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Good intentions gone wrong

“I’m just going quickly over this graph!”

And she’s doing it with good intentions. Because that thing she’s going quickly over is not that hard to understand. Also, it’s probably not the most exciting part of her presentation. So, just going quickly over it seems like a great service to her audience.

Except that it’s the exact opposite.

Because she’s going over it so quickly that her audience doesn’t even have the time to read the graph, let alone understand it, let alone question it.

What was easy for her is hard for her audience. If only for the simple fact that it is new.

When in doubt, assume that it’s harder to see the point than you think it is. Rather than go quickly over something that is easy ask yourself how to focus on the most relevant bits. Rather than go quickly over something that is unexciting ask yourself how to make it more exciting.

Lighting the path is the presenter’s job, not the audience’s.

How not to buy tea

I wanted to buy tea. Easy, right?

Wrong!

Our local supermarket carries hundreds of different teas. Which means that for someone like me who is not an expert tea drinker it’s not easy to find the right one. Luckily (or not), the supermarket figured that out, too. So, they put up some signs for better orientation.

And achieved the opposite.

I’ve never counted the number of signs in the image above which is an actual photograph of the tea aisle in that supermarket. It’s a crazy number of signs. There are large signs and small ones. Some indicate the cheaper ones, others the new ones. Some indicate the organic ones. Some are even combinations of these. All of them wildly spread across the aisle.

The thing is: I’m only going to buy one tea, maybe two or three. Certainly not 50. But how am I supposed to choose?

The trouble with so many signs is that I don’t even know where to start looking. They are meant to provide orientation, but due to their sheer number they actually provide disorientation.

This is a general observation regarding prioritisation. When everything’s important, nothing’s important.

This approach delegates the task of prioritising to the customer.

That’s true for your marketing problem, too. If you don’t focus, you’re essentially delegating that task to your audience. If you put up too many signs, you’re asking them to prioritise.

The bad news is that – just like me in the supermarket – they will. They will pick one message, maybe two. Certainly not 23.

(And if things go really bad, they will just leave without any tea, frustrated with the paradox of choice.)

You don’t need permission

You don’t need permission to change the world.

If you feel that you have a great idea that has the potential to change things for the better, that’s enough of a permission to make it happen.

You don’t need anyone else’s permission to go for it.

Just make sure that it’s true to who you are and that it actually changes things for the better.

Then, simply tell a true story about it.

If it really changes things, people will resonate with that story.

Looking forward to you lighting the path in 2022.

Your best decision

What was the best decision you made in 2021?

Think a moment about it.

I bet you chose a decision that led to a great outcome. Didn’t you?

Well, so did I when I was being asked that question by Annie Duke while reading her book “Thinking in Bets”. In fact, everyone does it. It’s due to what Annie Duke calls resulting, evaluating a decision from its outcome.

After all, when the outcome was great it must have been a great decision, right?

But that ignores luck. (And bad luck.)

Because what if the great outcome was due much more to luck than the quality of your decision? Take e.g. hiring. Hiring your best employee has as much to do with her applying as it has to do with you choosing her over someone else. That she applied in the first place had nothing to do with how you decided. But it influenced the outcome heavily.

It’s just as likely that another decision of yours didn’t turn out so well because of bad luck. She actually was the best candidate. But nobody, including you and her, could have predicted that she would be diagnosed with cancer 2 weeks after.

Once you see this you can’t unsee it anymore: The quality of a decision is not the same thing as the quality of its outcome.

Here are a couple of thoughts that I’d like to end the year with:

  • Once again: Looking back at 2021, what was the best decision you made? Why?
  • Can you think of a situation where you feel like you made a good decision even though the outcome wasn’t that good?
  • How about the opposite?
  • What can you learn from that for your decision making in 2022?

So incredibly powerful when she says it

“It sounds so incredibly powerful when she says it.”

Just wow.

But why is it that the same thought that you’ve thought a thousand times suddenly becomes powerful when you hear it ushered out of the celebrity’s mouth?

Because it’s immediately turned into a story. It gets filled with all the things that she’s achieved and said before. She embodies it and so you fill out all the missing pieces. When she says it, it becomes a profound truth that has enabled her path.

The crucial bit, though, is that when we experience a story it’s the hero we look at but it’s us who we see. We project ourselves onto the hero’s canvas.

Hearing the hero say out loud your thoughts brings you even closer. The incredible power of her saying out loud your thought is that it reassures you that you’re on the right track.

It’s not so much that you agree with her but that she agrees with you – which elevates you onto the hero’s podium. She’s picking up your thought. You’ve become the hero because the hero’s saying your thoughts and feelings.

That’s the power of lighting the path. Putting in words and saying out loud what your audience thinks and feels. It’s incredibly powerful.

I don’t know much

We had this mathematics professor at the University. During a discussion about some topic or another, he would often emphasize that he was not very knowledgable in that area.

Of course, in reality that meant he knew more about that subject than anyone else in the room and probably more than most people outside the room.

It was still the truth because when he said that, it meant that he was actually not as knowledgeable as he was about his specialty. In that sense, he was being honest.

In fact, he wouldn’t even have considered to comment on a subject he knew “not much” about.

When you chime in into a discussion, how knowledgable are you in that area? When you form an opinion, how profound is your background? Would you back out of a discussion when you feel you can’t contribute in a meaningful way?

Unexpected ground

A few years ago, I used Hemingway’s 6-word novel “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” in a keynote to illustrate a point about storytelling. What I didn’t know was that there was a man in the audience whose daughter had been born dead two weeks earlier.

It was an unforgettable reminder for me that people hear what we say in the context of their own experiences. Those experiences can be drastically different from our own.

We certainly can’t always foresee these experiences. Nor can we account for any possible experience someone might have had.

But it’s a good attitude to be sensitive to the possibility. And to be respectful when we recognise that our words have hit unexpected ground.

Would you like tea or coffee?

A simple decision, isn’t it? Well, you have no idea.

Let’s have some fun with it and pretend we would have to decide in a meeting. Obviously, we’ll need a PowerPoint to discuss the matter, right? Quickly, we arrive at 10 slides highlighting all of the important aspects, like so:

Slide 1: Title slide with presentation title (“Advantages and disadvantages of proceeding with tea vs. coffee”), name of presenter, their department, date, location, at least five logos
Slide 2: Agenda
Slide 3: Sales distribution of tea and coffee during the last 6 quarters, broken down by region. Underneath: comparison with other drinks such as hot chocolate and various juices
Slide 4: Mission statement for the coffee choice, market analysis including target group breakdown
Slide 5: Composition of ingredients (unfortunately, though, the font is so tiny that you can’t read anything) plus certificates from food testing institutes
Slide 6 & 7: The same for tea
Slide 8: Customer satisfaction rating and award for the most creative brand campaign 2021
Slide 9: Classification in the brand range with different flavor additives, variants, sizes and special promotions
Slide 10: Summary
Bonus slide 11: “Thank you for your attention”

All of this followed by an intense discussion to repeat the arguments a couple of times.

All of this without ever asking the question plainly: “Would you prefer tea or coffee?”

I’m positive that quite a number of meeting room presentations fit that description rather well.

Gifts

Here are some ideas for last minute gifts that will still arrive on time to bring someone joy over X-Mas.

Smile.
Lend them a helping hand.
Say something nice to them.
Listen.
Be patient.
Let the day unfold their way.
Be present. In the moment.

Wishing you a very merry X-mas.

(PS: Drawing by my daughter.)

Quick in, quick out

The goal of almost all media is to suck you in as quickly as possible and once you’re in to keep you in as long as possible.

Here’s another hilarious post. Oh, and don’t you wanna watch this crazy video? Here are five super useful tips to get rich quick. Wait, don’t go, your friend just commented on this post over here and you should really chime in.

It’s easy to see how that’s in the media’s best interest.

For example, if their interest is to show more ads. Or to keep their audience from spending the time on someone else’s channel.

A different approach is “quick in, quick out”. Get right to the point, deliver it clearly and concisely, and then let them go again.

Sure, they might head over to other people’s channels. Not all of them will come back. But the right ones will. Those who will be frustrated by the slow media, the time sucking media. Those who appreciate that someone values their time.

If you treat this part of your audience well, it will not only be in their best interest but also yours.

(PS: My podcast is 2 minutes per episode. That’s quicker than it takes most other podcasts to even get through the intro.)

Spread the Word

Dr. Michael Gerharz

Dr. Michael Gerharz