STRATEGY CENTRAL

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.

“What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term?  In a word: culture.  At Zappos, our belief is that if you get your culture right, most of the other stuff–like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers–will happen naturally on its own (p. 152, Delivering Happiness).”

I know I’ve already mentioned this, but Delivering Happiness is a great read.  Whether you already have a great organization or you’re building it right now…you don’t want to miss the thinking in this book.  It really is the kind of book that makes you want to schedule a tour of the home office next time you’re in Vegas.  Already planning it, believe me!

What are you listening to on your iPod?  You know…there’s a whole world out there that’s available and most of it is FREE.  How about a 45 minute talk by Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search.  Or how about Bob Sutton, co-author of Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense?  One of the things I’ve found essential in my own development is a broad reading menu.  Not just one field.  A variety.  Same thing is now available audibly.  At the Educators Corner you can choose podcasts from quite a variety of world class thinkers.

Or check out iinnovate where you can catch a great interview with David Kelley, the founder of IDEO.

This is some really interesting stuff.  Will it apply directly to your business?  Maybe not.  But if you’re really listening you can’t help pick up that one new idea that will help you take the next step.

Thanks to Bob Sutton for the links to two great resources. 

What kind of thinking goes into the development of your main events?  Are you trying to produce high usability alone?  Or are you trying to incorporate fun?  Maybe you’re thinking, "fun?"  Who said anything about fun?  Maybe you think fun cheapens the soundness of your product.  On the other hand, you may be really only going for fun…and usability isn’t on the radar!

Kathy Sierra has an interesting post today on usability through fun.  This is an important discussion for all of us.  If what we’re doing isn’t usable AND fun it really won’t be very effective.  One without the other (whichever is missing) really undermines the overall goal.

In her post Kathy includes an interesting list of the five components of usability (as defined by Jakob Neilsen).  Here they are:

• Learnability: How easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
• Efficiency: Once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
• Memorability: When users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
• Errors: How many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
• Satisfaction: How pleasant is it to use the design?

Now, if you think about what we do, aren’t these factors right at the heart of our main events?  Even everything we’re doing?  In a 7 Practices sense they’re really at the core of the design process.

What do you think?  Can you see how this becomes a great planning tool?

Be sure and go over to Kathy’s whole post.  She goes into some good concept on the idea of play and its role in memorability and satisfaction.

Do you ever get the nod?  You know what I mean…the nod that means I’m down with what you’re using (what you’re wearing, what you’re driving, etc.)?  Maybe you’re at Barnes and Noble and you’re sipping on a Peet’s coffee.  That’ll get you the nod.  From another Peet’s drinker.  If you’ve got a love wins bumper sticker you’ll get the nod.  Or maybe you’ve got a strange Hugh MacLeod cartoon on your desktop and another gapingvoid fan sees it.  That’ll get the nod.  ‘Course it’ll get a look of another kind from everyone else!  Check it out:

Actually, that one’ll get you two nods (one for gapingvoid, another for the scoble connection).  Question: is the nod a good thing?  Yes it is.  It is an indication of a larger community.  Can we do things to create opportunities for the nod?  I think so.  Kathy Sierra’s got a great post today on the nod.  Some really good insights.  She says, "To give The Nod is to recognize and appreciate another person who "gets it", whatever it is."  Second question: can we create such a vibe that it would inspire the nod from someone else who "gets it"?

Another key line from her post is that "When we give The Nod to another, it’s NOT about the thing we have in common–it’s about what having that thing says about us."  This has real potential for what we’re doing!  Don’t you think?  Or, what about this line: "It’s NOT about having a remarkable product–it’s about helping our users be remarkable."  This is an idea that could produce a really good discussion.  How can we help our users be remarkable?  What could we do as an organization that would make such a difference in the lives of our users that they’d get the nod from another user?  I think that’s part of our challenge.  Of course, the other key part is inspiring non-users to see the difference in the lives of our users and be drawn to them.

This is a really good discussion to have.  You can check out Kathy’s whole post here. 

Where do you think your customer’s experience begins?  According to Clued In : How to Keep Customers Coming Back Again and Again "experiences don’t simply start at your doorway, phone center, or Web site.  Customer’s experiences often begin long before they physically encounter the first tangible outposts of your organization (p. 131)."  The example cited is that the experience for Progressive Auto Insurance customers begins before they pick up the phone to call a claims representative.  The experience begins at the moment of impact.  In other words, the scene of the accident is an earlier part of their experience.

Yesterday’s post over on Monday Morning Insight had an interesting segment by Andy Stanley writing that "The sermon starts in the parking lot. You are the introduction." In other words, if our members haven’t created a positive impression and if they haven’t been won in our worship, by the time I get up there, our visitors have pretty much determined if they’re going to listen or not."  Read the whole post here.  I love it!

Out.