Categories: Articles

Strong Lessons On How To Present Ideas

Newsflash: you don’t have to be a great speaker to get an idea to spread.

We live in fascinating times. Ideas. Powerful ideas are being spread at a frenetic pace. You can blame smartphones. You can blame YouTube. You can blame Snapchat. It doesn’t matter. Ideas (of all nature and sizes) have the ability to be spread. One of the most profound shifts in the digital world is simply this: anyone can take an idea, hit the “publish” button and have that idea spread (for free) to the entire world. This doesn’t mean that every idea does spread. It simply means that the channel to distribute an idea is free, and has the potential to reach all. We are currently debating the future of work in a robot world. Where will the jobs go? What skills will humans need? One of the most important skills that a human needs (today and going forward) is the ability to cogently and powerfully share their thinking, and share their work. This is about much more than being a strong public speaker, and this isn’t about building a career in the domain of being a paid presenter. The core skills that those people use, however, are critical to your future success.

TED Talks are a great demonstration of how strong communication can often make ideas spread.

In fact, TED has become such a global phenomena, that the Head of TED, Chris Anderson, recently published an amazingly excellent book titled, TED Talks – The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking. Even if you don’t speak in public, this is a critical book about how to think about your ideas, and how you communicate them. Recently, Anderson spent an hour discussing his thinking about ideas and how we communicate them at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. Here’s how his talk at Google is described:

“Chris Anderson, Head of TED, stops by Google for a presentation and discussion with Gopi Kallayil, Chief Evangelist, Brand Marketing. Since taking over TED in the early 2000s, Chris Anderson has shown how carefully crafted short talks can be the key to unlocking empathy, stirring excitement, spreading knowledge, and promoting a shared dream. His exciting and informative new book TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking serves as Anderson’s instruction manual from his 15 years of working with many of the world’s most impactful speakers.”

Watch this: Talks at Google - Chris Anderson: “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking.”

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.