Getting You Heard

1. Step away from your computer! Start analogue.

2. Think AUDIENCE – what are they like? Audience Map.

3. BIG MESSAGE – taking audience FROM > TO

4. content on stickies…. Or write longhand first

5. Create a story and flow (information NOT EQUAL to story)

6. Visualise the story – simple storyboard

7.signal to noise ratio ( turn it up or turn it off)

8.One message per slide/paragraph

9. STAR (something they always remember) e.g.Steve Jobs nano launch

10.Emotion v reason – good blend

11. Never deliver a presentation/pitch/conference you wouldn’t want to sit through.

In a former lifetime, I used to work in the ITN building where they produce News at Ten. The Editors were always kept busy writing inspired  (not to be confused with inspiring) headlines. My headline is “getting you heard”. Barrie’s is ” helping people become architects of their future”. What’s yours?

The debate continues on our Linkedin pages with our portfolio careers group. Fascinating examples and stories of how people feel about their portfolio careers and how they announce their career pattern to others. Have a look and please join in the debate. There are now well over 300 members of this group and from a range of countries.

Hugh started talking about it way back – well it seems like at least 8 years ago with his Global Microbrand. I was asked by HP recently to talk to a select audience of small business owners about some things to think about in branding their businesses. Here are the slides. Lots of reasonably obvious stuff including how to create your “story”. I was reminded again yesterday by Mike Pegg that when talking about our businesses we should essentially be talking about how we can HELP THE CUSTOMER. We all love to talk about how well we have done and how many widgets we have sold to XYZ co but our customers really want to know what we can do for THEM. Apologies if this is soooooooo obvious but I think I certainly need reminding and I hope it helps you too.

This is a beautiful video that expresses concisely the power of words. So many portfolio workers rely on communication to get us work, to deliver work and to review our work. Networking in particular though crucial we argue to every worker is especially vital to us. Enjoy! And be creative.

I am spending  more time with people in ” the digital space” as the groovy cats like to call it. Working with individuals and brands who want to understand and interact with their customers and potential customers. Regardless of the type of media; broadcast, digital, print or outdoor, I believe it all comes down to how you w/rap your message.

I loved the Happiness Rap so much I bought it for my phone to remind me of the important things in life. I may also buy the book and check out Sonja if she speaks in London. Cleverly w/rapping the product – in this case a book and speaker services.

Radisson Hotels in London wanted diners to really understand about the care and passion in their food. They print QR codes on the menus which link to short videos of their chefs preparing the dish you are interested in – an innovative way to help you make that all important decision and a reinforcement of the “we are here to help you” message.

Big companies like Microsoft are also wrapping by encouraging “story tellers”. Steve Clayton is a/THE ( imho) Microsoft story teller. He gets paid to explain to us (in English) what technology is just around the corner and how its going to improve our lives.

Got me thinking about my “theory of the bongs”. Yes that strange drawing above does mean something. In a previous life I was a TV News Journalist. I worked for the BBC and also ITN who produced News at Ten – a flagship news programme that used a Big Ben “BONG” just before each headline. A Bong is a 3 – 5 sec headline written so you need to know more. “Bomb explodes in tube station” for example leaves you wanting more info. This is represented by the top thick line. The lead in is the 3 sentences or 15 secs the news presenter reads to get you to watch the report – for example; ” A bomb exploded at XYZ station today. Emergency services were at the scene within minutes.  25 people have been taken to hospital and there are reports one person may have died. Joe Bloggs reports”. this is represented by the 3 thick lines. If this is written well, it will entice us to watch the 90 sec report, represented by the 5 lines. And finally ( as they say in all good news programmes), if the viewer is really interested in the detail, they will watch Panorama ( a 30 min, one topic in-depth news programme) represented by the mass of long lines at the bottom.

SO what? you say. Well, in my experience, most businesses (and quite a few individuals) are great at Panorama but not so great at the BONGS. With limited attention spans – the customer/audience wants to know very quickly whether its worth spending any more time listening to your message. They are not going to do the Panorama to Bong translation – that’s YOUR job. That’s why this model only works top down and not bottom up.

So there you have it. In one of the longest posts I have done in a while – I have attempted to explain my theory of brevity….

As you know we love to receive stories about people who have opted for a portfolio career and I came across David’s through Google Alerts on the Recruiter site. I asked David if we could use it as a guest posting here so read his story below.

“The portfolio career is not a new concept. Charles Handy introduced the idea back in the 1980s when he saw the corporate world moving from monolithic and paternalistic organisations (cradle to grave) to the leaner and meaner businesses of the 1990s and beyond.

I remember when I joined Midland Bank in 1976, everyone — family, friends and fellow employees — assumed I would be there until I retired. As being a company man became less the norm, opportunities arose to undertake personal career planning, in particular to contemplate several careers at the same time with different rewards for each. A new working model was born.

Can a portfolio career offer a better quality of life? Yes, it can. Throw into the pot something intensive (and well paid) driven by existing experience, something less well paid but very rewarding and possibly something voluntary or ‘pro bono’. All these components create a different work-life balance that could potentially feed in to family and leisure time.

So, in my case, what does this portfolio look like? It has four main components:

Education with Cass Business School (City University). I get involved in lecturing, business development and mentoring across the range from undergraduate, through postgraduate to executive education. My work involves programming structuring, running facilitated sessions, and lecturing on entrepreneurship, strategic planning/implementation and bank management/strategy.

HR consultancy with Fairplace. I am retained as an associate to mentor people who have left full-time employment and as part of their outplacement package are looking for advice and support in setting up their own business. The range of ideas has been fascinating!

Business mentoring with Viridian. I am an executive director working on business improvement with boards, partnerships and individual board members/partners.

NED work. I hold non-executive director positions with Azure Partners (business strategy consultancy) and Lysis Financial (IT strategy consultancy).

So how does it work, the move from being a senior investment banker to running a portfolio like this? The dominant factor is careful networking. I firmly believe this is an activity much misunderstood by the business community at large. I never cease to be amazed at how many people see it as a forum for asking for jobs, selling or looking prematurely for leads to job vacancies or sales opportunities. If the focus is on building relationships and seeking information, it can produce over time extraordinary results.

But nobody could say that building a portfolio career is easy. Like most things in life it follows the old rule of ‘10% inspiration, 90% perspiration’ and it has taken over six years for me to mould the portfolio mix with which I am really comfortable. One of the challenges is that the journey you go on takes you through a range of emotions. If you picture a typical bell curve, you can imagine three phases:

· Phase 1 — when satisfaction is relatively low as the portfolio takes a frustratingly long period to take shape.

· Phase 2 — when satisfaction begins to grow rapidly as all the constituent parts fall into place (perhaps even ones you hadn’t thought about but which fit in quite nicely).

· Phase 3 — when satisfaction begins to wane as the different parts begin to compete for your time. This is where having a good mentor plays an important part and I am really fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with someone who has done a great job with me on time management and helped me make some difficult choices when necessary.

Once you have the balance it’s much easier to change balance, focus, pace and portfolio composition than it is in a conventional career.

What has a portfolio career given me? So many things including variety, interest, challenge, recognition, freedom from politics, appropriate financial reward, personal development, a sense of fulfillment, greater autonomy and flexibility. Perhaps most importantly it has enabled me to work with people I like and for people I like.

I’ve tried to make this account a balanced and controlled appraisal of what a portfolio career means to me and could mean to you. It is not easy; it has challenges like any other role, but if you get it right the rewards are enormous — and you can have some fun as well.”

Thanks David.

We did a posting recently on the thorny issue of when can one use photos garnered from the internet to spice up blog postings or presentations. You need to understand the concept of creative commons and once you have then here are 6 sites that we use to get free photos and artwork – admittedly with some conditions on some of them.

http://openphoto.net/
http://morguefile.com
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net  (you have to give acknowledgement of the site/photographer)
http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced (make sure to tick the creative commons box in advanced search)
http://www.rgbstock.com/
http://www.sxc.hu/

Hunting them down takes a lot longer than just reproducing something from Google or Bing images but if you do you are much more clearly protected.

Happy hunting. The one at the top here is from www.sxc.hu

I just came across this fascinating TED talk by  Harvard professor Larry Lessig, one of the foremost authorities on copyright issues, with a vision for reconciling creative freedom with marketplace competition. So what has this got to do with portfolio careers? Many portfolio workers, including us, who currently have 5 websites between us, constantly have to think about whether we are allowed to use images that we find from Google image searches or whether to research relatively copyright free sites like Flikkr or pay for images from providers like Stockphoto. Dare we use YouTube videos to illustrate our points or if we can use them how about other videos that we pick up from the web? What about adding music to some of our presentations? It’s a nighmare and as Larry points out one that is getting more rather than less complex.

The other reason for looking at this is to see the sheer professionalism of his presentation. Oh yes! There are also some very funny extracts – especially the duet between George Bush and Tony Blair – and a piece on Jesus Christ that some would simply find blasphemous. All of which serves to make his points.

Meet Milo…the virtual human that reacts to a person’s emotions, body movements and voice. (Please watch the video.)

Designed to be used with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 Kinect – its a new revolution in story telling says its creator Peter Molyneux.  ”His mind is in the cloud. As millions of people use it Milo will get smarter”.

And therein lies the rub. Are you doing something today that Milo could do tomorrow? If there isn’t something special about what you do and the way you do it, Milo will be doing it for you and most importantly, your customers very soon.