Practical Eloquence Blog |

Success

Perspective

By Jack Malcolm / 1.23.2018 / 1 Comment

In the book, Treating People Well, there’s a story about the time in 1955 when Dwight Eisenhower was scheduled to speak at Penn State University’s commencement. The weather forecast was troubling, so aides asked the President if the proceedings should be moved inside. Ike replied: “You decide. I haven’t worried about the weather since June 6, 1944.”[1]

Others saw a difficult and risky decision; Eisenhower saw it as trifling because of his perspective.

Perspective, at least in my definition, is not the same as point of view—it’s higher than that. We all have our own individual points of view on any situation, but it’s often limited. As in the parable of the six blind men and the elephant, our view of any situation is contingent on our available information, individual experiences, and personal temperament. Perspective is the ability to see the whole elephant. It’s a sense of what really matters, of what you can control and what you can’t, of what you can let slide and what to address immediately.

Here’s a personal example, a lasting and valuable lesson in perspective that I received when I was nineteen. I had gotten into an argument with my Dad about something, and I said, “Dad, you don’t realize how tough it is growing up in the 70s.” He quietly replied: “You’re right. All I had to deal with was the Depression and World War 2.” The difference was, I had a point of view, but my father had perspective.

Perspective can make you a better leader, a better persuader, and better person

As a leader, when you’re tempted to micromanage, perspective can remind you to step back and let others grow. It lets you see what truly matters and provides an example for others. Plus, when you’re full of yourself, perspective can set you straight. Perspective bends the effectiveness/efficiency tradeoff toward the former by helping you see beyond metrics to what truly counts.

As a persuader, an outside-in perspective makes it easier for you to frame your messages to better resonate with others’ points of view. It also helps you project an image of maturity, competence and confidence that boosts credibility.

Perspective probably has the greatest impact on the quality of your personal life. It smooths the rough edges of life. When you’re wallowing in self-pity, perspective can lift you up. It can help you frame situations more positively. As G.K. Chesterton said, “An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.”

Four vantage points to gain perspective

Perspective is fundamentally about comparison and contrast, and having a rich storehouse of experiences and impressions gives you more vantage points from which you can evaluate any situation. Four ways to “make things look different from here” are big picture, long view, outside-in, and gratitude.

Big picture. From a height, things look much smaller and can more readily be placed in relation to others. In business, CEOs are at that 10,000 foot level, but you don’t need to be CEO to take a big picture view; anyone can raise their perspective by “thinking like an owner”, or as Drucker advised, focusing on contribution and not job description.

Long view. The present situation only gains meaning in relation to both the past and the future. By looking back, Eisenhower was able to reflect back on his long experience to gain perspective. You can also expand your time horizon by looking forward in time. When problems and criticisms jostle you off your path, focus on the long-term goal to keep oriented on what’s important. Occasionally it may remind you that, “You will never reach your destination if you throw stones at every dog that barks.”

Outside-in. What I call outside-in thinking is what psychologists call perspective-taking or cognitive empathy. It’s about stepping into the other’s mind and seeing it from their point of view. It’s especially useful in crafting presentations and working towards win-win negotiations.

Gratitude. If you take the time to step back and consider it, we live in the best times ever in human history. We are safer, healthier and more prosperous than any generation in the history of mankind. You don’t even need to go back in time; just look at the world around you. My wife and I came up with a phrase when the Iraq war was raging that we still use: ” At least we’re not in Fallujah.”

How to improve perspective

Perspective probably can’t be taught, but I do believe it can be learned and cultivated, if we can just take the time occasionally to step back from the press of daily life. I’m reminded of this quote from A. A. Milne:

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.”

Here are a few ways to step back:

Travel more. Personally, a great way to gain life experiences is to travel widely, and experience other cultures. It will help with big picture and outside-in perspectives.

Read widely. You can also “travel” in time by reading history; you’ll learn quickly that most of what’s happening in our political scene today, for example, has happened in many other versions throughout our history. Read Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus to learn about Stoic philosophy, which will help you clarify the difference between what you can control and what you can’t.

Gain business acumen. When is the last time you read your own company’s annual report or 10-K? I strongly recommend it; if you want to think like an owner you have to read what the owners read.

Be curious. Be curious about other people, dig beneath the surface of conversations, and practice your listening skills. Be curious about your business, your industry, and the wider world.

[1] Lea Berman and Jeremy Bernard, Treating People Well: The Extraordinary Power of Civility in at Work and in Life. Digital.

Expression - Presentations

Quotations: Strong Medicine If Used Properly

By Jack Malcolm / 1.18.2018 / No Comment

One of the best ways to add power and sparkle to your speech is to use an apt quotation.

As Brendan Behan said, “A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.” That “borrowed” authority from more accomplished and better-known experts is an excellent way to add power to your argument.

Quotations can also add sparkle and even a certain literary flair through the clever way they’re phrased. As Montaigne said, “I quote others only the better to express myself.”

But like any strong medicine, quotations need to come with a warning label. The first is that if you overuse them you may be perceived as not having your own point of view. As Dorothy L. Sayers said, “A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.”[1] Second, just like any medicine used past its expiration date may be ineffective or even harmful, many quotations have become clichés and have outlived their usefulness. Almost anything attributed (correctly or incorrectly) to Twain or Einstein falls into this category. Finally, just as some medicines need to be taken with food, any quotation you use should be a supplement to your own original point of view, not a substitute.

Here are a few additional tips to use quotations effectively:

Make sure you quote them correctly and assign proper credit. If Einstein had said half the things people attribute to him, he never would have had time to think about relativity. It’s so easy to check quotations that you look lazy if you don’t.
In you’re unfamiliar with the person who said it, look them up[2]. This may prevent embarrassment, as I suffered once when I quoted Konrad Lorenz and then found out that he was tainted by association with the Nazi party.
Quote someone especially meaningful to your particular audience, such as their own company’s CEO or someone respected in their industry. I’ve had good success with highly technical audiences, for example, by quoting Richard Feynman.
Dig a little deeper to go beyond the ones everyone already knows. Everyone has heard some variation of: “Sorry for sending such a long letter; I didn’t have time to write a short one,” but he also said: “NO CAN DO 2 PAGES TWO DAYS. CAN DO 30 PAGES 2 DAYS. NEED 30 DAYS TO DO 2 PAGES”.[3]
When using them in a speech, keep them short, both so you don’t bore your audience and so you can memorize them and not have to read them off your screen. It’s OK to edit a long quotation as long as you don’t distort the original meaning.

[1] Normally I would not use so many quotations in one post, but it is about quotations…

[2] As I had to do for two of the quotes above. Brendan Behan was an Irish poet, and Dorothy Sayers an English crime writer and poet.

[3] In fairness, this one may be apocryphal.

Persuasive communication - Presentations

Exclusive Interview: Mark Twain on Practical Eloquence

By Jack Malcolm / 1.16.2018 / No Comment

It’s rare to score an interview with Mark Twain these days, mainly because he has been dead for over 100 years. But with the help of goodreads.com, I was able to get him to open up about his views on public speaking and persuasive communication in general.

Mr. Twain, thank you for agreeing to talk to me.

I love to hear myself talk, because I get so much instruction and moral upheaval out of it.

Why have you agreed to talk now?

From the first, second, third and fourth editions (of my autobiography) all sound and sane expressions of opinion must be left out. There may be a market for that kind of wares a century from now. There is no hurry. Wait and see.

What’s your view on persuasive communication?

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus and upset the convictions and debauch the emotions of an audience not practiced in the tricks and delusions of oratory.

What’s the best way to convince an audience?

I know all about audiences, they believe everything you say, except when you are telling the truth.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.

Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than for illumination.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

Facts contain a great deal of poetry, but you can’t use too many of them without damaging your literature.

Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not information.

So, does that mean you think emotion is more important than logic?

It is easier to manufacture seven facts than one emotion.

You’re not really that cynical, are you?

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Use what you stand for and what you oppose as a foundation to write great content that resonates with readers and creates a ripple effect.

How important is it to be concise?

If you have nothing to say, say nothing. Never miss a good chance to shut up.

Anybody can have ideas—the difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph.

Let’s talk for a bit about how to be clear.

Plain question and plain answer make the shortest road out of most perplexities.

And to those who insist on using big pretentious words?

I never write metropolis for seven cents because I can get the same price for city. I never write policeman because I can get the same money for cop.

She never used large words, but she had a natural gift for making small ones do effective work.

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between the lightening and the lightening bug.

What’s the best way to tell a story?

I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told.

Begin at the beginning, go on until the end, then stop.

Do you think people should write out their speeches?

Written things are not for speech; their form is literary; they are stiff, inflexible, and will not lend themselves to happy and effective delivery with the tongue–where their purpose is to merely entertain, not instruct; they have to be limbered up, broken up, colloquialized and turned into common forms of premeditated talk–otherwise they will bore the house and not entertain it.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

So you think impromptu speaking is better?

The best and most telling speech is not the actual impromptu one, but the counterfeit of it … that speech is most worth listening to which has been carefully prepared in private and tried on a plaster cast, or an empty chair, or any other appreciative object that will keep quiet, until the speaker has got his matter and his delivery limbered up so that they will seem impromptu to an audience.

As a humorist, what advice would you give speakers about using humor in a presentation?

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

One can be both entertained and educated and not know the difference.

Do you ever get nervous before a speech?

There are two kinds of speakers. Those who are nervous and those who are liars.

To succeed in life, you need two things; ignorance and confidence.

Finally, what is your take on motivational speakers?

To be good is noble. To tell other people how to be good is even nobler and much less trouble.

I’m not sure I agree with all your views.

Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

Sales

Selling Process Improvements

By Jack Malcolm / 1.11.2018 / 1 Comment

If you follow college football, you were treated to a thrilling championship game this week in which the University of Alabama came back in the second half to win coach Nick Saban’s fifth national title in nine years. The subtext to that incredible run is that Saban does not focus on winning per se; instead he pays close attention to what’s known as “The Process”, and the wins take care of themselves.

What does this have to do with selling? In B2B selling, your fundamental task is to improve your customers’ business performance. Just as a football team’s chances of winning rest on the collection of individual processes they follow before and during the game, your customer’s business success depends on how well—how effectively and efficiently—they execute their collected processes. Improve the process, and you improve the business.

Every business is an agglomeration of processes (production processes, selling and marketing processes, accounting processes, IT processes, and the list goes on), and all these processes are structured in the same way: they apply work to inputs to produce outputs that someone values. Like cogs in the cash flow engine, a firm’s overall profitability and cash flow depend on the cumulative and interacting effectiveness and efficiency of all the individual processes that it undertakes to produce value for its customers.

All the various sales philosophies or methodologies, including consultative selling, solution selling, challenger selling, or insert-catchy-name-here selling, fundamentally rest on the seller’s ability to improve at least one of their customers’ processes for producing value. You can’t solve problems, produce profits, or even generate useful insights unless you have a deep and complete understanding of the processes you affect.

When you do have that deep and complete understanding of how your customers do things, you command immediate respect from all the relevant levels in the buying process, from technical buyers all the way up to the C-Level. You can also find many more points of impact where you can connect your solution, and as a result you can generate and quantify higher value for your customers. You may even be able to add value by being an ambassador between your buyers’ problem-owners and process-owners.

Analyzing the process

So, what’s the process of business process improvement selling? It begins with peeling back the layers to expose the anatomy of any process. Every process consists of five things: inputs, work, outputs, constraints, and value.

Can you reduce inputs, such as labor, money, and time?
Can you eliminate or reduce steps and activities of the work necessary in the process? Can you identity and address problems, opportunities, changes and risks that the process-owner faces?
Can you improve the quality or quantity of the outputs? What process/operational measurements does the customer pay attention to?
Can you remove, get around or mitigate constraints, such as physical, technological or regulatory limits?
What is the financial and/or personal value of your answers to the above questions? What financial measures does the customer pay attention to?

You can’t outsource process knowledge

If you work for a large company, it’s tempting to think that a lot of this work will—or should—be done for you by your marketing or sales enablement functions, but there is no substitute for your personal mastery of the appropriate process knowledge. It’s the only way you will be able to be in control of credible and meaningful sales conversations, and especially to spot opportunities for improvement that they buyer may not be aware of.

You need to read all the relevant material you can find about the specific process, spend a lot of time questioning and listening to process owners, and most importantly, “going to the gemba”, which is lean-speak for actually visiting where the work is done to get a first-hand understanding of the work itself.

Everybody wants to create value for customers, but not everybody digs into the details of how their customers create value for their customers. Selling process improvements is not a substitute for whichever insert-catchy-name-here sales methodology you’re using, it’s an added process that will help you do it right. It may mean more work on your part, but just as in football, if you pay attention to the process, the wins will take care of themselves.