Thomas Edison is frequently quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” He was referring to his search for the material that would be the filament in his lightbulb. There are many lessons to be learned from that story; perseverance, optimism, ingenuity, creativity, etc… But I think the most important lesson is courage – having the courage to start something, the courage to fail, the courage to try again, and the courage to finally ship.
This process sounds obvious and maybe even simple. But if those are both true, then why do so few of us achieve the level of success we believe ourselves to be capable of attaining? It’s because there are a combination of forces aligned against us; some of them external but most of them insidiously entrenched inside our own lizard brains.
Fortunately for us, Seth Godin and Steven Pressfield have written a quartet of books that provide a blueprint for being successful and making a difference. I’ve coalesced them into what I call the “Godin/Pressfield Algorithm” (What can I say? I’m engineer, which means I love algorithms.).
Start
“What kind of moron doesn’t know that the first step in achieving success is starting?” That’s a fair point, but I’m using the word “start” in a less literal sense. There all kinds of distractions and time-wasting efforts that look like starting, but are really procrastinating. This is where Godin’s “Poke the Box” (affiliate link) comes in handy. It’s a manifesto that clears the fog away from indecision and provides inspiration and advice for overcoming the fear of getting started. But don’t expect a map, because there isn’t one. Godin explains, “Instead of learning to be more compliant, I want to push you to be the one who takes initiative.”
Work
Undertaking any endeavor is scary because you might fail. But even worse, your brain will fight you every step of the way because we’re programmed to pursue immediate, short-term gratification instead of activities aimed at longer term rewards; in other words, “work.” This invisible force that tells us to check our email or Twitter stream instead of authoring a blog post or writing a few more lines of code or making that client phone call is called “The Resistance” in Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.” Pressfield pulls the curtain back from this insidious obstacle and offers sound advice for recognizing and overcoming it.
Fail
Failing happens. Failing can even be a good thing. In fact, failure is not an option, it’s a strategy. But the problem is that it can be demoralizing. This is where Pressfield’s newest book, “Do the Work” (affiliate link) comes in very handy. He says, “It’s about getting off your behind and starting something. And Seth Godin writes about this, that once you start, you have to finish; you don’t get off the hook half way through.”
Ship
“Real artists ship.” Thus sayeth Steve Jobs, as quoted by Godin in the final book of our quartet, “Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” (affiliate link). This book dares you, actually embarrasses you into making yourself indispensable. It serves as the foundation of the Godin/Pressfield algorithm and stresses the importance of shipping. Otherwise, everything else is boasting, procrastinating, bullshitting. Real artists ship.
And now you have an algorithm for shipping. You’re out of excuses. Grab these books and get started.
OK, I will admit it – I may have a slight man-crush on Clay Shirky. I quote him often, watch any video he’s in, and read everything he writes. The term “thought leader” is overused in our hyperactive blogosphere, but the term truly applies to Shirky. His first book, “Here Comes Everybody – The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” looked past the obvious points everyone else was making about social media and unveiled the long term effects it would have on organizations. Put another way, he was thought-leading.
His encore book is “Cognitive Surplus – Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age,” and it is vintage Shirky. Every page is dense with original ideas about how social media is going to affect society. The very title of the book suggests that there is a surplus of brain power up for grabs. But since cognitive capacity is a zero sum game, the surplus has to come from somewhere. This begs the question, “Where do people find the time?”
The Essence
Shirky tells a story about a conversation he had with a television producer who was trying to determine whether or not to have him on her show. He talked about the controversy of Pluto’s “delisting” as a planet and the sudden spike in activity on its Wikipedia page. Shirky waited for her to follow up with questions about the social implications of this phenomenon, but “Instead, she sighed and said, ‘Where do people find the time?” Hearing this, I snapped, and said, ‘No one who works in television gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from.’”
The 1970's television show "Gilligan's Island" had many pondering the eternal question, "Ginger or Mary Ann?"
He estimates that there are roughly a trillion hours spent watching television worldwide each year. The advent of the industrial age and, with it, the 40 hours work week meant that the post World War II industrialized societies had an abundance of free time and television swooped in and soaked up most of it. We laughed at ourselves for spending so much time contemplating the such mysteries of the universe as, “Ginger or Mary Ann?“.
Social media represents competition for our free time. The big difference between it and television is that our every use of social media is, by definition, a creative act. Whether it’s uploading vacation photos to Flickr or sharing pearls of wisdom on Twitter, we have made something that didn’t previously exist. We can debate the value and merit of this content until the cows come home, but what is not debatable is that watching television creates nothing.
The question now becomes, what will come from the creative activities of “The People Formerly Known as the Audience” as he calls them?
Means, Motive and Opportunity
In three of the book’s chapters, presents the implications of the Cognitive Surplus in the framework of a legal argument; means, motive and opportunity. “The harnessing of our cognitive surplus allows people to behave in increasingly generous, public, and social ways, relative to their old status as consumers and couch potatoes.” They payoff in the book comes from the motive and opportunity topics, where the rubber truly meets the road.
The Skinny
Why it rocks:
The book is fruitcake-dense with ideas, evidence, and challenges. It looks well beyond the horizon of such comparatively insignificant questions as “Google versus Facebook”, or “How much is a follower worth?” Cognitive Surplus is a book about how human beings will harness each others’ brains in order to work together at changing the world.
Why it doesn’t:
It’s not the easiest read in the world. Not because of his writing style, but simply because you spend so much time contemplating the implications of the machine gun pace of ideas he unleashes.
The Verdict
This is an important book. It may not necessarily be important to you, but the concepts are far reaching and somewhat mind boggling. If you’re wondering what role LOL Cats may play in the future of mankind, Shirky goes a long way toward putting all things social media into context.
“Groundswell” by Forrester Research analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoffis one of the earliest and most influential books on the business effects and uses of social media. It is often at the top of recommended reading lists, and for good reason. The book is very well written, informative, practical, actionable and soaked with real stories and examples. I recommend the book to anyone involved or interested in how social media affects organizations and the ways in which they can leverage it.
But there’s one large caveat; Li and Bernoff (unsurprisingly) take every possible opportunity to inject research analysts into each step of the process.
The Skinny
Why it rocks:
The book brilliantly paints a picture of your organization before, during, and after engagement in social media. It lays out the influences it is having on all businesses, provides clear and understandable (i.e. non-techy) strategies and tactics for implementing it, and then predicts the aftermath of embracing social media.
Why It Doesn’t:
At every opportunity, the analyst-authors espouse the importance of using analysts to properly align your strategy with the social demographics of your target audience. On its face, it sounds perfectly logical and back in 2008 (yeah, way back then) it was probably much more important than it is today. One reason is that the ROI calculation was much more delicate two years ago than it is today, as the investment was generally higher and the return significantly lower. In other words, it is arguably much easier to earn a positive ROI on social media engagement today. Also, given the ubiquity of social networking sites and the advent of real time search, there are lots of fringe benefits to social media engagement that, in many cases, can make the ROI case themselves. Finally, more and more customers expect their vendors to be present in social media. This means that not participating can become both an opportunity cost and have a negative impact on their brand, both of which are hard to quantify.
Who Will Dig It:
Managers and executives who are ignorant, dubious, curious, or all of the above with regard to the hows and whys of engaging their organizations in social media will find the book very valuable and a fairly easy read.
The Essence
Part one focuses on understanding the groundswell. This first section by itself would make the book worth reading! It provides solid background and compelling examples to underscore the concepts. But it also introduces the core idea of the Social Technographic Profile. While I think this is a valuable thought exercise, I feel that the concept is a bit overdone. The idea is that you should tune your social media presence according to the technographical makeup of your target audience. My thoughts are that there are now sufficient tools available that the cost of leveraging all of the channels makes it a no-brainer to do so regardless of your target audience.
Part two of “Groundswell” builds on the concept of the social technographics profile and describes strategies and tactics for tapping into the groundswell. With chapters on listening to, talking with, energizing, and helping the groundswell, no stone is left unturned. Once again, my only beef is that the importance of determining the social technographic profile and shaping your strategy around it is slightly overemphasized. I would argue that similar to writing a business plan, the journey is more important than the destination.
Finally, part three talks about the transformation that an organization fully engaged in social media will undergo. These are important considerations, because like many initiatives, an organization cannot simply go through the motions. Doing so will be painfully obvious to the social media world and will cause more harm than good.
The Verdict
Though I found the self-promotion of the analysts to be a bit strong and notwithstanding the fact that some of the concepts are becoming slightly dated, the book has too much valuable information not to recommend it. And I do recommend it strongly with my previously expressed caveats. So, as they say at the end of the book, I “look forward to meeting you in the groundswell.”
It was just after Christmas and I had some gift cards and a book to return to Barnes & Noble. In the hustle and bustle I left the house without the “wish list” I had printed out, which contained my reading list. Since I would rather spend my time treasure hunting on book shelves than slaloming through post-holiday traffic, I decided to troll. One of the books on my list was to pick up a styles manual, as humdrum as that is. Luckily, however, I saw “The Elements of Story: Field Notes on Nonfiction Writing” by Francis Flaherty and decided to go ahead and purchase it. The good news is that reading this book was a transformative experience. The bad news is that I am now burdened with reviewing a book penned by a New York Times editor.
The Skinny
Why It Rocks:
Flaherty groups fifty rules into seven parts, presenting them with vivid examples and none of the pretentiousness you might expect from a New York Times Editor.
Why It Doesn’t:
At the risk of sounding spineless, the only complaint I have about the book is that there were not a hundred rules.
Who Will Dig It:
Bloggers, of course, but also anyone who needs to write articles, posts, reports, proposals, and any other non-fiction prose.
The Essence
Previously, I had read a few books about visual design. A consistent theme of design is simplicity, which is captured in Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s famous quote: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” I immediately recalled this quote after Flaherty closed out Chapter 5 by saying, “To write is to choose, which is to exclude.” That’s when the sea parted for me; writing is design using words. The same rules of simplicity, contrast, color, motion, proximity, etc. apply to writing as well. With this in mind, I began to think of writing in a whole new context.
Flaherty groups his fifty rules into seven groups:
A Human Face
“Every story, even the driest, has a human face. Draw it well and put it on display, for to readers it is a mirror and a magnet.”
The Theme
“The writer must be loyal to his major theme. He must study all its facets, and he must tamp down other topics that threaten to displace or diminish it.”
Motion
“Good stories are a brisk journey, and the reader can always feel the breeze in his hair.”
Artfulness
“The artful writer sees what others see. He just sees it in a drawn-fresh way.”
Truth and Fairness
“Writing is an art, and art bestows a license. But the license is a limited one, and it never sanctions material omission or unfair play.”
Leads and Other Article Parts
“Leads and settings, transitions and kickers: Each part of an article demands its own peculiar art.”
The Big Type
“Titles and subtitles are turbocharged text. They are your work distilled.”
I would not argue strenuously if you said it’s a bit lazy of me to reproduce the Table of Contents here. However, part of the charm and lure of this book is Flaherty’s masterful use of words and particularly the economy with which he employs them. Therefore, I felt it would be most effective for his work to speak for itself at least a little.
The Verdict
I found “The Elements of Story” to be as enjoyable as it was informative. Flaherty’s writing style is easy on the brain and ripe with understated – almost British? – humor. I consider it required reading for bloggers and strongly encourage anyone interested in improving their writing craft to give it a read.
PowerPoint doesn't kill people, bad presentations kill people.
I used to think I was pretty good at creating presentations. I took a business communications class in graduate school and learned the same old rules; limit your fonts, three to seven bullet points, don’t read your slides, blah blah blah. I withstood others’ horrible presentations, invisibly smirking and silently mocking the 250 word novels slides with their horrifying color schemes and monotone, stammering presenter. I congratulated myself on not being “that guy.” But the truth is that I was just as guilty of Really Bad PowerPoint as anyone else.
Then I read Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and everything changed. My goal in this blog post is nothing short of paying forward that same change, and so I’m using myself as a case study to show what my presentations used to look like, what they look like now, and what I aspire them to be in the future.
But before we go down that road, in case you’re dubious about whether or not really bad PowerPoint is a problem, here is a presentation that Guy Kawasaki put together that was used as the forward to Presentation Zen.
The Presenter As Storytellter
The number one lesson I’ve learned is that “slides do not a presentation make.” Rather, they are simply a prop for the story you’re telling. The following slide show contains a series of before and after shots from the same presentation, which I completely overhauled after reading Presentation Zen. They illustrate the first major change; move the narrative off of the slides and into the oratory.
Once the presentation is transformed from a distraction to a storytelling prop, the burden of communication falls on the story itself. Based on the recommendation in Presentation Zen, I also read “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die.” This indispensable book presents six principles that make stories “sticky.” It’s invaluable to crafting messages of all sorts, not just creating presentations. Whether writing an email, composing a blog post, or crafting a memo outlining your thoughts on your organization’s next mission statement this book will help you do it more effectively and memorably. These six principles can be represented by the acronym “SUCCESs”:
Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories
The Presenter As Designer
Duh. That’s the one word that best describes how I felt while reading Presentation Zen. Reynolds eloquently and convincingly makes the case that design is important, poorly understood, and badly implemented (by and large). Those were the “duh” moments, as I realized that those are all true and that I had never realized it or paid much attention previously. But next came salvation, as basic design principles and techniques are presented that make it possible to learn how to improve design. Imagine that – you can actually learn how to design! Looking back, I can’t believe that design wasn’t part of the core curriculum for my engineering degree or any of the computer science tracks I’ve seen. And now that we live in the age of Web 2.0 where we are all content producers, it seems to me that it should be required in all college programs. But I digress.
Reynolds begins by stressing simplicity, balance, noise suppression, and space. These are all related and as I look back on my old presentations it seems as though I was deliberately violating as many of these guidelines as possible on every slide. Take the slide shown below, for example. This is not simple at all; there are too many ideas at once and even the screen shot, while appropriate was still complex and distracting. The layout is completely unbalanced and top-heavy. The slide template is noisy with lines and the “ISA” logo implanted in the corner of every slide. Finally, there is a small amount of empty space on the slide, but it is concentrated in one corner and looks more like something is missing. They eye darts around this slide searching for meaning with no help provided from the design.
My personal design renaissance has begun with what Reynolds calls “The Big Four:” contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. I’ll now provide examples from my own presentations on how I’ve implemented these principles.
This slide uses contrast in two different ways. The first is the color contrast between the dark gray background and the pure white text. The words jump off the page in way that bullets never can. The second use of contrast is the emphasis of the words “interesting” and “boring” by changing the font size. For some reason we seem to be afraid to make things BIG enough or bold enough.
One of the central themes of this particular presentation was the abundance of free tools available on the Internet in our Web 2.0 world. Therefore, I made use of design repetition by placing the “Free” price tag graphic element on eight consecutive slides in the exact same spot. I also made sure to emphasize this in my delivery by asking the audience to guess how much each solution cost. Of course, the answer was the same and the audio and visual repetition made sure that this point would be driven home. Plus, the audience had fun with it.
Alignment stresses the importance of making objects appear as if they were placed in a particular place deliberately, rather than simply thrown anywhere there was space available. This slide aligns the letters of an acronym quite deliberately to show their relationship. While this is a good example of alignment, I’m not sure it’s a great example of contrast, balance, or noise. I’m sure there is a better way to present this idea, so I will keep tinkering.
This title slide demonstrates the use of proximity. The graphic and title are strongly related and so they are grouped together in close proximity. My name, company, and position are also grouped together and separated from the title in order to distinguish and de-emphasize them. You can also see elements of contrast and alignment in play here as well.
The Presenter As Heretic
Alas, as much as I believe all of this makes sense, it remains heresy to create a PowerPoint presentation that does not utilize the prescribed template or can’t be used as a handout. If you look at most of my presentations now, they are completely useless without the presenter and that’s exactly as it should be. Nonetheless, many conferences are still beholden to the same formula of “Email me your presentation three days in advance so that we can print them out.” Adopting this approach means that you need to create your own handouts that contain the substance of your presentation and not just the props. This all takes more work, but it’s worth it for you and your audience. My recommendation is to write the document in Word, then upload it to Scribd (or Posterous or other similar service) so that you can embed it in web pages and blog posts and also increase your online visibility. Leveraging Social Media & Internet Technology (Handout)
Looking Ahead
While my presentations are a night and day difference from what they used to be, the one thing for certain is that I still have a long way to go. I’m continuing to hone my public speaking skills (which I still think are not very good) and currently enjoying “Confessions of a Public Speaker” by Scott Berkun. I’m simultaneously thumbing through Nacy Duarte’s “Slide:ology,” which is not merely informative; it is incredibly beautiful, mesmerizing, and inspirational. I now look upon each public speaking engagement with excitement and optimism of not merely meeting the challenge, but improving each and every time. I’m looking for an end result that comes close to something like this…
Photo credits:
“death-by-presentation” from HikingArtist.com on Flickr (Creative Commons)
Thomas Edison is frequently quoted as saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” He was referring to his search for the material that would be the filament in his lightbulb. There are many lessons to be learned from that story; perseverance, optimism, ingenuity, creativity, etc… But I think the most important lesson is courage – having the courage to start something, the courage to fail, the courage to try again, and the courage to finally ship.
“What kind of moron doesn’t know that the first step in achieving success is starting?” That’s a fair point, but I’m using the word “start” in a less literal sense. There all kinds of distractions and time-wasting efforts that look like starting, but are really procrastinating. This is where Godin’s “Poke the Box
Undertaking any endeavor is scary because you might fail. But even worse, your brain will fight you every step of the way because we’re programmed to pursue immediate, short-term gratification instead of activities aimed at longer term rewards; in other words, “work.” This invisible force that tells us to check our email or Twitter stream instead of authoring a blog post or writing a few more lines of code or making that client phone call is called “The Resistance” in Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
