In 99.9% of pitch and presentation scenarios I encounter, there’s a really scary thing going on, and which prompted me to post when I saw the attached clip last night.
It’s a culture that makes me want to set my hair on fire and run screaming out of the building I’m housed in at that particular moment. Because a presentation can be – and should be – a momentous experience. Billions of dollars are spent on storytelling in film and television, yet why is it that in business, presentations are treated like a drunken text message to an ex-lover? Poorly written, filled with jibberish and done at the last minute?
Before you enjoy the clip (and it is after all, a lampooning of the problem – but it illustrates my point brilliantly), let me give you an example of the unassailable power of the live communication experience.
In August 1969, a conference was held to discuss culture at Haverford College in the USA. A young man named Randy Kehler delivered a speech about his current human experience. A member of the audience that day recalled hearing Randy talk – some 40 years later:
“It was though an axe had split my head in two. But what had happened was that my life had been split in two – and it was at that point that my life would never be the same again.”
The member of the audience was Daniel Ellsberg, a corporate analyst who had to that point, dedicated his life and work to the establishment and to maintaining the status quo.
Shortly after hearing that speech, Ellsberg leaked the 74 volumes of a confidential study called The Pentagon Papers to The New York Times and various other news outlets. And The Pentagon Papers were the catalyst for a sequence of events that culminated in the impeachment and resignation of Richard M. Nixon.
Personally, I don’t see any difference in Randy Kehler’s speech back in 1969 – and pitches or presentations that happen every day. A presentation is an experience. A pitch – or presentation – has outcomes that affect the presenter directly.
To paraphrase the great Aaron Sorkin: “Words, when spoken out loud for the sake of performance …..are music. They have rhythm and pitch and timbre and volume. These are the properties of music and music has the ability to find us and move us and lift us up in ways that literal meaning can’t.”
I take great pride in sticking my neck out on this one, because as far as I know, I missed “the memo” that said that it was mandatory to pitch for business like this clip. Don’t recall seeing it in my contract, either.
So let’s stop doing it like this, shall we, ladies and gentlemen? Agreed? Excellent.
