image from wikipedia, used under creative commons license

“thank you for coming out here today; i appreciate you all being here at the lincoln memorial with me.

“first i want to talk to you about abraham lincoln and his emancipation proclamation just to give you a little back story on what we’ll be talking about today. next i want to introduce the concept of ‘the bank of justice’ before moving into the urgency of now — why we need to act now to make a change. finally, i want to discuss my dream for the future.

“so, with that, let’s get started…”

if martin luther king, jr. started off his ‘i have a dream’ speech with that kind of introduction, in what ways do you think the impact would be different? would his speech be as famous as it is today? would we teach it to our kids in middle school? in college communication classes?

i don’t need, nor do i want, a purpose or agenda slide from you in your presentations. if there’s a specific purpose, i’m sure that i probably already know what it is. i was either sent an invite to your meeting — which hopefully, for both our sakes, has already mapped out the reason — or i found your talk whilst reading through the program list of breakout sessions at a conference. what i want from you is a story. i want a reason to believe in what you’re talking about.

we’ve already taken care of the purpose long before you took the stage. right now — with you standing in front of me — it’s your time to shine. it’s your time to share your story.

i want to know: what’s your dream?

image by Alvin K, flickr artist

here’s a simple science experiment:

count how many emails you get today from advertisements. also count the number of spam messages that get filtered into your junk email folder. in addition, count the number of emails you get that have attachments to them, especially large ones. then finally count how many emails you currently have across your folders that are unread.

now, you tell me if email is really a good tool to use or not.

what was worse than being stranded in denver’s airport after a redeye flight cancellation fiasco was being stranded in presentation after presentation filled with slides of information and no real message. for some reason, it seemed to me that people forgot a very key aspect of any presentation: a clear, understandable purpose.

there’s no doubt in my mind that those people who presented their work at these conferences are smart, talented, ambitious people. i was honestly surrounded by some brilliant people — leaders in their field with more certifications and degrees of higher learning than they have the wall space for. but knowing what you’re talking about and being able to pass that information on to others is an entirely separate matter.

it’s imperative that you reach your audience. why are they there? what’s in it for them? you have to convey what you’re talking about, where is it going, and why they should spend the next 30 minutes listening to you speak. you have to connect.

each of my presentations started off with a reason for listening ['this is going to solve these specific problems that our clients are having'], and each ended with a call to action ['this is just one example, and it's only the start. let's build on this together']. i was shocked to see just how few followed the same approach and just how many presentations i felt lost in.

we’re better than this, and there’s no shortage of resources available to help us improve.

• resonate and slide:ology by nancy duarte are must reads
• nancy also has a collection of tools on her organization’s website you can view for free
• the naked presenter and presentation zen by garr reynolds are also canonical texts

even if you don’t give presentations in your day-to-day work, read these books or any of the hundreds of articles online devoted to making presentations better. at some point in time, the lessons you learn are going to be valuable; i promise you that.

monday morning was a morning like all the rest, for a little while at least. i woke up at my normal time — 6:40a — ate reese’s puffs for breakfast, and headed out the door to the office. (fear not; i did get showered, clothed, and brushed my teeth in between.) when i arrived at my desk and opened the screen on my laptop, that familiar “boop” from the internal speaker of my firm-issued lenovo thinkpad rang true just as it has every morning since 2009, and i quickly pulled up microsoft outlook to check my email.

as i scanned my inbox for unread items, i had an alarming feeling overwhelm me: “there’s not a single thing in here that i want to read.” that’s not to say that i don’t like my job — in fact, my current tasking is probably as rewarding as my current role has ever been and i’ve learned a great deal from it — but the emails clogging up my 675 megabytes of exchange server space really didn’t need to be there. i pondered for a moment: “how much of this is my own fault? how many of my emails are other people looking at right now thinking the same thing: ‘this is worthless’?” so right then and there i decided my goal for the week:

don’t send a single email.

one of my friends, astonished, asked, “…are you off all week?” nope. i just wanted to live more intelligently, so boom — i cured it with my brain. shortly after, my brother sends me an email about going to a phillies game in april and i promptly reply on my iphone. doh! i convince myself that was unfair, i mean… i just started this thing, so i pull a kramer, “alright. starting.. now!” and the rest of monday goes off without a hitch. one day in, this isn’t bad! i was able to coordinate what i had to do in work with some simple, more engaging, phone calls and face-to-face micro-meetings. any and all other communication happens via text message, yammer, twitter, facebook, and online forums.

tuesday comes along with its own challenges (namely the fact that it isn’t friday yet). now people are asking me for tangible things! ‘that file’ and ‘that sql statement’. woof! even still, with people asking for powerpoint presentations and txt files, i’m able to use our corporate enterprise 2.0 system — based on microsoft sharepoint — to upload and store files on our team site and verbally tell folks, or drop an instant message, about where to go in order to get to it. four phone calls, two uploads, a handful of face-to-face conversations, and a circumvention of the rule by asking a coworker to email one particular file for me instead (hey, i still didn’t send it.. delegation of duties ftw!) and i’m through my second day of the week. confidence grows. i can do this.

on wednesday, this article about reply-all storms from the wall street journal crosses my yammer feed (thanks, nathan!). i’m convinced now more than ever that what i’m doing isn’t just good for me, but good for the whole company. i also convince myself that being able to fly is probably the one superpower i’d really like to have if i could only have just the one. i spend the vast majority of my time at client site for the rest of the week where email isn’t really available to me in any normal capacity. the vast majority of my work continues to use shared network services, face-to-face, and telephone calls. my personal communications are strictly through facebook, micro-blogging, lunch with a friend and colleague at taco bell, text messaging, and xbox live.

and here, as i type this on sunday evening, i have yet to send a single email since the one i sent to my brother on monday morning. so to the question, “what’s it like to live life without email?” let me just answer with one word:

awesome.

in sum…

pros: it’s far more engaging to work with actual people and not an inbox; not having to worry about “how is this going to come across?” or “does this make sense?”; it actually takes less time to call someone than to email them; using shared resources and e2.0 platforms (a) keeps version control, (b) lets everyone connect, not just those folks on the to: line, (c) keeps everything organized.

cons: some information doesn’t need to be persistent but for a while. using a wiki or other 2.0 tool is overkill, and a phone call or face-to-face meetup doesn’t provide the kind of fall-back reference needed; i miss signing my emails “- dino”.

overall: i’m not saying that email is completely worthless, but it’s mostly worthless. there’s not much value you get from email that you can’t get from any other means. i won’t say that i’ll never send another email again, but i’m certainly going to keep moving forward with this new perspective on the ageless tool of the digital age: less is more. why don’t you join me? do what i did.. just try it out for a week.

image by wolfsavard, flickr artist

elephants are extremely interesting creatures. they can grow up to weigh 15,000 lbs, but still be afraid of a mouse. they’re massive creatures, and anything that large — you’d imagine — can have quite a bit of influence. they’ll shape their surroundings and modify their environment to suit them. if the fruit is too high, they’ll knock over the tree. if the water’s gone, they’ll dig a hole to find some more.

circuses are interesting in their own right. a collection of sights, sounds, and smells that you can’t find any place else. and with so many different performance acts, everything has to be perfectly choreographed — and the ringmaster is in charge of it all.

so what happens when the ringmaster comes in contact with the elephants? certainly one person isn’t going to be able to move a whole troop of 8,000 lb creatures without a couple of peanuts.

leadership is all about getting the elephants to play along. so whether it’s your own team members or if you’re trying to win over clients, every ringmaster should know that you’re going to have to pack a lot of peanuts. give your employees a reason to do exceptional work… give them dozens of reasons, actually. let your clients see and feel the benefits as quickly as you can. sell them a clear vision, and guide them along the way. make it easy for people to follow your direction.

it doesn’t matter how strong-willed the ringmaster may be, or even how great a performance is in store for the audience. one simple fact remains true: if you don’t motivate the elephants, your circus isn’t going anywhere.

i find email to be a burden to my work.

it’s the hammer in the tool box. the problem is, not every situation is a nail. sometimes you need a screwdriver, and other times you need a wrench. but we’re so dependent on email (i blame ms outlook for it) that we all try hammering in screws and bolts — even when we know it doesn’t work.

even though we have instant messaging, and even though we have enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs and more, we time and time again return to email.

i think part of the reason is because ms outlook isn’t a mail client anymore; it has become a platform. since people have it open all the time and communication is instant, we use it instead of IM. we send files using outlook instead of posting them to some other service (like sharepoint.. ugh). we schedule meetings through outlook. we look up phone numbers and office locations through outlook. we hold long conversations in outlook. we ask questions in outlook, and we distribute information in outlook.

how frustrating is it, knowing that the place where you keep answers to your questions about multivariate calculus modeling for enterprise decision support is the same place that you keep information about server downtime from the internal IT department and notes about leftover sandwiches from the breakfast meeting being in the kitchen on the 4th floor?  how can anyone find anything in that mess?  we waste more time cleaning, sorting, and deleting messages from our inboxes that have no business being there.  cleaning, sorting, and deleting messages just so that we can find what it is we’re actually looking for.

enterprise 2.0 systems need to be more than a collection of blogs, wikis, and other web 2.0 tools.  it seems to me the easiest way to push adoption is to provide not just the screwdriver, or the socket set (metric, please) — we need to provide the hammer.

we have to add messaging!  instant communication needs to be part of our e2.0 solutions.  we need to create an internal facebook, with messaging, chat, and status updates/content sharing (micro-blogging) all in the same platform.  we have to make it so that people can do their work — all their work — from within one internal platform.

all of our tools, hammers included, need to be in the same box.

image by hensever, flickr artist

i’ve made this argument before: social media is social.  you can’t just broadcast information; you have to listen to what’s coming back at you and respond.

recent conversation at work brought up the notion of pre-planning tweets for a client’s conference — or having pre-approved topics that one could tweet about.  while some purists might find fault with that, i don’t.

there’s no problem with pre-planning your tweets because the tweet is just the medium.  if you or a client are attending a conference or some kind of convention and you want to make sure that you capture certain topics or information in your tweets — go right ahead and do it.  would you make a phone call to a friend or a client without first planning that also?

imagine that you were planning a happy hour for your project team with a co-worker and you needed to call them to work out the details.  you know you want to talk about the location, finalize the date, and also the time.  you punch in the numbers, and they answer the phone: “hey, how’s your [insert day of the week] going?”

you: “i thought we could have the happy hour at paddy’s pub.”

them: “uhh, that sounds fine.. who else is coming?”

you: “we should go on thursday night because not everyone comes into the office on friday.”

them: “but they have better specials on wednesday nights..”

you: “4pm should work best for everyone, so parents can pick up their kids from daycare at 6.”

them: “… dude, have you even been listening to me?”

you: “awesome.  this was a great talk!!”

them: [click]

there’s nothing wrong with planning what you’d like to say to people in tweets, phone calls, email, or on any other medium.  what’s wrong is when you don’t respond to what people are saying to you because you ‘have a plan’ as to what you’re supposed to talk about.

this is the fundamental problem that i have with a lot of social media efforts.  if you own a bar, and someone asks in a tweet: “are you going to have the game on tonight?” and you don’t send a response to that person — that’s bad.  if you’re the source of updates from an nfl team’s twitter handle and you don’t RT or engage in conversation with fans who are following you — that’s bad.  if you constantly post links to news and blog posts about the newest apple product, or research into how virtual communications make the office space more collaborative and never reply to people who want to talk about those links — that’s bad.

just think: what would happen if your phone calls were like your social media?

how many people would hang up on you?

image by oliver widder, creator of geek and poke

people don’t fully understand social media, and part of it is our own fault — the social media mavens.  i don’t think we do a well enough job of explaining it to everyone.

most people aren’t very fond of change, because change is unpredictable.  am i going to be better, or worse off?  will i be able to adapt?  can i make the necessary changes in me to succeed in this new environment?

the problem with social media, though, is that it’s really not a change from one thing to this other.  in the end, we’re all still communicating.  how we communicate — the tools we use — do (as everything) evolve over time, however.  but it’s certainly not anything to be frightened over.

we need to find better ways to communicate the benefits of social media to yesterday’s enterprise 1.0 stalwarts.  how do you get someone who is so loyal to the old way of doing things to change?

i think it’s in the metaphors.

drawing connections between perfectly understood and generally accepted metaphors with social media may be the key to forming a level of trust that will enable the “old dinosaurs” (who may very well be young guns who just refuse to change) to ease into a social media transition.  the very simple fact remains: many people don’t use it because they don’t understand it.  but what do people understand?

the news.

the news used to be, very long ago, a newspaper that you bought at a newsstand or had delivered to your house.  you’d keep it and read it the whole week until the next week’s edition when you bought the newest paper with the newest news.  but then, the radio came along.  radio and television changed the way that you got your news.  it wasn’t weekly anymore, it became nightly… and then twice daily.  with weather and traffic reports!  it didn’t take a whole week before you learned about what was going on in the world anymore.  but then, the internet came along.  the web again changed the way you got your news.  it’s not twice daily anymore — it’s any time you want.  news is reported as fast as it happens.

in the end it’s all news!  you find out what’s going on in the world around you; the only thing that’s changed is how you get the news.  flash forward from the days of big weekend newspapers and radio programs and into the world of the 1980s.  let’s talk portable music now..

years ago, if you wanted to listen to music, you would have to put a record on the record player in the living room or drop a cassette into the stereo system in your bedroom and enjoy while you sat there (or danced when no one was looking).  but then sony introduced its walkman player in ’79 and you could bring the tunes with you wherever you were.  out for a jog?  riding on the subway?  van halen was never too far out of your reach.  but then the CD player came along with a larger capacity, gave you the ability to skip tracks instead of fast forwarding, and allowed you to easily fit multiple albums in your backpack with the CD’s slimmer profile.  but then, the ipod was born.  now, we can not only skip songs but actively search for a specific song, and with large capacity memories can even store entire music libraries in your pocket.  you get the music you want, when you want it, at any time.

in the end it’s all music!  you play the air guitar, you tap your toes, and you sing along.

social media is the same as the news.  it’s the same as portable music.  we’re finding newer ways of communicating, collaborating, and building virtual relationships that translate into real world benefits.  when we talk about blogs, twitter, youtube, and wikis — what we’re really talking about is just an evolution in communication.  the same way the radio didn’t reinvent the news, and the cd player didn’t reinvent what music is — social media isn’t reinventing collaboration, it’s enhancing it.