Episode #170: The Big Idea When Presenting

The podium is a powerful place for powerful ideas. The audience has no idea what you are going to say and where you are going to take them during your presentation. In Japan, at least, they will politely hear you out until the end and then perhaps offer up a question oR two. For the thirty or forty minutes allotted to you, you are the master of the universe, omnipotent over all seated before you. And what have you done with this remarkable opportunity so far? Not that much I would reckon.

In business we are very pragmatic, practical, down to earth, focused. No one expects a businessperson to be giving a fiery, impassioned call to storm the Bastille and put the heads of useless politicians and leaders on pikes to be paraded through the town square. In fact, we bend over backward to be apolitical on the basis that we have customers of various allegiances and beliefs and we don’t want to upset our revenues or hurt our brand.

This tends to breed a focus on the details of elements of our business when we speak. We might be doling out useful advice based on our own experiences to date. It is all kept pretty locked down, neutral and safe. We don’t challenge ourselves and so don’t challenge our audience either. This is not varsity, where a lot of airy fairy stuff can be debated for intellectual stimulation. This is the real world.

The only issue with this “steady as she goes” model is we don’t push ourselves to go higher. We focus on what we know and have seen, instead on what could be imagined. We don’t try to think about issues at a more holistic level, to take a local company issue and elevate it to a conundrum facing the industry. We don’t try to project our intellects to a higher plane of thinking because we are caught up in the weeds of the detail of our speech. We spend vastly more time deciding the order of our sides than on any big idea.

This doesn’t mean our business speech has to whir off on a philosophical tangent far removed from the reality we all face. It does mean though that at a couple of points in our talk we can try to go higher than our own self interest and look at the bigger picture at the industry, country and international level. It may just to be offering up issues for consideration or to project different angles to a problem. To push ourselves to see something in a new light and from a bigger perspective.

The dealing with everyday problems can bury us in the everyday, every day of our working lives and that is a limiting factor in our own intellectual development in business. By taking the opportunity of the podium presented to us, we can challenge ourselves to see what we can say on a bigger topic. One or two big insights per speech is probably enough though, otherwise it sounds like we are on our soapbox, indulging our egos. This should not dissuade us though from thinking “what bigger points can I make about the world of business in my speech? Where do I see future danger points for the industry, the society, the country etc?”.

So when we are next preparing our talk, let’s ask ourselves “what can I say on this topic that will elevate some issues beyond today and my small part of it?”. That act alone elevates our own thinking and vision. Our job in the actual presentation is to do the same for the members of the audience. To challenge them to think more deeply and think differently.