From The Mistake Bank:
As a young Xerox sales trainee, Jill Konrath learned her sales demonstration script perfectly… perhaps too perfectly.
“Mr. Prospect” – 2:56
You can learn more about Jill and her work at SellingToBigCompanies.com.
Related Post:
Jill Konrath Mistake Stories
Tags:
sales, narrative, podcast, presentation, Mistake Bank
I’m happy to use my sons’ favorite expression to headline today’s post. If something is really, really good, it “rules.” I guess kids wish for monarchy (or feel as if they live under one). For example:
“Spongebob rules.”
“Indiana Jones rules.”
“Swim team rules.”
And, similarly, John Medina’s “Brain Rules” rules. (And I’m not the first to say so.) It performs an amazing trick–besides being informative and insightful…it’s also a delight to read.
The book sets out twelve rules about how our brains work (#1: Exercise boosts brain power; #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way), cites study after study to back up the rules, and demonstrates how our current lifestyles often aren’t particularly good for our brains. Mixed in is advice for students, parents, presenters, executives, drivers–everybody–about how to act more in support of your brain rather than in opposition to its needs.
I gravitated to the section about attention (#4: We don’t pay attention to boring things), especially his description of the 10-minute rule for his university lectures:
I decided that every lecture I’d ever give would come in discrete modules. Since the 10-minute rule had been known for many years, I decided the modules would last only 10 minutes. Each segment would cover a single core concept–always large, always general, always filled with “gist,” and always explainable in one minute. Each class was 50 minutes, so I could easily burn through five large concepts in a single period. I would use the other 9 minutes in the segment to provide a detailed descrtiption of that single general concept. The trick was to ensure that each detail could be easily traced back to the general concept with minimum intellectual effort. I regularly took time out from content to explain the relationship betwen the detail and the core concept in clear and explicit terms. (p.89)
The book is full of stories, blessedly, and also demonstrates Medina’s innate grasp of rule #4 by creating suspense in passage after passage, for example:
To explain how timing issues figure into memory formation, I want to stop for a moment and tell you about how I met my wife. (p.133)
How could anyone close the book there? Devices like these (used seamlessly and delivered in a deadpan voice) propel you through the book, so that at times it feels like you’re reading a thriller, not a book about neurology.
Enough said. Great book. Read it. Do something nice for your brain.
Related posts:
The first great business book of 2008
A must-read for people who present
Tags:
storytelling, learning, neurology, presentation, reading list
I have sat through, by my estimate, more than a thousand lousy presentations. You know the ones: someone in a suit stands at a lectern and dryly reads PowerPoint bullets for a half-hour, or an hour, or sometimes even longer. The slides use a garish corporate template and contain unreadably-small text, save for a few lame clip-art images. Ugh.
Even worse, I’ve given hundreds of similar presentations.
Luckily for me and other poor presenters, Garr Reynolds has been providing expert critique, tips and examples to help people present better on his Presentation Zen website. (I’ve written about Garr’s work a number of times: 1, 2, 3, 4.)
Now, he’s assembled his ideas into a book.
As you might expect, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery is beautifully designed and laid out. With lots of white space, beautiful pictures, and a nice variety of page layouts, it reinforces its theme by its very look. [Similar to Edward Tufte's books, Presentation Zen is fun to flip through just to look at the pictures.]
If you didn’t think you could say more with less text, or didn’t know how to find cool photographs that would actually enhance your message, or didn’t know how to make your subject as compelling to the audience as it is to you, Presentation Zen has insight you need.
While Reynolds echoes themes and specific advice he’s presented in his blog, the accrual of the information between the book’s covers has a more powerful effect than reading the same material over a long period of time in several blog posts. For example, throughout the book he shows side-by-side comparisons of poor slides and improved ones, or shows a number of different ways of conveying the same information with different slide designs. By the time you get to the end, the message is clear.
In other words, if you read Reynolds’ blog regularly, you should still invest in the book. And if you don’t read the blog, you should buy the book right away. And start applying the lessons today. [Please! I'm going to another seminar at the beginning of April.]
storytelling, design, presentation, PowerPoint, reading list
Two of my favorite bloggers have posted on Ira Glass’ (This American Life) videos on storytelling.
Shawn Callahan of Anecdote discusses the video here and connects it to the work his team does with businesses. (There are still a few days left to register for Shawn’s narrative in business workshop in Boston on March 29.)
And Garr Reynolds of the great Presentation Zen blog breaks down the video and summarizes each section.
Storytelling is everywhere.
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