The "Helmet with Shoes" - Dr. K

After weeks of anticipation, and enduring 421 pages of dehydrating college text, the day finally arrived - a full day workshop with award-winning entrepreneur and famed academic Dr. Don Kuratko. Prior to the workshop, I had a chance to meet Dr. K and felt obliged to comment on his book - ok maybe not "obliged", but I certainly felt I had earned the right to issue a commentary. After explaining how delightfully painful it was to try to devour an entire college textbook over the course of a few airplane trips, he mentioned that others had suggested a non-textbook version of the material, which he felt would be difficult to do in a reasonable level of detail and/or value. I would say that Dr. K is suffering from the dreaded Curse of Knowledge, so I naturally recommended the Heath brothers' book "Made to Stick", which I had finally finished on the airplane the night before (I offered him my copy, but he was already planning to finish "Skin in the Game" on his return trip home).



Shockingly, he opened his session with a joke, something that business presenters quit doing in the early nineties. Even more shocking to me, though, was the delivery of the joke went really well and was quite relevant to the session - addressing, head-on, the fear that every business leader has when he is about to sit through a full day seminar with an academic. The joke was an admission that college professors are notorious for delivering information that is "absolutely correct and totally useless". Then he assured us that, over the next eight hours, he would break that paradigm...and he did!



After a brief review of the material and required reading list (my next read will be "A Stake in the Outcome", by the way), he moved into a familiar ice-breaker - with a twist. Anyone who has been to enough corporate workshops has likely had to introduce themselves and include an interesting, unusual or little known fact about their personal life. Dr. K had us do it artistically. Every person had to draw a picture and show the group - the picture representing a fact about the person that everyone did not know. Then the group had to guess what the illustration was depicting. I'm tucking that one away for future reference - it was really a fun variation on a common ice breaker.



But what really stuck out of the opening ice-breaker, was Dr. K's drawing:



Even more interesting was the accompanying story:

In the early 70's, Dr. K played football at Div. III John Carroll University (Don Shula's alma mater, if you didn't know). At the time, a college football magazine ran a story about how, in 1973, the college had to special order his uniform due to his unusual stature 5'6", 118lbs - (which, by the way, is one inch taller and 40 pounds lighter than Tyler, my ten-year-old). The uniform manufacturer, knowing that no college would need an extra-small (XS) uniform, mistakenly delivered the equipment to the grade school across the street. Later that season, Don was on the field waiting to receive a punt from the other team. During the normal hush that tends to come over a crowd just prior to a kick - an opposing fan yelled out "Look - it's a helmet with shoes."

For the rest of the session, I just couldn't look at Dr. K the same way....

Got a minute?

Does an elevator speech really have anything to do with elevators? How long is an elevator speech supposed to be? How long is a typical elevator ride? Has anyone ever actually had a situation where they had an unexpected opportunity to deliver a short speech to an executive who suddenly stepped into an elevator with them? I know at least one believer - Patrick Kershaw.

On the plane en route to a technology summit at corporate headquarters, I advised Pat that he should have an elevator speech ready to quickly convey the status of his high visibility project - just in case we had a casual encounter with the CEO of our company. Pat had never heard of an elevator speech, so I explained the premise - you step into the elevator on the way to your destination and find yourself eyeball to eyeball with a high level executive in your company (or of a customer's or prospective customer's organization). You have less than a minute to concisely convey your message - whatever it may be - about yourself, your value proposition, your project, whatever.

Later that afternoon, Pat and I were in the elevator at corporate headquarters, on our way to the kick-off session of our conference - and who do you think stepped into the elevator with us? Yep, as if on queue - the CEO....I didn't think that stuff actually happened.

I heard someone last year describe the elevator speech as a 2 minute segment. Have you ever actually timed yourself talking for two minutes? That's really a long time. Have you ever been in an elevator for two minutes? Naturally, empirical data gathering was in order - so I started timing elevator rides. Now, the premise being that the CEO is probably travelling to the top floor of the building, and you've probably boarded at the lobby level. So every time I get in an elevator, I time the non-stop trip from bottom to top. (notice I said "non-stop", when you start adding stops, it's gets too variable, and all those extra people stepping in and out of the elevator really bust the mood) First, I started with the building where I work - SPX Cooling Technologies World Headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas. Granted, I wouldn't expect much of a ride to the towering third floor - but I timed it nonetheless - 35 seconds. (I usually take the stairs, which is about a 29 second trip).

So, just to test the outer bounds - my next timed trip was to the observation deck of the world's tallest building - Taipei 101. Thanks to the world's fastest elevator, this trip only took 37 seconds. The next week, I was at the Crystal City Hyatt in Washington D.C. The ride to the 12th floor....37 seconds. I've continued the data gathering for the better part of 6 months - regardless of building size, It always seems to take 35-40 seconds. Perhaps I have uncovered the underlying design criteria for commercial elevators - get to the top in 35 to 40 seconds.

So, I think it's safe to assume that the target time for an elevator speech is 35 seconds. That will pretty much carry you to the top floor in any building. Add some time for Q&A and you can stretch it to a minute. Got a story to tell - I'll give you a minute...

Signals of Change

Have you noticed the growing abyss between the communication standards of the younger generation? (what are they called, generation "Y" ? - Why ask "Y"?) As a father of two young boys, I become more and more aware of this every year. I feel funny trying to relate to them what life was like before the internet and email. ("wow, that was a lonnnng time ago, wasn't it dad!) Online social networking is no longer a curious fad for pubescent teens, it's moving with this generation right into the mainstream. The gap was illustrated graphically for me about a year ago at the SPX Leadership conference. One of the guest speakers polled the audience (a hundred and something corporate executives) to see how many had a "myspace" account. One hand sheepishly went up.

While myspace might not be the preferred gathering space for today's executive, it looks like the corporate world social network sites are popping up like mushrooms! Several years ago, a colleague (and networker extraordinaire), sent me a link to a site called "LinkedIn", an upstart business networking site. Seemed like a bit of a novelty at the time, but I went ahead and registered and basically forgot about it. Today, practically every person on my personal address book is on LinkedIn, and I seem to get invitations to join other networking sites every month. Just like our kids, we grown-ups are finally finding efficient ways to keep up with an ever growing network of social contacts. I love LinkedIn. Especially when I travel (which is almost weekly). Now I can quickly fill in those dead spots on the travel itinerary by having a coffee with an old friend or classmate, some whom I haven't seen in 20 years. Check it out, it's a good thing...

Speaking of generation gaps. During lunch break on Thursday, I had the pleasure of visiting my son's 5th grade gifted education class. I was introducing them to a technique of using storyboards to organize and prepare presentations, papers and speeches. During part of the class, I asked the class to explain the steps that are necessary when preparing a presentation. As I was writing the kids' answers on the whiteboard, an amazingly complete list emerged, including all of the textbook stuff; determine your topic and timeline, research, collect your thoughts, write your presentation, etc. One step that was conspicuously missing (and, from my corporate experience, the very FIRST step most adult students list) was "create visual aids" or "open powerpoint". In years of facilitating corporate communications training courses, this was the first time I had a class that failed to mention visual aids. These kids, by the way, are all proficient at powerpoint - they learn that in 3rd grade.

Puzzled (and pleased) I asked them where this step belongs in the process. Many in the class shot me odd looks, "why do you need visual aids, Mr. Dendy. Doesn't that just detract attention from the speaker. After all, the whole point of doing a presentation is to hear the speaker talk, isn't it?" Being only a week after MLK day, I also got the self-assured response "When Martin Luther King gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech, he didn't need visual aids, did he? What's the point?!"

Oh, to have the enlightened mind of a 5th grader!! I wish I had a video camera with me that day - I would play that video in every "Presentation Skills" workshop that I facilitate. When was the last time you actually sat through a corporate presentation and said "wow, what a dynamic speaker!" ? Presentations have somehow morphed away from being an exercise in interpersonal communication and are becoming a form of entertainment, where the focus is on the media and away from the speaker. In a way, it's easier now for anyone to give a corporate presentation. With such a low standard, the dynamic and talented speakers no longer stand out so much - unless they make a concerted effort to do so. Once again, the challenge remains: "Are YOU smarter than a 5th grader?"

The Air Out There

Recently, I had a unique opportunity to participate in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperative Clean Fossil Energy Conference in Xi'an, China. It was my third trip to China in as many months (OK, one of those three was to Taiwan). This was a first hand look at the real world conflict that grips the world's most populous nation - environmental responsibility versus economic development. My myriad of observations and reflections could keep me blogging for weeks, so I'll focus on just a single impact - air quality. Spending time living in both Houston and Los Angeles, I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of pollution, smog, and poor air quality. It just took a single morning's run in the not-so-crisp autumn air of Xi'an to recalibrate my senses. I had previously experienced the smog and haze in Beijing, but this cool October day had a completely different feel - and smell. Distinctive in the air was the odor of burning coal, like at a power plant with no emissions controls. Dr. Ting later explained to me that most houses in this region still use coal heating in their homes, with no pollution control furnaces. The result was a continuous haze and stench over the entire city that never subsided.

The good news is - there are a whole lot of people working towards a solution. While it could take decades or longer for the entire Chinese infrastructure to adopt modern day pollution controls, everyone agrees on the urgency and impact of the issue. I can't say that this 3-day workshop equipped me with any particular insight as to the likelihood of strict environmental controls taking root in China (and other APEC countries), but at least I am satisfied that the problem is well understood and at least something is being done to improve the situation. But when you are dealing with the China-type numbers, you quickly realize that the environmental efforts of rest of the industrialized world could be easily countered by the irresponsibility of a single country. For this reason, we should continue to do whatever we can to help deploy best in class pollution controls in the world's oldest and largest civilization.