to the mark. That means, in a 60-minute speech, 12 minutes should be novel. That seems about right. And it should be sprinkled throughout the talk, in order to get specific more than once about the particular issues the audience in front of you faces.
You customize in order to speak to a specific audience about the general truths you’ve learned from your particular experience. Both ends of the spectrum are essential to communicate and to impart useful, sharable knowledge.
I talk about these issues and many others that arise in preparing a great presentation in my new online course, Presentation Prep: 10 Steps to Great Storytelling, available starting next week. You can pre-register for it here.
Great advice, well put. Thanks Nick.
Thanks, Antoni!
Great points, Nick. I will sometimes tailor my introduction if I’m in a place or talking to a group that I have a substantial connection to (“I grew up in the DC area …”, “My second job was in an association”), but I make sure to relate that to the content of my talk, as opposed to something that’s just appended to the front.
Otherwise, some of the best customization comes from interacting with the audience (“Who’s had this problem and how did you handle it?”) or adjusting content on the fly, giving more and less weight to certain topics when it’s clear where the audience’s interests and needs lie.
And I agree that the crave for customization of examples is sometimes pointless. Leadership is leadership, storytelling is storytelling — the same fundamental principles apply whatever the industry or setting.
Hi, Rob — thanks for the great point about customizing on the fly — that is, responding to audience comments, using those kind of open-ended questions, and so on. That’s what really feels like customization in the end.
As usual Nick, you’ve got me thinking about something more deeply than I would have done otherwise – guess that’s the point! I like Rob’s point about interacting with the audience. It’s nice when you hear speakers refer to conversations they’ve had with people before the presentation. Sounds fresh, improvised but specific to that audience.
I also think if you’ve got a good story library it’s easier to pull out the right ones for that particular audience and their specific issues. And if the story is about something that happened on the way through the building, even better!
But what really got me thinking is not to worry about repeating your core themes. After all, that’s what you’re known for and why they hired you in the first place. Thanks again for massaging my brain Nick!
Thanks, Andrew, for weighing in. You’re right about the story library — too many speakers fail to develop one of those….In fact, it suggests a blog post….
My question is how to avoid the so-called platitudes while making a presentation, mostly when it comes to motivational speech, about leadership, goal setting, time management, and so on, where everything seems to be already said before?
Hi Sergio — the only way to avoid platitudes is to be authentic. Tell real stories about real people, and don’t settle for the easy cliche.
Stories are certainly a great way to stand out.
This quote from storyteller Doug Stevenson seems apt: “Content is not king, uniqueness of content is king”
Two other great ways to make your content unique spring to mind: Coin “a phrase that pays” (as Craig Valentine says) – a memorable and clever phrase (often rhyming, or a play on words) that becomes your trademark. Or, promote a distinct methodology, and give it a memorable brand name.
Yes, we humans are more impressed than we should be by rhymes — since there’s no inherent proof in a rhyme, just a pleasing sound. But they work! And we’re probably less impressed by good methodologies than we should be, on the other side, because they’re usually not very sexy.
[…] Source: http://www.publicwords.com […]
Interesting post (and comments). I like that it weighs up diverse approaches, instead of just focusing on one.
I don’t know how seriously to take Guy Kawasaki on this, because sometimes he says one thing and does quite another. For instance, I’ve heard him cite his “10-20-30 rule” in a talk that contained dozens of slides (not 10) and lasted 30 minutes (not 20). Yet he implied “10-20-30” is a universal rule.
The customisation he suggests would certainly be quick. I’m not sure how satisfying it’d be for the audience though. I agree with you about sprinkling new content throughout instead.
I love Rob’s tip about asking the audience questions. That’s 2nd on my list
of ways to customise your talk. Others range from quick and easy (like using the host organisation’s colours in your handout) to slow and tricky (like interviewing audience members weeks ahead, and then citing some of what they said).
Thanks, Craig, for your thoughtful comment. The speaker’s comfort level with audience interaction and its attendant uncertainties is important to consider. Some speakers are easily thrown by an unexpected question; others thrive on that. A wise speaker knows his own comfort level.