I overthink so you don’t have to.

Ignaz Semmelweis had solved a mystery. And it drove him insane. It’s 1847, and Semmelweis is a doctor at a teaching hospital in Vienna, Austria. The hospital has two maternity wards – one for training doctors, one for training midwives. To keep patient levels even, the wards admit women on alternate days. But the levels […]

The Power of “Only” When you’re trying to clarify and simplify your big idea, the word “only” is extremely important. You need to make sure your audience gets only what they need in order to act. To do that, focus on the action that you’re looking for. Keep in mind that understanding isn’t an action— […]

Seeing Things From a Different Perspective Effective technical communication is tricky because we suffer from the “Curse of Knowledge.” We don’t remember what it’s like to be unfamiliar with all the jargon in our industry. It’s difficult to imagine what it’s like to not know something that we know. As a result, we end up […]

Let’s clear something up: authenticity is not something you choose to be. Or not be. Authenticity is a state. Whatever you are, you are. Whether angel or asshole (forgive my French), you are authentically that. So that’s not the problem. No, when people want you to “be authentic,” they want you (or your business — it applies […]

  Setting Clear Goals To get an to audience make a change in a short presentation you need to know where they already are. Instead of focusing so much on the time slot, we need to focus on the amount of change that is possible in our audience, given the time slot. Big changes can […]

Putting the Show in Showmanship Making a great keynote presentation is about showmanship, but not quite in the way you might think. Yes, you need to engage the audience and be inspiring, but you also need to show them that you’ve answered three questions: Is this possible? Is this possible for me? And, is it […]