Preparing for an important speech

I was recently asked where ideas for an important speech come from. The questioner's problem was that, when looking for ideas, none of them seemed powerful nor appropriate.

I am well acquainted with the feeling. Preparing for the best man's speech for wedding, none of my sources gave me inspiration. Quotations were close...but missed the mark, or seemed glib, unoriginal and over-scripted. Distressingly (and, if you have ever prepared an important speech with a tight deadline, you'll know I am not overstating the case) nothing seemed to work.

If you have more time than that, here is the answer: preparation starts well before the speech, years even.

The technique I use is to collect potential material in a scrapbook or album or their equivalents online.  News items, old menus, wrapping paper, photographs, signs, posters, things you overheard in the street, observations you made at work and so on. Photographs of things I saw that can be used a metaphors (roads, paths, wilted flowers).

A common problem at this point is knowing what to choose and what to discard. The solution is to choose whatever catches your attention.  You will only know if it was "correct" - if ever - long after capturing it.

This method works because it bypasses the creativity-killer effect of a tight deadline. It uses serendipity as a selection method as much as any other. Sometimes the idea is direct. Other times the idea works because you have juxtaposed it with another item that gives it relevance or context.

When you prepare for the speech, the materials provide the best customised source for your speech and give it the best likelihood of success.

Death & Taxes: 2012

Jess Bachman has published the 2012 version of his presentation of the US budget.  You can view it (and, if you wish) purchase a copy at http://deathandtaxesposter.com/.  It is a brilliant example of how a daunting volume of information can be made accessible.  This is no small matter: as the volume of information increases, visual literacy has become increasingly important.

The discussion of complex issues is hindered by the ability of participants to create a model of the issues in their minds.  Taxes, budgets, the causes of the global financial crisis and so on.  The result is that complex issues are misunderstood and simplistic explanations readily accepted.

The poster gives summary and context and empowers those who view it to have a view.  Their view might be right, it might be wrong, some might disagree; this poster enables the discussion to take place.

Sending information without informing - geting your message across by design

On a dark, wet afternoon last month, I found this envelope sheltering in my letterbox:

It caught my interest: the edge of blue triangles made it stand out from other mail.  The codes: "GB/601/5905"; "WP100/1-2011" and the bar code suggested a stringent control process.  The "GB" prefix (a letter from Britain, perhaps?).  The words raised my curiosity.  "Full instructions provided" (for what purpose?); "deadline date disclosed" (what deadline, disclosed to whom, for what purpose?).  "Date strictly enforced?" (why?).  "Shipment authorised" (a strict control process).  "Do not impede delivery" (it must be important).  On the back, more of the same.  A signature and stamp, no less:

In the heavy rain that day, the envelope had become wet.  An important document had been damaged...well I had better open it.

But hang on...an important delivery - so why had it been left in the letterbox?  Come to think of it, it wasn't addressed to anyone in particular.  On closer examination, the stamp was printed, not stamped difficult to see on a wet envelope - delivery in the rain was a masterstroke!

I have kept the envelope to illustrate how design can be used to convey a message without informing.  In doing so, I have impeded its delivery, ignored the deadline, gone off schedule, disregarded the instructions.  A task for another rainy day, perhaps. 

Time management - handling paper

Back in the 20th Century, I learned a technique on a time management course. 'Each time you handle a piece of paper, place a small red dot in the top right hand corner with a Biro. The accumulation of dots will show you how many times you handle the document.' Multiple red dots would indicate the symptom to diagnose the underlying problem (procrastination, poor filing habits, the need to escalate the issue, and so on).

In the 21st Century, this technique is less applicable as the physical object - your screen - is generally the same for all of the information that you handle.

Back in the 20th Century the cost of creating a paper document was high in terms of cost, time and effort. In some organisations, sending a letter meant handwriting or dictating a draft, and passing it to the typing pool. The draft would be mailed or, if it contained errors, corrected. In the 21st Century the cost of creating a virtual object containing information is much smaller. By comparison, minuscule. The result: a greater number of bits of paper (or the virtual equivalents) arriving on our desk(tops).

If we could 'red dot' the information, the accumulation of dots would reveal a symptom: we spend a large amount of our time repeating information - or aspects of it - to different formats. The agenda, the phone calls, the e-mails, the minutes, the tasks, the project plan, follow-ups, reminders and reports - each one creates another file. What if all of these could all be held in the same document? Sure, it could not be done in a paper document, but with a computer...why not?

For all the advances we have seen in the 'information age', many knowledge workers are stuck in an outdated paper culture. The agenda, the phone calls, the e-mails, the minutes, the tasks, the project plan, follow-ups, reminders and reports are all separate because, in a paper culture, they have to be. For many people, coping with the large number of documents is what their work has become, rather than work governed by their desires, objectives or goals.

Sadly, without the 'red dot' to reveal the symptoms, it is hard to see what a waste of time this is.

Problems of the "to do" list

Lists are a great way to focus on the essentials and prioritise what you are going to do, however, the format of your list can create problems for you. For instance, in our connected world, the paper list quickly becomes out-of-date. This may not be a problem if you use it to focus for a short period, but it can be inconvenient if writing it takes up a large amount of time and you have to re-write it frequently. 

To overcome the problem of the paper list, some use software and electronic devices to capture and monitor tasks. Again the format creates problems. For example, limited screen-space means you cannot see all of your tasks at once and if you can each one is too small to quickly read. Another problem is that each item has a similar visual weighting, meaning that urgent, important tasks look the same as less important (or even unimportant) tasks. If you have a long list and cannot see all the tasks in a single screen, it is hard to get the essential overview of your work.

To deal effectively with these limitations, you need to have a clear idea of what the list provides:

• quick summary
• focus
• robust support to get the essentials done

and the problems it can bring:

• inflexible
• time-consuming
• quickly out-of-date, so does not support getting the essentials done

Having done this you need to decide on the method system which brings you the greatest amount of benefit with the least amount of problems. You need to understand the problem that arises from attaching the information to a particular format, rather than just suffer because of it.

A bucket is a useful metaphor to explain the problem: a bucket is a device to holds things together for storage and transport. The bucket keeps these things away from other things. In this way, paper and writing is a useful way to cluster information for storage and transport.

When we use only a few devices or formats, our world is fairly well ordered and we can cope.

Each time you use a different bucket, however, you complicate the picture. Creating separate written documents, or recording information in different formats (such as apps, software or file types) means that you create a problem in which the administration of the separate buckets becomes the purpose of your life, rather than working on the problem that caused you to use a bucket in the first place.

I have found mind mapping a useful way to deal with this issue. Electronic versions allow me to attach information to a map to understand and process it and enable me to translate it to the appropriate format.

The essential thing, I believe, is that you become more aware of the benefits and limitations of the different formats and choose carefully. Choose methods that reduce your bucket problem.

Peter Drucker and information responsibility

As a metaphor (probably a tiresome one, but stay with me!), you should be the CEO in your life. You have a vision and a plan which governs your activities and reactions.

In From Computer Literacy to Information Literacy, Peter Drucker wrote of the time when computers began to be introduced into organisations: 'Most CEOs still believe that it’s the chief information officer’s job to identify the information the CEO requires. This is, of course, a fallacy. The information officer is a toolmaker; the CEO is the tool user.

'CEOs must accept that the computer is a tool, it is the tool user’s job to decide how to use it. They must learn to assume 'information responsibility'. Which means asking, What information do I need to do my job? From whom? In what form? When? As well as, What information do I owe? To whom? In what form? When? Unfortunately most people expect the chief information officer or some other technologist to answer those questions. This won’t do.'

The comment reflected the change wrought by the introduction of computing power and the time it took for business leaders to get to grips with the change.

If you are the CEO for your life, do you have a similar problem? Have you assumed 'information responsibility' or do you accept the tools that have been provided by your organisation or are available with the device you purchased without question.

There is an enormous number of software applications available. Many are useful, or free, or both. All of these, individually and combined, should support our CEO role. On their own, many support aspects of our lives, but combined leave us lost in the detail. 24/7 e-mail takes you from your CEO role and puts you to work in the mail room.

Drucker was right and that his questions are still relevant. I see many people leave the question to the 'technologist' to answer. This didn't do then.

It still doesn't.

Illustrating the day-to-day battle

One frame from an old comic illustrates some lessons to keep in mind when battling time, fighting the paper war and coping with information overload.
Maps provide an excellent visual summary of a situation. Maps are useful tools in as much as:

• the value they provide exceeds the cost of their construction and maintenance. Value is reflected in time saved, insights gained and the quality of decisions
• the summary enables a focus on the pertinent issues and not detract from them. A good map enables an immediate view of different levels of details and their relationships
• they enable the situation to be rapidly modelled by users, and users remain cognisant that the map is a representation of the situation, rather than the situation itself
• the map can be easily updated and maintained. The generals have to guide the battle, not become immersed in map maintenance activities

Imagine if the generals :

• crowded round the radio in the background, listening to messages and traffic
• had to spend a day painting some new flags for the map or making some more trees

What effect would it have on the battle or on the decisions they made? Alternately, what effect would it have on your battles if you were constantly suffered from:

• inadequate maps (long written reports; information scattered between e-mails, written notes or computer files; long lists that are curtailed by the edges of your screen)
• distractions (e-mail; social networking sites)
• huge time costs in maintaining your systems (transferring information between formats, software applications and platforms; report writing)

Mind map software and other forms of summarising information are useful. If you leave it to others to provide the tools and do not assess the effectiveness of the tool, it's more likely than not to result in your becoming distracted from your "big picture".

In the context of this post, it means losing the battle.

Where did I leave the car?

Given the size and cost of the average motor-car, it is surprising how often people (by which I mean me!) forget where they parked it. Knowing where you left the car is on the list of things you should know for a productive and hassle-free life.

Given the importance and value of ideas, it is surprising how often people do not know when their most idea-productive times are.

If you don't know when this is - other than a generic 'in the shower' - I suggest you keep a diary for a week, listing the times and activities when ideas floated into your head. Once you know the times and activities that produce a flow of ideas, you are in a position to increase the number or duration of these opportunities.

Leaving the flow of ideas to serendipity would be a pity when the small effort of finding out can yield big results.

Video synopsis

Recently I read about video synopsis, a new technology for the security industry.

Video cameras are used across the world to record what happens in front of the camera. A problem has been that reviewing the recording takes as long as the period it covers. In other words, reviewing what Camera 3 'saw' between midnight and 6AM takes six hours. To save time, the person reviewing the recording could play it back at a higher speed, but risked missing fleeting but vital evidence.

The video synopsis technology separates moving objects and inert background. When reviewing the recording, moving objects are clustered, meaning the operator can view the movements of many hours in a few minutes.

Moving figures are played back at their actual speed and are tagged with the time they appeared. In this way, individuals and events that warrant further examination can be played back separately.

Video synopsis is a good example of an innovation that arises from combining existing technologies in a new way. The existence of technology does not create innovation - the recombination of existing technologies does. Recombination arises from trial and error or thinking the problem through.

The starting point of the solution is a clear appreciation of the problem. As shown on the left, video synopsis succeeds because it puts 'review' into a different quadrant from 'record' in terms of time, without compromising 'accuracy'.

In my experience, many knowledge workers expect technologists to provide solutions to their information problems. This is a pity because it is the worker who understands their role and the problems they face. If they developed an appreciation of the problem and recombined their existing tools, they would create many powerful solutions to their knowledge problems.

Developments such as video synopsis arise because:

• it is a unique solution to a widespread problem;
• its intellectual property can be protected;
• development costs can be amortised across the application of the technology to many different locations.

It is a business model that works.

Many years ago Peter Drucker wrote about knowledge workers trying to answer the questions: what information do I need? In what form? Drucker prescribed that they 'must assume information responsibility. Unfortunately most people expect the chief information officer or some other technologist to answer those questions. That won't do.'

For information problems, the video synopsis business model is not available. Getting the technologist to solve your particular problem is too expensive. The solution may not have wider application.

The answer for knowledge workers is to develop an appreciation of existing technologies, developing the ability to analyse problems and applying trial and error to recombine existing technologies.

Information and coherence

Try this experiment at home:

• Gather 163 books
• Rip out the pages - discard covers and bindings
• Pile pages on the floor of your drawing room
• Collect paper from your neighbours' paper bins
• Add to the pile
• Shuffle the pages into random order
• Read 30 pages a day
• Make sense of it

You might think this experiment is too stupid to contemplate, let alone do... and it is. On the other hand, it is what many 'knowledge workers' attempt each day: to find coherence - meaning even - from the e-mails they receive. Each one makes sense as a structured message, but taken as a whole, each one is the merely the next page of an incoherent, uncoordinated narrative. Page 148 of Austen's Emma precedes page 23 of Dante's Inferno, followed by page 71 of the instruction booklet for your calculator (printed in 12 languages and the page you picked up is literally foreign to you).

Framed as an experiment, it shows how ridiculous the venture is. 

Meaning or coherence doesn't come from more information or more data. It comes from your ability to keep your purpose 'front of mind' when you read the next page.

Sometimes this ability is called the 'helicopter view'.

Information technology helps not so much in what it does, but in as much as it enables you to juxtapose purpose alongside the next batch of data.

Wikipedia racing

For this game you need two or more players. Each player will need access to the internet and, in particular, Wikipedia.

The game is a race. The aim is to get from the 'start' to the 'destination' before your opponent does.

The game starts with one player clicking 'Random article' in Wikipedia for a start point. The second player clicks 'Random article' and tells the other players the 'destination' article. As soon as the start and destination are known, each player goes to the start article. When all players are ready, play commences and each player clicks Wikipedia links to get to the destination article first. 

For example, player 1 clicks 'Random article' and is taken to the Venice article  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice). The other player clicks 'Random article and is taken to the Arsenal football club article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_Football_Club) as the destination.

Here is a path I found:

1. Starting on the Venice page, click 'Venezia Mestre Rugby FC - rugby team'
2. Click 'rugby union team stubs'
3. Click 'sports team stubs'
4. Click 'British sports team stubs'
5. Click 'United Kingdom football clubs'
6. Click 'English football club stubs'
7. Click '1995-96 Arsenal F.C. season'
8. Click 'Arsenal F.C.

Can you get there using fewer steps?

Information causes rocket catastrophe - part 1

You have probably heard the (apocryphal?) story from World-War 1. The order: 'send reinforcements we are going to advance' was passed along the trenches, whispered from soldier to soldier. When the message arrived, it had changed to 'send three and fourpence, we are going to a dance'.

What caused the problem? Soldiers hoping to prevent the advance by altering the message? Fatigue? Mishearing the message they had heard for the one they wish they had heard?

The story is a classic, used to illustrate the importance of ensuring the integrity of information.

In our time, we have sophisticated communications systems. Surely, we can ensure the integrity of information as it passes along the chain?

The answer is 'mostly yes' or 'no'.

In A Bug and a Crash, James Gleick explains the destruction of the Ariane5 rocket on 4th June 1996. The guidance system tried to convert data from 64-bit format to 16-bit format and triggered a chain of events ultimately leading to the US$7 billion catastrophe. You can view the result on the right.

Gleick observed: 'Software built up over years from millions of lines of code, branching and unfolding and intertwining, comes to behave more like an organism than a machine.'

The errant soldier lives on in our machines.

Information overload - a growing problem, but nothing new

The amount of digital data on the web has been estimated as being more that one zettabyte (10²¹ bytes).
 

As the volume of information grows, it is unsurprising that an increasing number of people are feeling pressured by 'information overload'.
 

You might be surprised to learn, however, that it isn't a recent problem. In her book, Too much to know, Ann Blair traces information overload as far back as the 3rd or 4th century BC to the Book of Ecclesiastes and relates Seneca's 1st century lament 'distringit liborum multitudo' ('the abundance of books is distraction').

Blair is a professor of history at Harvard University. In her examination of the past, Blair finds lessons for our present time: 'It's important to remember that information overload is not unique to our time, lest we fall into doomsaying. At the same time, we need to proceed carefully in the transition to electronic media, lest we lose crucial methods of working that rely on and foster thoughtful decision making. Like generations before us, we need all the tools for gathering and assessing information that we can muster—some inherited from the past, others new to the present. Many of our technologies will no doubt rapidly seem obsolete, but, we can hope, not human attention and judgment, which should continue to be the central components of thoughtful information management.'

Complex information represented not simply, but appropriately

Last month, I presented a course on information management to managers of railway maintenance crews. I wanted to make the point that presenting information visually can be a powerful way to make it 'speak'.

In the morning, I asked participants what they knew about the federal budget of the United States. This drew a blank. They managed crews maintaining the railway networks. What could they know about the US budget?

Later in the day we discussed the federal budget of the United States.  It was an informed discussion, informed by a poster Death and Taxes: a visual guide to where your federal tax dollars go.

The poster enabled us to discuss something immense and complex with little prior knowledge. Sure, it does not answer every question, but it enabled us to see enough to ask further questions.

The poster demonstrates the power of presenting complex information not simply, which results in dumbing down, but appropriately. 

The poster was created by Jess Bachman. You can view it at http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/

Teams and sports analogies

When I worked in office teams, there was always an annual team-building session. At each session, a facilitator would use one (at least and often more) sports stories to tell us how to 'play as a team'.

What gripping stories! What dramatic examples! All made sense at the time. All forgotten soon afterwards. Well, not forgotten, so much as failing to change team behaviour.

I am not against sports analogies. They can be a powerful, if hackneyed, way to tell the people in teams how to achieve the team's goals.

I believe one of the major reasons the sports 'story' didn't translate to my teams was 'cycle time'.

By this, I mean that a sports team plays a match each week during the season. Each match is followed by the coach's debrief. Performance is reviewed. The coach outlines what needs to stay the same and what needs to change. The impetus for change and renewal is a weekly cycle.

Some of the teams in which I was involved had an annual cycle time. Performance was measured annually. The bonus was paid annually.

A short cycle doesn't mean the changes are always effective, however, it does mean that the impetus for change and renewal occurs more frequently. There are more opportunities to improve because 'by next Saturday we will' is more compelling than 'by this time next year we will'.

A classic example is when an employee postpones his resignation by several months in order to be paid the previous year's bonus.

So, if your team has a long cycle, shorten it. I believe it's an important factor underlying the performance of sports teams. Failing to grasp this point renders many sports analogies ineffective in changing team behaviour.

The convenience and immediacy of pencil and paper

A pencil and an A3 pad are essential bits of kit to capture and develop thought.

The surface of the page allows pictures, words, diagrams, doodles, scribbles, tentative marks and bolder lines to express ideas.

Other tools can interfere with the flow. 'What should I say?' or 'how do I express?' blocks writing. 'Which program?' or 'how do I get it to?' have a similar effect when using a computer.

And while you can draw on a computer, pencil and paper are more nuanced.  They allow barely realised and even unconscious thoughts to come to the surface of the page.

Many aspects of life are intangible, making them hard to express using words. IT projects often fail because of fundamental misunderstandings between those commissioning, those executing and those using the end-result of the work.

An essential supplement to the communication of written specifications and the spoken exchange of ideas is: 'draw what you mean'.

Welcome

Hello and welcome to the MyInformationCoach blog.

My information coach provides personal coaching services to give people access to the training, techniques and tools to save time and stress less.

The blog will outline some of the ideas underlying how you can improve the way you handle information in your life.