The MLK of Classical Music

Awakening the possibilities in yourself and others

Zander starts off by brilliantly and simply illustrating, in his own unique way, the power of getting yourself and others to "do it on one buttock." If you watched the presentation you get the point, but ask yourself this: How can you turn your presentations into one-buttock presentations? How can you turn your organization (company,school, church, etc.) into a one-buttock organization? Doing it "on one buttock" is not only for musicians, it's for athletes, teachers, artists, business people, and on and on. Leaders of all types must understand the need for doing it on one buttock.

What is your role?
Benjamin Zander is a master at awakening the possibilities in others. He shows how in just twenty minutes one can expose people to new ideas, new possibilities and new passions. He truly embodies his belief that "one of the characteristics of a leader is that he's not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming". I especially liked his realization that since the conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound, he depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful. "The conductor's power depends on his ability to make other people powerful. My job is to awaken possibility in other people. If the eyes are shining, you know you are doing it. If they aren't shining, I must ask, "Who am I being that my players aren't shining?" His job is to awaken possibility in other people.So, what's the role of a good leader then? Is it not to awaken the possibility of an organization (or a nation)? What is the role of a good teacher? Is it not to inspire and awaken the potential of each student? Is not the role of a good parent, among other things, to awaken the possibilities within each of their children?

How do you know if your connecting?
How do you know if you are "awaking the possibility" in each student, or each audience member, Zander asks. The answer? "Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it." Zander goes on to say "...if the eyes are not shining you have to ask yourself a question: who am I being that my player's eyes are not shining?" This goes for our children, students, audience members, and so on. For me that's the greatest takeaway question: who am I being when I am not seeing a connection in the eyes of others? Zander's lessons go far beyond the world of music and the art of presentation, and although the ideas may seem simple, they are not easy. Some of the best ideas out there are the simple-but-not-easy ones. These are the kind of ideas that change things.

Beyond the Fuck It
Zander also introduced the idea of BTFI(Beyond The Fuck It), an idea from his book "The Art of Possibility". This is a simple idea: What would happen if you stopped worrying, stopped holding back, and avoiding the possibility of mistakes and just said "Fuck it!" and then just did it. No thought of technique or of victory or defeat...just the moment.

What Makes Messages Stick?

Most of the great books that will help you make better presentations are not specifically about presentations at all, and certainly not about how to use slideware. One such book is Made to Stick (Random House) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The Heath brothers were interested in what makes some ideas effective and memorable and other ideas utterly forgettable. Some stick and others fade away. Why? What the authors found—and explain simply and brilliantly in their book—is that “sticky” ideas have six key principles in common: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. And yes, these six compress nicely into the acronym SUCCESs.

The six principles are relatively easy to incorporate into messages—including presentations and keynote addresses—but most people fail to use them. Why? The authors say that the biggest reason why most people fail to craft effective or “sticky” messages is because of what they call the “Curse of Knowledge.” The Curse of Knowledge is essentially the condition whereby the deliverer of the message cannot imagine what it’s like not to possess his level of background knowledge on the topic. When he speaks in abstractions to the audience, it makes perfect sense to him, but to him alone. In his mind it seems simple and obvious. The six principles—SUCCESs—are your weapons, then, to fight your own Curse of Knowledge (we all have it) to make messages that stick.

Here’s an example that the authors used early in their book to explain the difference between a good, sticky message and a weak yet garden-variety message. Look at these two messages which address the same idea. One of them should seem very familiar to you.

* “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.”

Or

* “...put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.”

The first message sounds similar to CEO-speak today and is barely comprehensible, let alone memorable. The second message—which is actually from a 1961 speech by John F. Kennedy—has every element of SUCCESs, and it motivated a nation toward a specific goal that changed the world. JFK, or at least his speechwriters, knew that abstractions are not memorable, nor do they motivate. Yet how many speeches today by CEOs and other leaders contain phrases like “maximize shareholder value yada, yada, yada?” Here’s a quick summary of the six principles from Made to Stick that you should keep in mind when crystallizing your ideas and crafting your messages for speeches, presentations, or any other form of communication.

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Simplicity. If everything is important, then nothing is important. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. You must be ruthless in your efforts to simplify—not dumb down—your message to its absolute core. We’re not talking about stupid sound bites here. Every idea can be reduced to its bare essential meaning, if you work hard enough. For your presentation, what’s the key point? What’s the core? Why does (or should) it matter?
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Unexpectedness. You can get people’s interest by violating their expectations. Surprise people. Surprise will get their interest. But to sustain their interest, you have to stimulate their curiosity. The best way to do that is to pose questions or open holes in people’s knowledge and then fill those holes. Make the audience aware that they have a gap in their knowledge and then fill that gap with the answers to the puzzle (or guide them to the answers). Take people on a journey.
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Concreteness. Use natural speech and give real examples with real things, not abstractions. Speak of concrete images, not of vague notions. Proverbs are good, say the Heath brothers, at reducing abstract concepts to concrete, simple, but powerful (and memorable) language. For example, the expression “iiseki ni cho” or “kill two birds with one stone”? It’s easier than saying something like “let’s work toward maximizing our productivity by increasing efficiency across many departments, etc.” And the phrase “...go to the moon and back” by JFK (and Ralph Kramden before him)? Now that’s concrete. You can visualize that.
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Credibility. If you are famous in your field, you may have built-in credibility (but even that does not go as far as it used to). Most of us, however, do not have that kind of credibility, so we reach for numbers and cold hard data to support our claims as market leaders and so on. Statistics, say the Heath brothers, are not inherently helpful. What’s important is the context and the meaning. Put it in terms that people can visualize. “Five hours of battery life” or “Enough battery life to watch your favorite TV shows nonstop on your iPod during your next flight from San Francisco to New York”? There are many ways to establish credibility—a quote from a client or the press may help, for example. But a long-winded account of your company’s history will just bore your audience.
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Emotions. People are emotional beings. It is not enough to take people through a laundry list of talking points and information on your slides—you must make them feel something. There are a million ways to help people feel something about your content. Images are one way to have audiences not only understand your point better, but also feel and have a more visceral and emotional connection to your idea. Explaining the devastation of the Katrina hurricane and floods in the U.S., for example, could be done with bullet points, data, and talking points, but images of the aftermath and the pictures of the human suffering that occurred tell the story in ways that words, text, and data alone never could. Just the words “Hurricane Katrina” conjure up vivid images in your mind. Humans make emotional connections with people, not abstractions. When possible, put your ideas in human terms. “One hundred grams of fat” may seem concrete to you, but for others it is an abstraction. A picture of an enormous plate of greasy French fries, two cheeseburgers, and a large chocolate shake will hit people at a more visceral level. “So that’s what 100 grams of fat looks like!”

Stories. We tell stories all day long. It’s how humans have always communicated. We tell stories with our words and even with our art and music. We express ourselves through the stories we share. We teach, we learn, and we grow through stories. In Japan, it is a custom for a senior worker (sempai) to mentor a younger worker (kohai) on various issues concerning the company history and culture, and how to do the job. The sempai does much of his informal teaching through storytelling, although nobody calls it that. But that’s what it is. Once a younger worker hears the story of what happened to the poor guy who didn’t wear his hardhat on the factory floor, he never forgets the lesson (and he never forgets to wear his hardhat). Stories get our attention and are easier to remember than lists of rules. People love Hollywoord, Bollywood, and indie films. People are attracted to “story.” Why is it, though, that when the majority of smart, talented story-loving people have the chance to present, they usually resort to generating streams of vaguely connected information rather than stories, or examples and illustrations? Great ideas and great presentations have an element of story to them.

Robert McKee on the power of story

Why should a CEO or manager pay attention to a screen writer?

"A big part of a CEO's job is to motivate people to reach certain goals. To do that she must engage their emotions, and the key to their hearts is story." The most common way to persuade people, says McKee, is with conventional rhetoric and an intellectual process that in the business world "...usually consists of a PowerPoint presentation" in which leaders build their case with statistics and quotes, etc. McKee says rhetoric is problematic because while we are making our case others are arguing with us in their heads using their own statistics and sources. Even if you do persuade through argument, says McKee, this is not good enough because "...people are not inspired to act on reason alone." The key, then, is to aim to unite an idea with an emotion, which is best done through story. "In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener's emotion and energy."

What is a story?
At it's core, story is about a "...fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality," says McKee. Story is about an imbalance and opposing forces (a problem that must be worked out, etc.). A good storyteller describes what it's like to deal with these opposing forces "...calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make difficult decisions...and ultimately discover the truth." Can not a presentation on a technical or scientific topic be a story — with plenty of data and information along the way — about a long journey of discovery, of trial and error, and so on?

How can executives/leaders learn to tell stories?
We tend to forget lists and bullet points, McKee says, but stories come naturally to us; it's how we've always attempted to understand and remember the bits and pieces of experience. McKee's point is that you should not fight your natural inclination to frame experiences into a story but should instead embrace this and tell "the story" of your experience/topic to your audience.

What makes a good story?
It's not what you think—the beginning-to-end tale about how results meet expectations is boring and banal, McKee says. Avoid this. Instead, it's better to illustrate the "struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness." So, what's wrong with painting a positive picture? McKee says that spin and a glossy, rosy picture actually works against you because everyone knows it can't be exactly true. What makes life interesting is "the dark side" and the struggle to overcome the negatives — struggling against the negative powers is what forces us to live more deeply, says McKee. Overcoming the negative powers is interesting, engaging, and memorable. Stories like this are more convincing.

Isn't this just exaggeration and manipulation?
McKee admits than business leaders are often skeptical of story. But "the fact is," he says, "statistics are used to tell lies...while accounting reports are often BS in a ball gown — witness Enron and WorldCom." When McKee helps executives turn their dull presentations into stories, he starts by looking for the dramas and the difficulties, the antagonists and the struggles, and even the dirty laundry. People prefer to present only the rosy (and boring) picture. "But as a storyteller, you want to position the problems in the foreground and then show how you've overcome them." If you tell the story of how you struggled with the antagonists, says McKee, the audience is engaged with you and your material.