If you are a presenter, you’re going to want to take a look at Nancy Duarte’s newest effort.  Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences is a great follow-up to slide:ology (her previous book on “the art and science of creating great presentations).

Duarte, the CEO of Duarte Designs (an award winning design firm whose clients include Adobe, Chick-fil-A, Cisco, Citrix, Food Network, Facebook, GE, Google, etc.), might be best known as the leader of the team that shaped Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth presentation.

Although slide:ology got the conversation started, Resonate takes it to a whole new level with the introduction of the concepts and practices that help tell “visual stories that transform audiences.”  Using examples drawn from great storytellers in a wide variety of industries (Ronald Reagan, Leonard Bernstein, Richard Feynman, John Ortberg, Steve Jobs, and Martin Luther King, Jr.), Duarte skillfully illustrates the steps that create moments (and take it way beyond a presentation).

I found a couple of the chapters especially helpful.  Create Meaningful Content is a great combination of practical steps that begin with idea collection and creation and end with the transformation of information into stories and ideas into messages.

Another chapter that gave me introduced me to some new practices that were immediately helpful was Structure Reveals Insights.  Now, I’ll have a new set of tools to use whether I’m building a consulting presentation or a leader training event.

Finally, I loved chapter 7, Deliver Something They’ll Always Remember.  Referencing some of the best known presentation moments in recent history (Bill Gates releasing a jar of mosquitoes at the end of his TED talk on solving some of the world’s biggest problems and Steve Jobs unveiling the MacBook Air by pulling it out of a interoffice envelope), Duarte details the creation of “memorable moments that get repeated and retransmitted so they cover longer distances.”

If you’re looking for a way to take your presentation skills from the delivery of information to the creation of transformational moments…resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences needs to be in your toolbox.

Like many of us, I am a student of the language of ideas. How to say it in just the right way is the essence of great communication.  Without the right language it can never be more than directional.  For anything to be inspirational…language is an essential element.

Need an example?  Take a moment to read this manifesto.  It was developed by GWP as part of their pitch to secure the ING Direct account as they prepared to launch in the United States.  This kind of pitch must show that the branding company absolutely gets the core idea.  As you read it, listen for how it might apply to your organization:

We are new here.  There has never been a time like this before.  Our name is ING Direct.  Our mission is to help people take care of the wealth they make for themselves in ways that fit this new time.

We will be fair.  We will constantly learn.  We will change and adapt and dwell only in the present and in the future.

We will listen.  We will invent.  We will simplify.  We will never stop asking why, or why not.  We will create wealth for ourselves, too.  But we will do this by creating value.

We will tell the truth.  We will be for everyone, except those who are truly served by the old way (I love that line!)

Because we aren’t conquerors.  We are pioneers.  We are not here to destroy.  We are here to create.

We will never be finished.

We are not a bank.  We will never be a bank.  But we will be what a bank would be if it began tomorrow and asked simply, “What if we started over?” (I really love that line) (p. 77, The Orange Code)

I can’t speak for you.  I don’t know about your organization.  But I do know this…there is an aspirational element in this that’s at the heart of what needs to be rediscovered in many, many organizations.

“We will be what a ________ would be if it began tomorrow and asked simply, “What if we started over?”

By the way, this concept is related to the Andy Grove idea referred to here, here, and here.  And if you’re new to StrategyCentral…you can sign up to get my updates right here.

Whether you are a speaker or a writer you will benefit from The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo.  I’m constantly looking for ways to add a little extra snap to what I’m doing.  42 pages into this one has already convinced me that these secrets will make an immediate difference.

A quick google of “Steve Jobs presentations” finds almost 2 million results.  Why?  Because his presentation style is widely regarded as crazily engaging.  Gallo’s work reveals the working parts of Jobs’ presentation work.  In The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs you’ll learn how to:

• create an inspiring brand story
• answer the one question that matters most
• paint a specific, memorable and consistent vision
• deliver unforgettable moments

I tripped across the book when I saw this short video interview with Carmine Gallo, “a presentation, media-training, and communication-skills coach for many of the world’s most admired brands.”  If you long to communicate more effectively, this video will really whet your appetite .

Looking for ways to take your presentation skills to a next level?  I highly recommend The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.  One word of caution?  Martin Lindstrom was right.  “If you pick up this book, your presentations will never be the same again.”

I love the spirit of this video.  I linked to it 3 years ago.  Still one of the most popular pages here at StrategyCentral.

If you give presentations (or preezoes as my friend John calls them), you need to check out this webinar by Nancy Duarte of Duarte Design.  She was "one of the gurus" behind Al Gore’s Inconvient Truth presentation.  Definitely worth taking a look.  You can take a look at it by clicking here. 

One of the bloggers I check out regularly is David Armano over at Logic + Emotion.  Often a really good way of looking at things, maybe a little unexpected, but definitely will make you think.  Check out this diagram about the Stairway to Brand Heaven:

Interesting, don’t you think?  This is all about the way things work from the standpoint of brand value (whether you’re talking corporate or personal).  Want to build loyalty in your customer?  Building loyalty takes a lot of work.  Positive interactions are only the beginning.  Consistency and credibility are important steps along the way.  Authenticity and trust get you beyond credibility to the place where you’re actually building loyalty.

The truth?  Compromise on consistency or waste credibility on a half-hearted effort…and you take a few steps down the stairway.  Fudge a little on something or break trust even for an instant…and you may take a giant leap backwards and have to rebuild.  Want to build brand loyalty?  Where are you?

Got a vision statement?  Sure you do.  Happy with it?  Probably not.  Just a guess…but it may not even be your vision statement.  Might be a slightly doctored version of another organization’s statement.  Might not even be slightly doctored…might be word for word.  Truth be told?  Been there, done that.  Want to develop your own?  Here are the five rules of a contagious vision statement from Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture, and Create Movement:

• The Junior High Rule: Can a 12-year-old boy who has not been to church understand it? (Clear)
• The One Breath Rule: Can it be stated in one breath? (Concise)
• The Resonance Rule: When people say it do they want to say it again? (Compelling)
• The Actionability Rule: Does it inspire action on the part of the participant? (Catalytic)
• The Bouquet Rule: Do the words communicate biblical truth arranged for the listener’s time and place? (Contextual)

When you run your vision statement through these 5 rules, how does it come out?  Weak?  Or strong?

Want more?  You can pick up your copy of Church Unique right here.

I started at San Diego State University as a Business major.  Tried but couldn’t pass their self-starter version of Intermediate Algebra.  Tried three times and dropped it all three times.  Switched to English and the rest is history.  But I never lost interest in the world of business, especially leadership, innovation, strategy and change.  So I don’t remember exactly why I picked up a copy of In Search of Excellence, but I still have my marked up, wet from the pool, falling apart at the spine copy.  Because of that read I’ve maintained an interest in the business genre and Tom Peters remains a favorite over 20 years later.

So when I saw this interview with Tom over on the Author Blog I thought you might like it too.  Here’s Tom Peters on writing and speaking.

And here’s a great quote that he led with when asked how he got into writing and speaking in the first place:

Few leaders want to be leaders.  They are compelled to be leaders to fix something they don’t like.  Warren Bennis (attributed by Tom Peters)

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek has a cool Change This manifesto that would be good reading for a lot of us.  There is a lot in it that will help if you’re finding yourself overwhelmed by email and the need to respond.  You can download it right here. 

While I was at Fellowship of The Woodlands we ran a very frequent membership class.  In the last year that I was there we averaged over 100 per class.  As part of our agenda we regularly asked how people had heard about us.  As a show of hands, we asked how many heard about us via a piece of direct mail.  There would be a couple out of a hundred.  How many saw the television ad?  Usually there be one, maybe two at most.  How many saw the billboard?  Zero or one.  How many were invited by a friend?  95 to 98.  It’s all word of mouth.

Here’s an interesting post over on Church of the Customer Blog.  Take a look.  If you’re depending on a direct mail strategy, or a newspaper ad…well, you’re toast.  So…what causes word of mouth to work?  A seriously good product.  Getting that is job one.