The Real Reason for a Big Idea

So, you want to change the world?

Or maybe your aspirations are a little more humble, and you want to change your world by getting others to listen to something you have to say.

Either way, this is for you.

I want to share with you something I learned from coaching over 50 TEDx speakers over the past decade, which will help you cut through the noise and allow your message to make the impact you want.

An Observation

First, I want to share an observation with you that will help illustrate the point I want to make. All of the people I coached for TEDx and the dozens of Founders I coached who were launching a business had one thing in common. -Passion!

They were passionate about their topic and idea, which drove them to explore the topic in great detail. As they uncovered layers of complexity, their understanding of the topic became nuanced. The smallest detail became a thing of fascination for them as they worked that into their increasingly complex mental map of the subject.

Perhaps you can relate to this?

As their mental map became more sophisticated, they sought out others with a sophisticated understanding of the problem or related issues. They found these conversations stimulating, even exhilarating. They could talk all day about the minutiae of their subject.

And they want to share this excitement and passion with the world.

The Expert’s Dilemma

The problem for the people I have described, and I am going to assume for you if you have read this far, is that your passion has driven you to this level of sophistication in your understanding. As you unearthed more complexity, your passion has grown. If it had not, you would have moved on to another topic.

Looking back at the beginning of your journey, there was no passion there. There was probably curiosity. You were intrigued about something, an idea, an aspect of something that you couldn’t explain, something captured your attention, and then you explored it.

The biggest mistake I see speakers make is talking to the audience as a peer; they want to share the things that excite them, but they do it in a way that the audience can’t quite access.

This may work if you are addressing an audience of your peers, and if that is the case, this is the perfect way to proceed. However, if you address a general audience, such as at a TED-style event, you will not fully engage your audience by going deep into your subject.

Your passion can make up for this lack of accessibility, but that only goes so far. The chances are that if you are passionate about your topic, which is inaccessible to the audience, they will like you but be ambivalent or confused about your message.

Make Your Topic Accessible

The key to this is to make your topic accessible. Something that anyone can engage with. As with any topic, it will capture some people and not others. This is to be expected.

The answer is quite simple; you may have already spotted it above.

Start your audience where you started. With curiosity.

Show them the wonder that first captured your attention, and feed their imagination with the possibilities that emerge from exploring the first basic elements of your topic. You can absolutely share your passion with them as you go through this, and you should.

But avoid going into detail. Refrain from explaining everything to them.

Sometimes, we get into explanation mode to validate ourselves, to show our intelligence or understanding. When we are addressing an audience, it should not be about us. It should be about our audience.

Beyond that, we are also robbing our audience of the joy of exploration. Remember that your exploration of the topic grew your passion for it. So, if you feed the answers to your audience, you are taking that opportunity away from them.

Create the Pathway

A really effective talk or presentation captures the audience’s imagination and offers a path for them to explore the topic further. It may suggest some things to experiment with. It may suggest some actions or things to study.

In effect, it sets the kindling out and creates the spark so that if the spark of interest is ignited, there is something to feed the flame of knowledge and passion.

The pathway you present to your audience will depend on the topic, and there are thousands of ways to proceed, not all of which will be relevant to your topic. Here are a few ideas:

• Look out for these situations (observation)

• Take this action

• Ask these questions next time this comes up

• Examine this thing in your life/business/relationship

• Check out these resources

• Watch this movie with this in mind

• Read this book with this in mind

• Come along to a workshop that examines this in detail

Remember, not all of your audience will find the topic compelling enough to take action. This is perfectly fine. You want to support those who are compelled to find out more. These are your target audience.

The Destination - Your Big Idea

We have talked of a pathway, but in order to set out on a path, travellers need to have a destination in mind. In terms of your talk, this destination is The Big Idea you will share.

Your Big Idea must be simple enough for the audience to easily grasp and simply explain to others. It must be compelling enough that your target audience will want to take action to explore it more. The audience may be compelled by curiosity, greed, pain, benevolence, fear, excitement, anticipation, validation, FOMO, or any number of other emotions.

Ideally, your Big Idea will be framed so that your target audience will be compelled by both a positive and negative attitude towards the actions you want them to take. You don’t have to be over the top with these things. Subtlety may work better, depending on your audience.

Examples of big ideas include:

• Losing weight may be more psychological than physical

• Familiarity breeds confidence

• Indigenous knowledge has value

• Action sports can lead to a better world

• You can change the world by reducing your foodprint

• Business success can be simple

• Make happiness a choice

• Sport has an important role in our society

• Are you a slave to the microbes in your gut?

• Is food your drug of choice?

• The rewarding path from scientist to entrepreneur

• Lessons depression teaches us about happiness

• Volunteering is a gift you give yourself.

Conclusion

I hope this article has sparked your curiosity and you are compelled to change how you approach your next presentation.

It all starts with your Big Idea, presented in such a way as to capture the imagination and curiosity of your audience. Those who feel compelled are your target audience. You should offer them a path to explore for themselves so that they can create and build their own passion for your topic.

I guarantee that if you effectively implement this into your next presentation, you will notice a difference in the response you get from it. And that might just lift your own passion another notch!

Snippets is a section where I take some interesting text I have come across in the previous week and comment on it.

This week I attended a few sessions of the Emerging Innovation Summit 2023 over Zoom. EIS is a great event organised by Alexe Bojovschi. I have spoken at the event a couple of times in the past, and I hope to speak there again.

I had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion on AI, and some comments by Scott Thomson, Head of Innovation, Customer Engineering at Google, were worthy of mention here in Snippets.

Scott explained that the Removal of Toil is a focus at Google. They have a Toil Analysis Report that highlights low-value work that slows engineers down by keeping them away from higher-value work. In fact, if an Engineers level of Toil hits 50% of their workload, they are expected to use the other 50% to work on reducing that level of toil through better processes and tools.

Obviously, AI is a great tool to remove toil from their work.

But what I wanted to point out was the excellent use of words. Nobody will argue that they don’t want to remove Toil from their work. It is the perfect word in this context because removing work can be perceived as losing jobs to AI, but removing Toil makes it a beneficial value for the worker.

This is a fantastic example of Effective Compelling Communication.

Scott also mentioned that the annual Bureaucracy Busting process is linked to this, which is almost celebratory at the end of each year.

Again, Bureaucracy Busting is another great use of terminology.

So, the challenge for you: What processes in your business could benefit from a better name?

Unpacking Wisdom is a weekly section where I dive into a famous (or not so famous) quote and explore how this can apply to the Compelling Communicator.

I like this quote’s imagery: a person stumbling forward, lurching unsteadily to the end of their days because they lack some knowledge.

It is important for me to note that my definition of education is: to seek knowledge. It has nothing to do with universities, schools or certifications per se. Those things can help you seek knowledge, but they are optional.

I believe this because although I left school at 16, took a job in a factory as an industrial mechanic, and have never stepped foot in a ‘higher education’ institution, I have pursued knowledge in different ways, and in various categories throughout my life. And I consider myself an educated person.

In fact, I will always remember my grandfather saying: “When you stop learning, you start dying”. He was taking a desktop publishing course when Cancer overtook him in 1993. This from a man who served in the Special Boat Service during World War II.

My point, and the point I think Plato was making, is that education is not about ticking a box, gaining a certificate, or proving something to yourself or others. True education is about exploring life and the world around us, creating mental models of how things work and playing with those models simply for the pleasure of doing so.

Through this, your understanding of the world around you and of yourself will allow you to walk a little more upright and more stable through life.

What I am up to this week…

Professionally:

I had a week of annual leave. Feeling refreshed.

Recreationally:

Sunday, 3rd September (before this is published), I am performing on stage at Improv Combat. It should be fun.

What I am reading:

Over my leave, I spent some time reading Mark Dawson’s John Milton series of books on my Kindle. If you like Jack Reacher-style novels, you would probably like these.

What I am watching:

I watched Nigel Latta’s excellent TVNZ mini series: You’ve Been Scammed