Mini book review: Great Speeches for Better Speaking

I've just finished reading Great Speeches for Better Speaking by Michael E Eidenmuller (published by McGraw Hill).

It's not quite holiday reading, but neither is it a textbook. It's a curated journey Eidenmuller takes you on, through six historical speeches of the 20th century, complete with full recordings.

Eidenmuller's passion for his subject is almost tangible. I was a little disappointed, however, in how brief and tantalizing some of the commentary is. Still, with recordings and full transcripts available, Eidenmuller's commentary is more of a kickstarter, and he offers a few hints of where to go next, but leaves the journey up to us.

He also brings up the "Great Debate", between Plato who argued that rhetoric was dangerous, and Aristotle who said it was a powerful force for democracy - if everyone understands it.

It's an important question, especially in am age where social media gives everyone with an Internet connection, a voice.

Highly recommended reading if you speak, write, or just enjoy a good speech.

How to write if you're not a writer

Writing doesn't come naturally for everyone, but we all need to write well in our daily routines. Technology has made written communication all the more important. And for some, it adds pressure and anxiety.

No-one cooks at the same time as they assemble their ingredients, yet that's how many people expect to be able to write. They sit down at the keyboard, and expect to get the message right in one go.

But writing is made up of three distinct parts, a bit like preparing a meal.

Here's how to take the pressure off yourself, and create better writing at the same time:

1. Gather your ingredients.
Who are you talking to? What do you want to say to them? Identify the key parts of your message, not in sentences but in ideas.

For example, you need to invite someone to a collaboration website you're setting up, and you want to give them some context around why you're inviting them.

The key parts of your message - your ingredients - could be:

* I'm inviting you to this collaboration website
* The collaboration website does these things...
* The team who will be collaborating on the website are...
* The purpose of us doing this is...

Notice how there's no numbers, just bullet points. We don't put things in order until step 2.

Even better than bullet points is a mind-map, or post-it notes. You're gathering all the ingredients, make sure you have everything you need, and not any more.

2. Sort the ingredients.
What part of the message needs to come first? If you're using post-its or index cards, you can physically re-sort them. Try to find the logical flow of your message.

How do you find the logical flow? it's a bit of an art, but this may help. Think of the key parts that would make more sense if you had the information from previous key points.

For example, telling me who's on the team makes more sense if I know what the purpose of the team is. Telling me what the collaboration website does makes more sense if I know I'm invited to the website.

As you do this, you may find that some of your cards are actually saying the same message. That's good! We're making sure we're saying everything we need to say in as few words as possible. Both parts are important, "everything we need to say", AND, "as few words as possible".

3. Write the message.
You now have your ingredients and are ready to start cooking. You have the skeleton and can put some flesh on the bones. This is where you can think about all that fun stuff like grammar and spelling.

The good thing is, you don't have to think about the other stuff, like what part of the message goes where, or whether you've included everything you need to include. You've already done all that stuff.

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I'm not a great cook, but when I do cook people are generally pretty happy with what I prepare.

It helps if I have a recipe. But as I practice, I also start to see beyond the recipe, to the principles of the recipe. I start to experiment, to discover my own way of cooking.

Writing is the same. We all can write; some of us need a bit more structure than others. And like any skill, you will get better and faster as you go.

What I tweet about (in the last year)

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Testing a mobile blog

... from my phone. And all of a sudden I can't think what to say!

Caution: L&P's promo is awesome

Caught up with me old mate Brendan Boughen (not pictured here!) the other day.

Brendan's working for Ogilvy PR, and he told me about L&P's latest web promotion, Paeroa Tourism, which he described as a cross between Flight of the Chonchords and Borat.

He was right. This is hilarious.



The media kit was... awesome too. A typewritten cover letter from Maurice Morrison, badly photocopied fliers touting the seven wonders of Paeroa (that's two more than Thames, in your face Thames!), a bright yellow t-shirt like Colin's wearing in the pic above, and a six pack of L&P. Thanks Brendan! Good humour and bribery will get you everywhere. Check out the Facebook page.

On a slightly more serious note, it brings up two thoughts for me:

• Yes it's the age of authenticity, but you can still carry off fictional characters in an online campaign if you do it very well, and if it's very funny. (Easy as that, eh!)
• New Zealand's small towns have a great opportunity to use social media to differentiate themselves. We have some really neat, quirky towns around the place like Bulls, Taihape (where iJump clients Gravity Canyon are based) and Tirau. (By the way, those photos are from another iJump client, EyeballNZ.com). Could they (should they) do a Coos Bay? And what on earth is it with Ngaruawahia? Looks deserted every time we go through (which admittedly isn't that often).
  

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

I'd heard that The Life and Death of Peter Sellers was not for the fainthearted, but the cheerful opening titles lulled me into a forgetful sense of security.

It is full on. His life is a train wreck in slow motion. It is a tragedy. It is hard to like Sellers, which is a gutsy move for a film (you're supposed to like the protagonist).

I love most of Sellers' work. The Goon Show played a huge part in developing my off-beat sense of humour (made even more off-beat by the fact I was listening 30 years out of context).

But the life behind the laughs was a nightmare. Sellers was a boy who never grew up, who became entrapped in an industry that encourages emotional immaturity.

It's a very well-told movie, if you know Sellers and his work.

It makes me wonder: will the future enable the kind of big, but dysfunctional superstars like Sellers?

Or will the disruption that's happening in media and entertainment mean that vulnerable but gifted people like Sellers (and Michael Jackson, and many others) won't be able to insulate themselves from reality?

That's a long question. I bet the answer is even longer.

We all make policy happen

I've just read the NZ Institute's report (PDF) on this country's competitiveness, based on World Economic Forum data.

Some good recommendations, as far as I can tell. Key areas for improvement are innovation, and we as a nation need to enable this.

However, the language of the report, particularly the all-important last slide (Policy implications for New Zealand) is just not accessible.

Perhaps the argument is that policymakers are used to dealing with dry, abstract language. That may be so. But...

Isn't it better, if you're painting a goal, to paint that goal and vision in as vivid terms as possible? When you're making recommendations, if you show me what the outcomes of those recommendations are, and why those recommendations are needed?

I also suggest this because policy ultimately needs us all to deliver it. Government may propose, but the people dispose. Public servants, local governments, business people and ordinary citizens all make policy happen. Let's embrace that.