Practical Eloquence Blog |

Imagine: The Power of Mental Images

By Jack Malcolm / 1.20.2014 / No Comment

Where were the slides?

Today being Martin Luther King day, I’ve been thinking about the incredible power of visuals in speeches—but not the pre-packaged kind you get with slides. King’s Dream speech worked so well for many reasons, but one of the most important was his ability to seize the audience’s imagination through mental imagery. He didn’t need a big screen set up on the white marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to get us to picture scenes of black and white children playing together “on the red hills of Georgia”, or to imagine freedom ringing from “every hill and molehill of Mississippi”.

All he had was words, and words were more than enough.

Technology adds so much to our capabilities that we sometimes forget what we give up in return. I wonder if PowerPoint has sapped our power to evoke mental images through words, and if so, does it matter?

I do believe it matters, because mental images can be more persuasive than actual visuals. Actual visuals are good because they are processed instantaneously, and because everyone sees the same image[1], but these advantages may actually be disadvantages in terms of the persuasiveness of the image. Mental images can be more persuasive because they enhance memory, intention and emotion.

Memory: When someone is getting ready to decide or to act on your presentation, you want them to remember how they felt when they heard the presentation and the arguments for taking the recommended course of action. Because creating the image actually takes work, the effort of creating the image will get the listener more involved and engaged, and they are more likely to remember the image or have it pop up in their minds when they are getting ready to act on the information. That’s why all memory systems are based on mental images.

Intention: People are more likely to perform the actual behavior if they envision themselves doing it. One study that tested actual consumers’ sign-up rates for cable service found that those who were asked to imagine having cable service were more than twice as likely to sign up than those who just got a description of product features.[2] The impact of imagination on actual performance is well-known by athletes who use routinely use mental imagery to gain an edge.

Emotion: When you use words to evoke an image in the listener’s mind, each listener sees their own personal version. Because it’s theirs, it can be more real and more meaningful—hence more persuasive. Even better, when you can get them to picture themselves in the image, it tends to increase the likelihood of the behavioral change.[3]

How to create mental pictures

Make it a priority. You’re already spending a lot of time trying to find the right visual for your slide presentation. Why not spend some of that time figuring out how to generate the virtual image in their minds? You don’t have to give up slides, but try a little harder to use them less.

Use concrete words, vivid details, and analogies. Familiar objects are easier to picture and remember, especially when they’re vivid and dramatic vivid they are.

Make them the hero of their stories. Stories are powerful image creators, and they are even more powerful when you make the listener the hero.

Give them time. If you take the time and trouble to get your listeners to create a mental picture, don’t erase it immediately by immediately launching into facts and figures. Pause long enough to let it sink in and work its magic.

Imagine

Imagine this scene: Dr. King sets up on the National Mall—and delivers a PowerPoint presentation! Would we remember his words today?

[1] Which is why mental images are NOT recommended when clarity or precise understanding is called for.

[2] Petrova and Cialdini, 2007.

[3] Anderson, 1983.

Book reviews - General business books

The Lean Startup: Book Recommendation

By Jack Malcolm / 1.17.2014 / No Comment

Not just for entrepreneurs

I like to be on top of things by reviewing new books as they come out, so why am I reviewing a book that was published three years ago? Simply because the title misled me. I don’t run a startup and most of my readers don’t either, so I didn’t see a reason to read it.

But I had heard good things about The Lean Startup , so I decided to see what the fuss was about. The first point to make is that this book will profit anyone in business, from entrepreneurs all the way to bureaucrats in a vast organization. That’s because the definition of startup includes any new product, project or venture that requires acceptance by customers to succeed. (In my own case, I’m applying the principles to my writing projects and to a new market I’m focusing on—more of which in future posts.)

In my view, The Lean Startup is one of the most thoughtful and important books I’ve read in a long, long time. What’s not to like? So many of the topics I touch on in this blog and in my training are in here: clear thinking, customer focus, value, lean principles, and process orientation. The popular imagination tends to see entrepreneurship as a spark of genius, where someone turns a great idea or insight into a big business. But good ideas are often the least important part of the equation. Ries tells us that “…it’s the boring stuff that matters the most.”

The key idea is how to apply lean principles to startups. In a nutshell, lean is about eliminating waste, which is defined as anything that does not add value to the customer, using a very rigorous and data-driven approach. But in a startup, how do you define value when you often don’t even know who the end customer is? (And if you think you do, you’re probably way ahead of yourself—you’re operating on an untested assumption, to use Ries’ term)

The answer is that you measure progress toward the creation of value not through how the product is coming along, but by how much you’re learning about what customers will want and will pay for. After all, you can create a wonderful product full of all kinds of cutting edge features, and have it fall flat with customers. And it doesn’t do too much good to conduct focus groups to ask customers what they want because often they don’t know either.[1] Learning occurs through a cycle called the Build-Measure-Learn loop. You start with a hypothesis about what customers will value, then build a minimum viable product to test it, carefully collecting the right metrics that will lead to validated learning, then repeat as fast and as often as necessary.

Ries provides a very detailed road map through the Build-Measure-Learn loop using credible and compelling real world examples to illustrate such important concepts such as Minimum Viable Product, validated learning, innovation accounting, small batches, and Five Whys. It’s probably easier to grasp the concepts if you’ve had exposure to lean thinking, but if you haven’t, it pays to study the ideas closely—with a pen and paper at hand to write down all the good ideas that will spark in your mind.

My one quibble with the book is the definition of the word entrepreneur. Although I like the idea of defining a startup broadly, calling anyone who runs a startup, especially within a larger organization an entrepreneur is like blurring the distinction between the chicken and the pig when it comes to ham and eggs.

That quibble aside, I highly recommend this book.

[1] Ries doesn’t put it this way, but I see it as an ongoing dialogue between startup and customers, where you “say” something in the form of a product and see how the customer responds.

Success

The Liar in Your Head

By Jack Malcolm / 1.16.2014 / No Comment

There is a liar inside my head that has kept me back from achieving everything I am capable of. You probably know the one I’m talking about because it’s probably in yours too.

It’s the voice that tells you it’s time to quit. It makes up all kinds of reasons why you should stop right now, and every one of them is a lie.

It tells you that you won’t be able to reach your goal. The only way that can be true is if you listen to it.

It tells you that you will feel better when you quit. That may be true for about a second, then you immediately feel worse—because you quit. The momentary pleasure of easing the pain does not last, but the regret of falling short can’t be erased.

It tells you that you’ve reached a limit, physical, mental, or moral. But pushing past perceived limits is the only way to grow.

It even has a scientific veneer of credibility to it, because now researchers tell us that willpower is a finite resource, so it’s not our fault if we quit. But human progress is the result of people who treat willpower as an infinite resource.

It tells you that just this once won’t hurt. But when you do it just this once, it gets easier to do it again and again.

It tells you that you can start tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes.

It tells you that you need to do just a bit more analysis before you act. But sometimes acting is analysis, because it provides feedback that refines your knowledge and understanding.

What can you do about the liar? One approach, obviously, is to ignore it. That’s easy to say and hard to do, of course, but you can improve your chances of success by anticipating it. I’ve written before about the power of positive pessimism, a mindset that does not blindly assume everything is going to be easy and rosy, and so is better prepared for the inevitable difficulties and discouragement.

Or you can actually beat the liar at its own game and turn its voice into a cue for redoubled effort. Charles Duhigg (The Power of Habit) tells us that habits are formed through a “cue-routine-reward” loop. In this case, you can’t change the cue, because the voice will speak up, so you have to change the routine. When the voice tells you to quit, use it as motivation to push even harder or spend more time. You know it’s lying, so if it tells you it’s time to quit, believe the opposite: it’s time to work even harder.

Presentations

With Slides, Sometimes You Can’t Fight the Culture

By Jack Malcolm / 1.15.2014 / No Comment

HOW many more slides do you have?

Like most professional presentations trainers, I have some pretty definite ideas about how to improve the use of PowerPoint, and I certainly make those ideas known when I work with clients. The general idea, of course, is to use fewer slides, much less text and add relevant visuals, remove irrelevant visual objects such as logos, disclaimers, and ornate designs.

In many cases, following these principles requires presenters to do an extreme makeover on the look of their slides, and this is where I often get pushback. People will tell me that their audiences (especially their bosses) are used to a certain type of slide, and if they present anything that looks too different they run the risk of having the discussion about the slides drown out the discussion about the content.

For example, one of my clients runs regular ops reviews that feature a slide deck template that calls for a lot of text, and several slides with four graphs on each. I think it looks busy and confusing, but it’s what they’re used to and nothing I say can get them to change. While I get frustrated at this, maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. After all, I am a big proponent of expressing your ideas in the way that best suits your listeners.

Maybe culture is too strong a word to describe a company’s PowerPoint practices, but I think not, based on how widely accepted those practices usually are, and how reluctant people are to deviate from the norm. The funny thing is that most people individually agree with me, but worry that their colleagues won’t get it.

To show how powerful this culture can be, I’d like to quote a passage from Robert Gates’s new memoir, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War:

“Meetings and conferences, I said, should be more interactive. A briefing should be the starting point for the discussion and debate, not a one-way transmission belt. If they had to use PowerPoint, I begged them to use it sparingly, just to begin the discussion or illustrate a point.”

“Again, changing the Pentagon’s approach to briefings was a singular failure on my part. I was not just defeated—I was routed.”[1]

The Secretary of Defense is one of the most powerful people in the land, running an organization of over 2 million people, and even he was powerless to change its PowerPoint culture!

What does this mean to you? You might want to keep this in mind when you prepare your next all-important sales presentation. I certainly don’t advocate preemptively admitting defeat, but it might be a good idea to run your presentation by a coach for a culture fit test.

The general rules about slides that I summarize in the first paragraph are certainly important, but they also have to be balanced against two other important general rules:

Speak in the language your audience will understand.

The best slides are the ones that don’t get noticed.

[1] P. 85.