And relate is the key word here – if you’re discussing new ideas then you need to find an existing concept for people to relate the new idea to. When I discuss SEO to small business owners they usually know that they need it but they’re not always sure why they need it. So I relate it to them like this:

You open a new store on a busy street. On that busy street is a sidewalk with significant affluent foot traffic. Do you have a large clean window on the side of the building facing the foot traffic? Of course because it shows off your merchandise. If you didn’t have it then people would walk right by not realizing what you’ve got for sale.

No business owner I’ve ever met has not understood this concept. I then change the “busy street” with “the internet”, “sidewalk” with Google and the window is SEO. You don’t need to know the mechanics of how a window is made, hung, and cleaned, but you do know what the outcome should be.

When presenting new ideas and concepts, nothing else is as important is knowing who your audience is. The phrase “know your audience” is an obvious cliche yet people still don’t consider it when they put a presentation together.  Ask yourself this: what’s the reason people will want to sit in front of me for an hour and hear me speak? If you think it’s because you’re a great presenter or the topic is riveting, you’re wrong. People attend for two reasons:

• Kill time until something more interesting comes along
• Find something they can use to their advantage later on

That’s it. Every other explanation is crap. You can’t do anything about the people who just want to kill time but you can put a hook out there for the rest of the people watching and listening to you. From here, you just need to figure out how to put your thoughts and ideas out there in a way that people will relate to.

The next time you’re asked to give a presentation try this – ask a few of the attendees what they’re most interested in and what they want to get out of your topic. Summarize those responses and address them in the first ten seconds of your presentation. Give people a real reason to listen to you.

For the rest of this month I’ll be putting together a series of posts that focus on presenting thoughts and ideas in a way that people will understand and gravitate towards. If you’re a seasoned presenter then nothing here will be new. Much of the posts will be based on Garr Reyolds books Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design. Additional ideas come from How to Prepare, Stage, & Deliver Winning Presentations by Thomas Leech. Each of these resources help you identify your audience, your subject, your message and your desired outcome. They also help you focus on adding content and context that supports your idea rather than detracting from it. Hopefully by the end of all this we’ll all be invited to present at a local Pecha Kucha event. That’s my goal anyway, your intentions my vary widely. As always, feel free to contribute in the comments section.

One major challenge to any innovation effort, especially one where people from different parts of the organization are involved, is that of conveying ideas clearly and consistently. Although communication skill sets may vary widely across an organization the results can be reached more effectively with some straightforward  strategies. One of my favorite books in this area is The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam. He describes how conveying complex thoughts and abstract ideas can be accomplished by just about anyone, artist or otherwise, through the systematic use of pictures. I’m a huge fan of white boards, the bigger the better. Multiple people can contribute – erase, change, rename, or start over completely with very little effort.  White boarding is of course nothing new, but the way in which Dan Roam approaches it is. He presents new ways of looking at problems and new ways of describing ideas. However, I also think that he’s tapped into a more efficient way of cross-functional teams to hit the ground running and quickly get their arms around a problem. It makes things much easier if everyone understands what the others are trying to represent and becomes a major advantage the more people you have collaborating. With just two people on a team the communication is easy to control, if something isn’t clear then it’s simple to ask a couple of questions and get some clarity. Becoming more and more common (I hope) is the situation where you have larger innovation teams working together – some of which may never have met each other. The problem of communicating ideas through pictures becomes ever more important then.

So here’s what I propose… The book focuses primarily on problem solving with others based on the concept of “visual thinking” or solving problems with pictures, so pick up four or five copies and hand them out to people you routinely ‘ideate‘ with. Then find a nice big wall and paint it with IdeaPaint or RustOleum’s Dry Erase paint. I’ve used RustOleum on a 13′x9′ textured wall, with a minimum of sanding and 2-3 coats [and] it worked pretty well. Next, have everyone read the book, pick a previous problem that some or all of you had worked on and go through it again after learning the concepts from Back of the Napkin. The first couple of passes through will be rough as you get your feed feet under you but it will start to make more sense as you go. You may even find a couple of different solutions that you hadn’t thought of along the way. Whatever. Once you and your team is comfortable, start teaching it to others. Slowly. Pick one or two people to try it out on. See what happens. Obviously you really can’t test it until your heads down trying to solve a problem or generating new ideas.

If you try this, tell me what happens. I’m interested to see how others deal with cross team communications through abstract mediums.

ideate – I despise this word. It sounds like something we just made up along the way to make it sound like we were working. But since it’s been around since 1610 I guess I just need to accept it. I promise to use it as infrequently as possible.

I learned this trick a few years ago and I believe it was a tip that Brian Tracy suggested, however I can’t find it and over time I’ve refined it a little bit. The first step is to clearly define the “problem” and I find most people don’t take the time to do this. A well defined problem creates a focus that helps ensure that you’re fixing the right problem. I hear many people say “this doesn’t work” but they don’t take the time to really understand what “this” is and can’t really describe what “doesn’t work” means. There’s a big difference between “People just don’t buy from us online.” and “People are finding the online purchasing process convoluted and has too many steps, therefore they’re not buying from us.”

Now here’s where things get interesting. Restate the problem along with some assumptions like “we only have $5,000 to commit to this effort” or “we need to be launched in four weeks.”  I tend to keep people resources out of the equation as you can usually figure out how to get people to pitch in on a really interesting problem. I also tend to keep most process oriented assumptions out of the restatement of the problem. I’ve experienced that existing processes were sometimes the root cause of the problem anyway and assuming that you can’t change the process is like chewing tinfoil. It hurts and in the end you can’t digest it anyway. Now, with the problem restated, set aside about 2-3 hours that you will not be disturbed. Go off-site, disappear, turn the phone off and book your calendar because you’re going to need this time to focus. If you know yourself well enough then you should know at what time of the day you’re most creative and imaginative. For me it’s usually around 10-11AM and from 2-4PM. With your time blocked out and your phone off come up with 20 answers to the problem. If it’s truly a difficult problem you’ll start to stumble after about five answers, struggle at ten, and come to a complete stop at fifteen answers. Your true breakthroughs are going to occur in the last five answers so keep pushing. This should cause true brain-pain and if you’ve got any connection with the outside world you’ll be tempted to stop and just go with answers 1-15. If you do that then you’re truly going to miss an original thought – a true innovation that begins to solve your most difficult problem. Once you’ve got 20 you should know what to do by now. Pick the ones that seem most likely to succeed and run with them.

If you try this then let me know what your results were. If there’s any suggestions you can add to this then by all means leave a comment.