Year: 2009

The Kindle’s place in Innovation history

Posted on in history, Innovationby Scott Berkun

My innovation hype detector went off in this NYT piece on the Kindle. The offending quote is as follows:

Today’s idea: The advent of e-books and Google’s online book archive mean “2009 may well prove to be the most significant year in the evolution of the book since Gutenberg hammered out his original Bible.”

Anyone who makes a quote like this should be expected to spend at least 60 seconds reviewing the history of books before uttering a phrase such as “…the most significant since”, don’t you think?

Frankly it’s a stupid comparison.  The Kindle is, or is not, awesome based on how it makes reading easier or better, which I’m pretty sure it does. Why drag Guttenberg into this yet again?

Here’s a quick run through of book innovations history to help frame the kindle:

  • Movable type – Gutenberg should be taken down a few hype notches. China had working presses for centuries before he was born (around 1000 AD). It just never took off, in part because written Chinese language has hundreds of characters, compared to Germans 26.
  • Gutenberg – Deserves credit for the Western, as in European, printing press. He made several very clever enhancements never seen before, but did not invent the book nor the press.  He was also not much of a philosophical hero or idea liberator – as best we can tell he was just a fine craftsman mostly failing to make a living printing bibles.
  • The invention of cheap paperback books, Penguin makes books cheap enough for the average citizen (1935). This was a revolution in the U.S. as in made books cheap, portable and part of middle and lower class culture.

If anything I think paperback books are the best comparison as they were a revolution in distribution, access, convenience and portability much like the Kindle is. They also revolutionized the business model for authors, publishers and bookstores, much like Kindle will if it’s success continues.

Quote of the Month: Use the difficulty

Posted on in Philosophy, quote of the xby Scott Berkun

“I was rehearsing a play, and there was a scene that went on before me, then I had to come in the door. They rehearsed the scene, and one of the actors had thrown a chair at the other one. It landed right in front of the door where I came in. I opened the door and then rather lamely, I said to the producer who was sitting out in the stalls,’Well, look, I can’t get in. There’s a chair in my way.’ He said,’Well, use the difficulty.’ So I said ‘What do you mean, use the difficulty?’ He said ‘Well, if it’s a drama, pick it up and smash it. If it’s a comedy, fall over it.’ This was a line for me for life: Always use the difficulty.”

Michael Caine, interviewed by NPR’s Terry Gross, from her book All I did was ask

Wednesday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here are this week’s links:

Healthcare as an innovation problem

Posted on in Innovation, politicsby Scott Berkun

I’ve been loosely following the healthcare debate in the U.S.  and there are some obvious points for innovation gone wrong. It’s not Obama’s fault, at least not yet, as the system he is working in is designed to make innovation quite difficult. Big change of any kind, for better or for worse, is extremely hard to do as power is divided across so many people, with so many entrenched and selfish interests.

Given what I know about innovation, if I were tasked with the challenging of reforming U.S. Healthcare, the last thing I’d do is try to overhaul the entire system all at once. It’s too big, too complex, and has too many built in defenders of the status quo to ever pull off. It would also be much too hard to get right in one shot.

Instead I’d do the following:

  • Inform the populace of examples that already exist that we can emulate.  Innovation is less scary if people can see and talk to others who are already doing something.  Which U.S. states or countries are closest to what Obama wants to do? I have no idea, yet I’ve followed the high level debate points so far. Many of the criticisms hinge on the belief what Obama wants to do can’t be done, yet somehow most developed nations in the world do provide a form of universal health-care. We are ignorant of how else this can work and it’s a flaw in American culture that we’re ignorant of other successful ways governments can run. I want to see a chart comparing the U.S. to Sweden, Japan, Canada, Germany, etc. so we know how else this has been done, and can learn from them.
  • Run a pilot program so the risks are smaller.  Pilot programs are the only way to take risks in a safe way and avoid criticisms driven by fear (see idea killers). If you take a small group, and apply the changes there, and observe the results, you create a way to learn from mistakes in the small, prove the core principles and gain support from people who say it can’t be done. It’s much easier to get support for a pilot project than for the real thing. You often can do it in some form with a minimum of approvals. Do a small one, show it worked, then repeat on a bigger scale until you have enough evidence to make your case.
  • Insure more people every year instead of all at once.  Another way to minimize risk is to grow the system over time. This is a form of pilot program – piloted over time. Instead of radically overhauling the system, increase coverage to 5% of the uninsured in 2010, learn from how that worked, then expand to %15 etc. By making changes incrementally there is less to fear and less risk of abuse, bloat, and mismanagement. And it reduces the costs risks many complain about.

But the problem with my advice is the U.S. government is not designed to make this kind of thing easy. Budget cycles and Senate processes do not encourage experimentation, and the momentum required to get any legislation passed at all is so complex and momentum bound that once in motion there likely will not be a second chance – you get one bullet to spend during a term as president, if that at all.

Many corporations suffer similiar systematic problems – there is so much required to even get an idea on the table, that big ideas become brain dead easy to kill if that’s what you want to do, which most people who already have power and seniority tend to want to do.

As is often the case for me in American politics, I’m worried less about which side wins whatever battle, than I am about the low quality of discourse and discussion. It’s hard to sort our how much the headlines reflect what is actually going on, but stupidity and arrogance are harder problems to fix than innovation. Whether at work or a town hall meeting, when many arrive with decisions already made, or with the goal of silencing others, there’s not much room for progress to happen.

Thursday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here are this week’s links:

  • The problems of Virtual teams – Some research showing how problems are more frequent on virtual teams than local. It’s a small sample size, but first research I’ve ever seen asking this question.
  • Letterman top ten – Dear God this is funny. It’s silly and stupid, but perhaps so am I.
  • Orwell vs. Huxley – Fantastic cartoon that captures so many of my opinions on technology, the world, and the future.  (The winner, between Orwell vs. Huxley is Neil Postman).  (Thx to Ario for the link).
  • Photo blog of abandoned things – It is what it says. Amazing photos of large, abandoned man made things from around the world.

The Netflix Inc. guide to culture (Analysis)

Posted on in Innovation, Managementby Scott Berkun

Making the rounds this week is this slidedeck apparently put together by Netflix upper management about their culture. There is no reference or name, so can’t be sure it’s real, but I doubt someone would go through the trouble to create a 128 slide fake Netflix deck.

There’s plenty of good, some bad, and some downright weird.   Of course I have no idea what someone might say over these slides, or how much of this is actually practiced, but here goes.

The most important thing, as you’ll see, is Netflix has 414 employees 2000+ employees.  Some of the philosophies they advocate are not uncommon for highly successful tech start-up companies. When Microsoft or Google had 500 or 1000 employees some of these principles were at work – perhaps not by executive decree, but they do happen and are workable, perhaps preferable when you’re still a small corporation.

The goal of “few big products vs. many small ones” (Slide 25) is natural when you are a small company, with one or two profit streams that haven’t maxed out their growth potential. Things change when growth slows. But that is not Netflix’s problem yet.

Many of these concepts are much harder to apply at 1000, 5000 or 10,000 people.  But that’s not Netflix’s problem. At least not now.

The good:

  • They makes fun of similiar corp culture slide-decks (Slides 5 to 8). Many corporations have manuals and slidedecks like this one, but they serve the purpose of codifying the fantasy view of the company the HR department and executives want to pretend is real – Netflix makes fun of this by showing Enron’s value statements. Platitudes are cheap. But I have to ding them as their list of core values is pretty close to what I’ve seen at a dozen or so different companies (Courage, passion, judgment, etc.)
  • You are your rewards. They rightfully point out that instead of of what you say, your culture is what you do. “the real company values… are shown by who gets rewarded, promoted, or let go.” Rock on.
  • Effectiveness matters more than Effort (Slide 33).  This is gold, but hard in practice since effort (e.g. hours worked, who stays late) is much easier  to measure than effectiveness.
  • Increase freedom as we grow (Slides 39-52). This is the most interesting part of the deck, as they describe a variant of the innovator’s dilemma as it effects culture and how they intend to avoid the traps of growth and success. Their answer is to increase talent density faster than complexity, which is nice. The problem is, even if you sucessfully fire the less talented people, the talented people you keep, who often have egos to match their talents, protect their previous work as much as untalented people do.  As years go by they defend their old ideas.
  • Good processes vs. Bad processes (Slide 61)- This is solid. They offer that any process or rule should help talented people work faster. Bad processes protect and limit people’s behavior to prevent things from happening, often things that have low recovery costs (Approval chains, forms, endless interview loops, etc.).
  • No vacation or expense tracking (Slides 65 to 72). When I worked at Microsoft most of my managers practiced vague vacation tracking. They didn’t care what I put into the HR tool, as long as all my work kicked ass, and I negotiated time off with them. It worked perfectly and I practiced the same thing myself as a manager. Netflix apparently doesn’t bother with the pretense of the tool. It’s 100% up to your manager. The risk becomes, like at Microsoft, people who don’t take enough of their vacation to life healthy, happy, long lives.
  • They practice the Lefferts law (If you manage, it’s your fault).  They believe managers set context, and if a talented employee failed the manager failed to set the right context. People who can set the right context for plans, situations and decisions are more valuable than people who can only work (Slides 77-84).

The interesting or weird:

  • They pay top of market for all full time employees (Slides 93-107). Since they depend on high talent density, they expect to pay above market rates for employees. They assume this will retain talent as leaving the company guarantees a pay decrease. They also focus on salary and not other benefits, believing their employees should choose how to use their “income”.  No bonuses. No granted stock options. And they do not believe in tying pay to company performance.  I’ve honestly never heard of this before. I can’t see why you wouldn’t tie company performance in some way to rewards, especially for a small company, but I need to think more about this.
  • Highly aligned / Loosely coupled org. (Slides 85-91). This is the weakest part of the slide deck – very heavy in management consulting jargon (ad-hoc, cross-functional, blah blah).  They seem to say you set the right strategy and get buy in and don’t worry much about the rest.  They run with the motto “Big and Fast and Flexible” which doesn’t mean very much. I’ve yet to see a company say they’re trying to be “Big and slow and rigid”, but many are.

The bad:

  • The keeper test (slide 28).  They suggest managers ask “which of my people, if they told me they were leaving, would I fight hardest to keep at Netflix.” They suggest firing the rest with a nice severance package. Whoa. There’s a local factor involved here: your second best person might be much better than another manager’s best person. There’s also the all-star team effect, where you might need people with different talents, or a mix of talents, to make the team function. Zappos pay to quit approach makes more sense as it rewards unhappy people for leaving, regardless of talent.
  • My force powers sense a cuthroat vibe. It’s reading between thin lines, but there isn’t any real mention of teamwork, collaboration or even pride.  My biggest gripe about my Microsoft years was how the reward system paid no respect to teams. No overt rewards for people who learned to work well together as a unit. And since everyone knew reviews were done on curves there was often negative competitive energy. You end up with the NY Yankees, rather than the Boston Red Sox. This deck is a masculine, tech, analytical view of culture and I suspect there are things in their culture that they want to keep that are not well reflected in this deck.  Perhaps it’s just the sting of a CEO/VP being totally honest, with no HR filtering or fluff, but there was definitely something missing for me.

Have you seen any of above in practice before? Or would want to try if you were CEO?

Help me find photos for the new book

Posted on in Booksby Scott Berkun

The new book, Confessions of a public speaker, is wrapping up and one of the fun challenges remaining is figuring out what images to use for chapter openers.

It’s a fun, but slow, task and I figured I’d see what would happen if I opened this up. Can you crowdsource curation? Lets find out.

Chapter openers are the photos that help introduce each chapter or section of the book. Here is an example from The Myths of Innovation:

For the new book, the openers either need to be riffs vaguely related to public speaking, or something that plays off, or against, the chapter title.

It could be a teacher in front of a class. Or a guided tour of an art museum in progress. Maybe a great photo of a microphone, a lectern or an unusual lecture hall. It could be unexpected venues or places for lectures  like this photo below (taken by Steve Rhodes):

The tentative chapter titles for Confessions of a Public Speaker are:

  • Chapter 1 – I can’t see you naked
  • Chapter 2 – Attack of the Butterflies
  • Chapter 3 – The wonders of $30,000 an hour
  • Chapter 4 – How to work a tough room
  • Chapter 5 – Don’t eat the microphone
  • Chapter 6 – The science of not boring people
  • Chapter 7 – Lessons from my 15 minutes of fame
  • Chapter 8 – Things people say
  • Chapter 9 – The clutch is your friend
  • Chapter 10 – Confessions of a public speaker

How you can help:

  • Spend some time searching flickr or other photography sites.
  • If you’re a photographer, check your library to see what might fit the bill
  • If you’re a bored photographer, get out there and take some photos for me
  • Other themes that can work include: stage-fright, making mistakes, tough rooms, people sleeping in class, spotlights, learning and teaching.

I can’t offer to pay for photographs, but I can promise to give a copy of the book to anyone who finds a photo I end up using, as well as to the photographer who took it. And of course the photo will be credited it the book.

If you find candidates, leave them in the comments, preferably inline (set width to be <400).

Let the experiment begin!

Crap detection 101 and social media

Posted on in Philosophy, Web 2.0 / social softwareby Scott Berkun

Howard Rheingold wrote an interesting essay called Crap Detection 101, which provides both commentary on how to separate fact from fiction on the web as well as some practical advice. He wrote:

I got good strategy advice from John McManus, author of “Detecting Bull: How to Identify Bias and Junk Journalism in Print, Broadcast and on the Wild Web”, who told me “you have think like a detective.” Think of tools like search engines, the productivity index, hoax debunking sites like Snopes.com, and others I will mention later as forensic instruments, like Sherlock Holmes’ magnifying glass or the crime scene investigator’s fingerprint kit.

It’s a good essay and it made me realize one thing: the problem of how lazy we are. Most people know they should ask more questions, and take more time to verify sources, but that takes effort. And that effort, if spent well and results in the discovery of a unreliable source, it costs double. We’ve lost not only the time verifying something, but also the time spend finding that now unreliable source, and the kicker is you still don’t have a fact you can use.  Fact checking is a double-whammy against seeming productive to others. We have natural reasons to not want to check that source, even though we know we should. Part of us doesn’t want to know.

When people find a fact that supports their argument, regardless of where it comes from, its incredibly tempting to grab it and run, assuming whoever reads what you write, or listens to what you say, will be as lazy as you were. You can bluff your way into credibility because there’s no one depending on what you say enough to openly challenge what you’re saying.  Often online when people think you are full of shit, they’ll just click away. You have to care to take the time to challenge someone’s facts or sources. And even when people do criticize, they’re in such a rush to prove you wrong for something, it’s common to be criticized for things you didn’t actually say, or with claims that are not supported, sparking a dozen ratholes that have no possibility of convincing anyone of anything. Communication speed makes the downward spiral of miscommunication spin much faster.

I’ve written my own take on detecting bullshit, but the thing I don’t know how to tackle is what to do when our innate desire for efficiency works against us. Being  “productive” online in writing blog posts or frequent tweets, demands spending little time verifying anything, much less seeking out evidence for the opposing view and vetting them against each other in what old school folks used to called thinking. If there is anything I want to promote it’s thinking. Honest, open, generous amounts of critical thinking where people are just as willing to admit when they are wrong as they are to prove they are right.

My gripes about social media, and the future of technology in general, comes around to how we’re increasingly rewarded for volume online, or believe we will be rewarded for volume, rather than quality. Which is strange given how successful the web has been at making volume of information moot. We have more to read, watch and listen to than we can consume in a thousand lifetimes. Volume isn’t the problem. It’s the search for quality and the shortage of critical thinking that we need to solve and this includes the promotion of the kinds of questions Rheingold suggests everyone asks of things they read online.

Critical thinking will always require effort  – and if we’re overwhelmed and stressed by too much information, or feel we’re falling behind and running out of time, the feedback loop works against slowing down to ask good questions. That stress fuels making assumptions and jumping to misguided conclusions.

How do we fix this? Or is it even a problem at all? Let me know what you think.

How to design a conference – Interview with GEL host Mark Hurst

Posted on in conferencesby Scott Berkun

I’ve run a few events myself and a challenge many attendees never think about is how to arrange the day. When are the breaks? What order should the speakers go in? What topics should get the morning vs. the afternoon? There is a curation-like design challenge in figuring out how to make a great day.

One of my favorite conferences is Gel – Good Experience Live (it’s the place that let me run my NYC Sacred architecture tour), and I asked the organizer Mark Hurst his thoughts on doing this well.

SB: Speakers are the core of most conferences, yet the lectures and lecturers have earned a reputation for being boring. Gel has consistently had very high quality speakers. How you think your approach is different than other events?

MH: Invite your heroes. I learned that from Richard Saul Wurman, founder of TED, who originated the phrase.

That means, invite people who you are personally, genuinely interested in. Forget any other consideration and focus on: would YOU want to hear from them, if you were an audience member?

I’m not sure how this compares with other conferences – I can’t speak for them – but I’ll leave it to you to imagine the other not-so-good reasons why events might have people speak… rather than inviting them because they’re good for the attendees.

SB. Is there any coaching or training you do for your speakers? Do you think this is a meaningful practice for conference organizers to consider?

I run speakers in a 20-minute time slot, so there’s often some coaching around getting the message across in that short timeframe.  One thing I often say is to go light on, or skip over, all the normal introductory stuff, and just get right to the good stuff. In other words, start strong. And then try to tell a story, while still making the larger points. It’s a tricky balance.

Most conferences use 45,60 or even 90 minute sessions, yet yours are shorter, often 20 minutes. How do you decide the length, format and order of speakers for each Gel?

The length is easy – 20 minutes is the standard slot. Format is easy – the day is comprised of four groups of four, usually with a few shorter “special appearances” sprinkled inside.

The order of the speakers is the challenge – and that’s hard to describe, as it’s more of an art than a science. It’s a puzzle with lots of dimensions. You have to consider developing the theme of the day, and (possibly) a sub-theme for each individual session, and the blend and flow of the energy that each presentation is likely to transmit to the audience, and the timing of catering (coffee breaks and lunch), *and* occasionally there are constraints due to a speaker’s schedule. And it’s really tough to put the puzzle together unless you have the speaker list completely finalized… so I generally have to do this late in the process, not long before the event, and go through several revisions of speaker order, before I finalize it and send it to the printers.

How do you evaluate speakers, both before you choose them, but also how to you evaluate how well they did?

I listen to attendee comments at the event, and read all the emails that come in after the event, to get a sense of what people liked or not. I’m happy that Gel attendees are enthusiastic about sending feedback – positive and negative – about their experience, so I always have a pretty good idea of how the audience reacted to each speaker.  (And it’s often a mix – occasionally a speaker polarizes the audience with an extreme reaction in both directions.)

As for how I *choose* speakers, see answer to #1 above. That’s another one that’s more art than science – but generally I’m just trying to find a good mix of speakers that, together, will create the best possible experience for the attendees.

[Update: The next Gel event is Gel 2013]

You can watch videos of Gel talks from past years – several dozen are up there. Don’t miss Ira Glass,  Erin Mckean or Andrew.

How to watch a Michael Bay film

Posted on in moviesby Scott Berkun

To get out of the 101 degree heat here in Seattle, I decided to take the afternoon off yesterday and go see a film. Only thing playing at the right time was Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen.

I don’t hate Michael Bay films, but I rarely like them since I like movies that make sense. I admit Armageddon was fun, but I can’t say much for the others. Except for The Island which I thought was quite good – probably his best film. If not The Rock. Ok, fine. I guess I do like his films.  But if I do, it’s in part because I’ve learned how to prepare for them.

To prepare for Transformers 2, which I did enjoy, here’s what I did:

  • Don’t think of it as a movie – it’s a mega abstract conceptual art project at a bargain. I paid $7.50 to see a film that cost $150 million to make. There are few bargains this good. By not thinking of it as a movie the pressure to have it make sense went away, and the cheezy jokes, cardboard cutout characters,  or racial stereotypes didn’t bother me. Instead my mind was free to wonder how many people were in charge of Megan Fox’s lip gloss. Or the conversations the CGI folks must have had about how a functioning robot that walks and gets hit by grenades and tank shells could convert in seconds into a functioning jet. Not thinking of it is as movie, and considering it a conceptual art project involving lots of special effects, freed me to daydream, which is a good thing to do when nothing is exploding or being chased in a Bay film.
  • Sit as far back as possible. He loves cramming as much CGI violence and camera movement as possible into the frame and it’s unwatchable unless you’re in the back few rows. Avoid the temptation to get close. You will lose.
  • Turn off all plot seeking brain cells. They will be damaged. This is not Memento. This is not Shakespeare. Any positive effects disappear if you activate your higher brain.
  • Read all the non-spoiling bad reviews. I skimmed through metacritic which lists all the high profile, and often hi-brow, reviews, and many roasted him alive. Even the complimentary ones ripped him in some serious way. This helped set my expectations very low. So low I debated going in fact. Friends don’t let friends OD on metacritic.
  • Forget memories of preceding film in series or actual history.  I did see the first Transformers film, but deliberately avoided remembering any of it so I wouldn’t be disappointed by how much is repeated.
  • Imagine you are talking to a 12 year old boy. It does seem most of his movies are made for 12 year old boys, so it’s good to imagine you’re going to talk to one before sitting down in the theater. If the movie is based on a children’s toy you should know exactly what you’re in for in terms of sophistication. Transformers 2 is a finely made film for 12 year old boys, but if you’re not one yourself, you have some prep work to do.

It was a great way to get out of the heat and see some cool things blow up, including the now standard complement of various monuments and famous buildings.  And if the preview for 2012 was any indication, any buildings Bay hasn’t destroyed on film will be taken care of when that film hits the theaters.

Reference:

  • What is Bayhem Film Style?  (“we are really visually sophisticated, but totally visually illiterate” 7:26) [h/t Paul Mitchum]

 

The science of hunches?

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

Interesting article in the NYTimes about the significance of following hunches for U.S. Soldiers in Iraq. Among various stories of soldiers sensing danger and avoiding traps, are reports on various studies trying to understand how the better soldiers are able to detect these things, when ordinary soldiers do not.

But the kicker for me was this question, raised by one of the scientists regarding the ability for some to detect threats more accurately than others, near the end:

The big question is whether these differences perceiving threat are natural, or due to training, Dr. Paulus said.

This question is a much larger question than just for hunches – most things about behavior are vulnerable to the same nature vs. nurture debate and the answer is almost always both.

I wanted to ask this scientist how he decides what research to do, or how to design specific aspects of the study. Or even how did he decide that this was “the big question?” I’m sure he followed hunches to some degree in the decisions he made in doing his research. Most of what we do in life is hunch based, or at least not scientifically based. It’s uncommon we bother to do much more than follow what our gut feelings suggest we should do.

More interesting perhaps is there is evidence we often do things in opposite fashion. We have a feeling, mostly decide to follow it, and then our higher brains invent various seemingly logical reasons to support what is, essentially a hunch (note: there are studies suggesting this). In other words, we often trick ourselves into merely justifying our hunches, and claim we’ve thought rationally about our decision.

I’m not a brain science expert, but I’ve read much on the subject of decision making, and it seems something else missing from the article is discussion of false positives. We have hunches, certainly about danger, that are wrong all the time. It’s basic survival logic – if you have two creatures, one who is a little paranoid and worries about things that often don’t happen, and one that is totally carefree and fears nothing, the former has higher odds of survival.

I did agree with the article’s emphasis on the importance of emotion. But I’d go even further. Here’s a good quote from the article:

Not long ago people thought of emotions as old stuff, as just feelings, feelings that had little to do with rational decision making, or that got in the way of it,said Dr. Antonio Damasio, director of the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Now that position has reversed. We understand emotions as practical action programs that work to solve a problem, often before we’re conscious of it. These processes are at work continually, in pilots, leaders of expeditions, parents, all of us.

Emotions work faster than rational thought in the brain, and its reasonable to assume emotions are at the core of what the Army describes as good survival instincts.

Also see: Should you trust your gut?

Wednesday Linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here are this week’s good links:

  • 100 years of design manifestos –  I’ve always wanted to write a manifesto. How could it not be fun? And given how hamfisted many of these are, it seems there’s plenty of room for someone to write some good ones.
  • How the average American spends their paycheck – Well down visualization/graphic about how we spend our cash.
  • Google generation a myth? – A study in the UK shows there’s not a huge difference in how today’s kids use the web for research vs. adults. The actual study isn’t posted, but their claim, if I read it right, is we all suck at doing research regardless of age.
  • Mcluhan vs. Mailer – McLuhan and Mailer, two brilliant men with supersized egos, duke it out in a live debate that is fascinating even if you don’t care what they’re talking about. No conversation this complex and interesting would ever be on broadcast TV today.
  • Zoning out is good for you – Chapter 1 in The Myths of Innovation explores this notion, that our brains do lots of work, especially creative work, when our conscious minds are zoning out and relaxing.
  • Tornado vs. Train – This is exactly what you think it is and it’s awesome.

Lessons from 50+ books on public speaking

Posted on in lecture fixes, Public Speaking, the bookby Scott Berkun

My book Confessions of a Public Speaker is published and doing well – but to write it well I did much research. Here’s what I learned from reading more that 50 books on public speaking:

  • 50% or more of the advice is the same.  Dale Carnegie got much of it right 50 years ago in Public Speaking for Success (one of the best I read – I’m surprised too). And he hits the same points Aristotle and Cicero taught 2000 years before.  You can throw a dart at a stack of these books and get much the same advice.  It goes like this: know your audience, be concise and practice. The problem is this takes effort, more effort than buying books. Knowing and doing are not the same thing. Joining Toastmasters, where you practice, is likely one of the best things you can do.
  • You can’t learn a skill by reading alone. My book makes fun of this in several places as I do want you to be a better speaker. But public speaking is a skill and the only way you get better at any skill is to do it, not just read about it. You’d never expect to be a good guitar player just by reading about it, yet somehow for things that scare us that’s exactly why we buy and read books. We’re hoping to dodge a bullet. Books can help but only if you practice.
  • Rhetoric is boring. Many of these books have several chapters on rhetoric, or the construction of arguments. This is good stuff, but it’s oh so boring. Even chapters in these books about passion (ethos) are boring.  It’s the common academic trap of people writing for comprehensiveness rather than for pragmatics. Thank You For Arguing, by Heinrichs, was the best of the bunch in that respect.
  • Standard books might be the wrong way to learn this. As great as Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepare’s is (he’s the guy who originated Method Acting), can you be a great actor from reading it? Not unless you do a lot of acting after you read it. I’d say 30-40% of the books have nearly the same textbook structure of chapters and content. At least An Actor Prepare’s is an intimate personal read. Many books on speaking are shallow and stay on the surfaces of things, never touching on why people fail even after they’re read these books.
  • There are many fancy methods and tricks that play on people’s interests to make this seem simple. No surprise here, but books with titles like power speaking, magic presenting, instant persuasion, extreme lecturing, etc. mostly just rehash Carnegie’s advice, and do it poorly. Performing, which is what speaking always is, resists being boiled down.
  • Lecturing has been well researched it’s just no one knows about it.  There is so much misinformation about what works or doesn’t in public speaking. One magnificent gem is the book What’s the use of Lectures? In all my interviews and chats I haven’t found anyone who’s heard of this book despite how amazing it is. It’s on the dry side, but it’s a summary of all the research that has been done on lectures and what makes them work well or not. No myths. No voodoo. Just good advice based on actual research.
  • 20-30% of the books focus on one tool or specific type of speaking. There are piles of books just about PowerPoint, many about Keynote, and tons about pitching, or teaching, or doing seminars. And they mostly strike at the branches, rather than the roots. If you get the core dynamics of style, attention and making points, it’s not hard to move from one form to another. And books about software, in the guise of books about speaking mostly promote slideuments, something Garr Reynolds rightfully fights against.

So what am I doing What’s different in my book?

  • There is a real person here. It’s titled Confessions of a public speaker for a reason.  I’m completely honest with you. I have license, via the title, to call bullshit on myths, and legends that get in the way and to tell you useful things some are too polite to mention.  I can share the messed up things that happen backstage, what speakers really think of their audiences, etc.
  • I tell real stories. Many books take on a “I’m a perfect speaker” tone that doesn’t help people learn. I know I’m far from perfect, as my speaking experiences over the last 15 years, which include many embarrassing, comical, and occasionally criminal behavior. I learned the very hard way and I’d love for you to do better. I also have stories from other veteran speakers, teachers, and professors who were happy to share their honest thoughts about all this.
  • Like my other books, it’s fun, direct and honest.  I’m write books I wish someone had given me when I started.

You can read free samples of Confessions of a Public Speaker here:

Wednesday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here are this week’s links:

Don’t be precious

Posted on in Creative Thinkingby Scott Berkun

Creativity is best studied creatively, and for me this means studying what the masters actually did. Not what we think they did, or what we’re told they said, but how they lived and worked everyday. And while I’m not an artist, I’ve spent a lot of time studying them including the one I’m married to.

So when I got a chance to chat with Teresa Brazen, who runs a podcast called Tea with Teresa, it was a thrill since she’s an artist (painter and filmmaker) and agreed to watch one of the coolest, and most obscure, films about creativity I know of: Picasso’s documentary, The Mysteries of Picasso (trailer here).

In this lively 20 minute conversation we explore what we both got from watching this crazy, mind-numbing and mind-blowing film, the importance of failure in art and life, how to apply ideas from the art world to everywhere else, and the challenges of creative work in the world and the workplace.

You can listen or dl the mp3 here at Don’t be precious – my chat with Teresa.

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen the film – I suspect you’ll track it down after though :)  All of the paintings Picasso make during the film were destroyed on purpose after the film was made.

The other myths of innovation?

Posted on in history, Innovation, Myths of Innovationby Scott Berkun

There’s been buzz around two recent articles listing myths of innovation, one from CIO Insight and another from CEOForum, and I didn’t write either of them, despite the title of my 2007 bestseller being The Myths of Innovation.

While I know very well how many people do (and do not :) read my books, you’d think perhaps the authors of articles might do a google search on their core idea to see what else is out there.

Of course I’m not the first to wander this path, as many of the good books in the Myths of Innovation’s annotated bibliography, like Farson’s The Innovation Paradox, are decades old.

However, it’s important to note a major goal for the book was to avoid simply listing things that are false. It’s fun but doesn’t teach much, and gets dull fast. Other people have done this well. And as it happens there are some mistakes in my book too.

Instead the goal was to use myths as the seed for exploring what we can learn from attempts at innovation that have already happened. Every chapter moves quickly away from myths and on to the truth, as best I could form it from extensive research.

You can find many lists of myths like the ones above. And they’re fine to read.  But within the limits of a blog post, where few demand many sources, or deep exploration of the significance and impact of the myths, they’re easy to discount.

Here are the ten myths from the book:

  1. The myth of epiphany
  2. We understand the history of innovation
  3. There is a method
  4. People love new ideas
  5. The lone inventor
  6. Good ideas are hard to find
  7. Your boss knows more about innovation than you
  8. The best ideas win
  9. Problems and solutions
  10. Innovation is always good

If you were interested in the aforementioned articles, and missed my book the first time around, I hope you’ll give it a spin.

You can read Chapter 4 online and free – PDF (3 MB) or watch my lecture at CMU on The Myths of Innovation.

Wednesday linkfest

Posted on in linkfestby Scott Berkun

Here’s this week’s links:

  • Great post about how experts cause more failures. Nice comparison between software and other processes, and how communication is often the main reason for failure, not how skilled or talented individual performers are.
  • Top 200 blogs for developers.  When I see these lists I’m reminded first how many blogs there are, and then how many I don’t know about.
  • Tools of Escape. In this case necessity is the mother of invention, as these ingenious tools were made by inmates in German prisons. These are AMAZING.
  • A brief history of social media. Nice graphic showing the history of digital social media from 1997 to 2007.