Chapter 2. Won't "Good Enough" Do?
The digital age has made countless artifacts from the twentieth century obsolete: typewriters, steam engines, home cooking, and personal relationships, for example. Perhaps the first individual to live a complete life without interacting with another human being has already been born. That individual will bank online, tickle a kid sister through the "poke" feature on Facebook, and telecommute exclusively. Oh, the wonders of the modern age!
The average presenter seems to be banking on such a future, hoping and praying that the day will come when he or she won't have to depend on social interaction and can instead rely on the cold, hard data they keep plastering all over the projection screen. Though empirical evidence is valuable, it is also uninspired; we don't buy our food based on algorithms that measure the caloric and nutritional content of a food against price per pound. We buy what we like, or what we are convinced will make Brazilian-cut Speedos and bikinis look good on us.
Audiences are composed of human beings who think on these terms. Our highly evolved brains have an enormous capacity for learning, interpreting, and incorporating data into our lives. Instead of doing so ourselves, we generally let our hearts or appetites guide the bulk of our decision-making. Thus, when we ascend the stage to address an audience, variables that are obviously unrelated to the matter at hand—whether the shoes are shined or not, whether a slide has a funny picture or not, whether the speaker is kind, or smart, or inspiring—begin to have a direct impact on whether or not we will be successful in our presentation, regardless of the truth.
It takes a whopping seven seconds for the human brain to rifle through hundreds of relevant and irrelevant variables to form impressions about the people we meet every day. Since the average person reads about four words per second, by the time you finish reading this sentence, you could have reached an unshakable conclusion about another person—just like that. In less than seven seconds, I have decided that you are reading this book on your iPad in a coffee shop, so I want to give you an assignment: look around. See that girl? Hippie, right? See that guy? He looks rich. That little girl? Seems like a fussy toddler, probably. I may be wrong in my assumptions—after all, you may be reading this in paperback form in bed—but I proceed as if they are. The truth matters less than what I think.
It's completely unfair, but your audience is doing the same thing to you. They give you seven seconds to create your first impression, a reality that is shaped not by facts and figures but by emotions and abstract motivations. Empirical evidence is valuable; it is important for many of us to feel as if we've made up our minds based on data. However, we have formed our solid opinions in roughly seven seconds, so we know this cannot be true.
Can you build a case empirically in seven seconds or less? Chances are that you cannot.
The human mind is designed to function in this way. It's adaptive. It helps us take in and manage the incredible volume of information that is swirling about at any given moment, even when we're just blankly staring at walls. We have to take into account that our employees, customers, shareholders, and fellow citizens are taking an equal amount of time to form impressions about our companies, products, strength, or vision. What have you been doing with the first seven seconds of your presentations? If the words, "warm up," "open up PowerPoint," or, "tell my mom I have to go because I'm presenting, now," come to mind, then I am so glad you have decided to read my book.
Perception is everything. Facts shape realities, but oftentimes what people think about something colors the way it actually is. The conclusions being jumped to in the first seven seconds of 30 million presentations every day are like concrete: Though they are not necessarily permanent yet, they will be—very, very soon. My personal vision for the Presentation Revolution is not thousands of speakers rifling off their most explosive material in a seven-second period of time, spewing humor, sadness, enthusiasm, and joy like a five-course meal pureed into an unbearable eight-ounce beverage to be chugged. Rather, my vision involves an army of skilled professionals thinking critically about how best to utilize their time on stage. Presentations matter because you get to shape and mold perception before the concrete sets.
But far more important than your presentation is an expensive product, such as an MBA from Harvard and Ph.D. from MIT or a spotless record when it comes to supporting house resolutions supporting baseball and apple pie, right? Unfortunately, while innovative, smart, and spotless individuals are obsessing over their products, brains, and records, the pantheon of presentation gods—individuals who have made managing perception a sainted virtue—are eating their lunches. Let's look at some examples:
At Apple's 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference, CEO Steve Jobs presented the iPhone 4 to the public. AT&T had to stop taking orders almost immediately thereafter. Is the iPhone 4 so fundamentally valuable that broke college kids should forego textbooks and pizza for weeks on end to have one? Probably not. But do they? Yes.
Dick Hardt gave an impressive presentation at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention in 2005 that propelled his company, Sxip Inc., Identity 2.0 theory, as well as his personal brand into near-global recognition within the tech industry. A star was born in the course of a keynote address. Did other brilliant people have other visions for the future of identity in the digital age? Of course. In the wake of Hardt's presentation, did these visions have a chance? Probably not.
Randy Pausch, whose Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams presentation became the New York Times bestselling book The Last Lecture, witnessed first-hand the rocket-like trajectory that a good presentation can put you on. Was it a brand new idea, never before heard in human history? We know that there are no new ideas. Did he become the face of the philosophy and personally embody the message for the rest of his life? He did, indeed.
Sure, Apple makes a great product, Dick Hardt is a widely recognized genius, and Randy Pausch delivered content that changed people's lives. But let's be serious: There are always competing products, smart people, and great ideas. Talk to technology experts and they'll tell you there are computers, even phones, that can beat Apple products. Apple's products are fantastic; I am a zealous Mac addict myself. However, I'm well aware that while its technology is innovative, Apple is far more innovative in controlling the perception of the Apple brand. Jobs, Hardt, and Pausch recognize the effect perception has on their work. Their presentations matched the opportunities.
Presentations matter. The average human lives to be 78 years old. We spend the first part of our lives in school, the middle part working, and the end doing anything but attending presentations. We have approximately 40 to 45 working years to use our educations to determine what we think about everything. None of us has the time for such a monumental task—especially not by conducting a thorough review of the facts and figures associated with any one given topic. Presentations tell us what to think, and we are happy to rely on this service.
Controlling your presentation, then, is a vital aspect of controlling your message and, more importantly, what people think about it. Everything comes down to the presentation: Newer, better, cheaper products are always just a moment away. There is always someone smarter; there is always someone better. Superiority in the digital age is fleeting, if achievable at all. Developments and improvements leapfrog over each other daily, even hourly. If you want success that lasts longer than a Facebook status, you absolutely must master perception.
The best thing about presentations—unlike products, brains, and records—is that there is a definitive standard for each one, an action point that lets you know in real time whether or not it worked.
Capital may be raised, products sold, representatives elected; in short, something occurs after the presentation that is directly attributable to the performance. A great presentation tells audience members a simple message: "I understand you. I understand myself. I know exactly where to go. You should follow me." If that sounds powerful, imagine what a bad presentation can do.
The fact is that most presentations—commercials, speeches, one-on-one interviews, and so on—are almost always lackluster. The percentage of people "on top" correlates with the percentage of people giving good presentations. You might be smarter than your boss, but does your boss present better than you do to his bosses, clients, and employees? Maybe you can sell a chocolate bar better than Willy Wonka, but how would Hershey's know? At some point, we have to face a simple, frightening fact: We control perception, or others control us. Leave it to others, and they'll spend seven seconds deciding the outcome of your life.
A poor presentation demonstrates an occupational death wish in a way that punching your boss in the face cannot even match; while punching your boss in the face controls perception (albeit it the perception that you cannot be trusted because you randomly hit people), a poor presentation does nothing at all.
Start thinking critically about what others are presenting to you: the commercials you watch on TV, the ads in the newspaper, your kids when they ask for the car keys. Is the message prepared, strategic, and informed? Does it make you believe something, do something, feel something? Effective presentations are conversations, even if it is one person on stage, holding a microphone and talking the entire time. Resonance—that singular feeling where individuals suddenly begin traveling in the same direction—is born out of empathy and preparation. It is not fate; it something that's achieved through hard work.
Our presentations, in other words, serve as a replacement for one, much bigger thing: our entire lives. I cannot drag an audience through a comprehensive personal history when I'm presenting. I have as little as 10 minutes to create an impression in their minds that fills in the gaps and conveys details about years of personal and professional qualifications that I simply cannot list.
Perception is the great equalizer in business and in life. On the perception playground, dumber, less experienced, or less responsible people all of a sudden have a very real opportunity to compete with the smartest, most experienced, most responsible members of their field. This is why we hear stories of brilliant innovators with hearts of gold wallowing in poverty while veritable idiots walk away with prize business. I'm not saying it's great; I'm just saying it's so.
The sooner you accept the fact that success depends on the perception of qualifications more than any qualifications themselves, the sooner you can begin to protect and advance yourself. Certainly, having qualifications in a given field makes it easier to give the impression that you have them. At the end of the day, we all want to work with experts and the best in the industry. But there's just not enough time in a day for us to perform due diligence on everyone with whom we do business. At some point, we have to rely on perception: a gut feeling, a hunch. Though these are educated opinions in some cases, they are also informed by seemingly irrelevant details: the organization of a proposal from your plumber, the fact that your insurance agent's laptop wasn't charged, or the eye contact (or lack thereof) from your teen son who wants to borrow your car for the evening. None is a direct reflection of competency or intention; yet when we have little else to go on, these are the things that motivate us to act, trust, or go elsewhere.
