THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 23 Conference season is here. Which means many of you are currently staring at a presentation, maybe moving around slides, rehearsing the intro, or practicing the Q&A. That’s where almost everyone puts their effort … because it feels like the talk is the thirty minutes on stage. But I think of conference talks differently. The time on stage is only the middle of the story. What happens before people decide to walk into your session and what happens after they walk out of...
about 18 hours ago • 2 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 22 Think about “We Will Rock You” by Queen.Got it? Ok. You’re probably hearing the refrain in your mind by now. But what about verse two? Can you sing it? Most people can’t. No wonder. A refrain consists of only a few words that allow everyone to join in. And it’s repeated over and over again. While verses are usually much longer and hardly ever repeated. Let’s put it this way: The verses give you something new.The refrain gives you something to come back to. Now think...
8 days ago • 1 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 21 Every talk has two risks: Someone misunderstands a detail. Everyone misses the point. The more you try to prevent the first, the more you risk the second. Which is exactly what most speakers do when they’re facing an important talk. They add nuance and facts to make the message more and more bulletproof. But with each bit of detail, the point becomes harder to see. The opposite is usually the better choice: protect the point and risk the footnote. Here’s what that...
15 days ago • 2 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 20 Sometimes you have to explain something that’s genuinely complex, maybe a new business idea, a technical process, a decision that affects the whole company … and whenever you try to leave something out, it’s immediately incomplete. It feels like there’s no way to simplify without losing meaning. So, what do you do? Leave it in and hope people will tolerate it? Or cut it and leave out the difficult parts even if it costs meaning? That’s exactly what most people get...
22 days ago • 1 min read
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 21 Almost all presentation advice comes from people who are themselves presenters. But the profession that knows even more about what makes an audience listen isn’t presenters. It’s musicians. They’ve been working on this for centuries, and they’ve got the one result that all of us want. People choose to listen to them. Again and again. How do they do it? This essay has 7 lessons I’ve learnt from music. Table of Contents Essay PDF Version A note on delight...
26 days ago • 11 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 19 So what, I say. No one is. For example. It took Leonard Cohen 80 draft verses before he settled on the final version of Hallelujah, the most recorded song of all time. How many revisions do you go through before you decide that you’re not a natural born speaker? Because if your message doesn’t click yet, could it be that you’re still in draft 17? Cohen says that … “One is distracted by this notion that there is such a thing as inspiration, that it comes fast and easy.”...
29 days ago • 2 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 18 As I said last week, I’m still on vacation. I thought that I’d gift you an essay from the premium “What the Best Leaders Say” series. It explains the difference between a talk that makes sense and one that actually changes things. Here it is:→ Read “A Talk that actually changes things” If you ever doubted whether facts still count for anything, this issue is for you. Facts count. They’re just not doing the job you think they're doing. And if you enjoyed that piece,...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
What the Best Leaders Say Issue 20 You know that your talk is too long. So you make it shorter. Cut some slides. And it does get better, up to a point. Then you hit the point where everything that’s left is genuinely good. The chart with the background info. The story you have told twenty times because it lands every time. The section on how the market got here, which is, by any honest measure, interesting. There is nothing weak left to cut, and the deck is still too long. Nobody tells you...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
THIS MOMENT COUNTS · 17 I’m on vacation this week and next week, hiking with my family in the Czech mountains. That’s why there’s no new content today. But I thought I’d point you to some free resources you might have missed: 1. The Best Talk of Your Life – The one they can’t stop talking about I’ve seen brilliant ideas fail in good talks. Delivered well, rigorously argued, someone even said “nice talk.” But afterwards this nagging feeling: “I could have given that more.” This concise guide...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read