Hi there,
This week has been very busy, a good microcosm for the entirety of this now-concluded term. It’s been a long slog, one day coming fast after the next. The weekend has provided much-desired respite, with travel home (also surprisingly tiring) and then a lot of IPL watching.
I had a lot of fun at the top of the BT Tower in London, taking part in the UK Cyber Leaders Challenge finals. It’s not every day that you get to enjoy a drink (non-alcoholic, of course) on a revolving floor with a skyline view of London. Will be forever grateful to Sourish, also a blog reader, for the invite - had a great time!
Highlight of the week: beyond the finals, it was a beautiful dinner in Battersea, with my CLC teammates, our mentor (Sourish’s lecturer) and her husband. High-quality Indian food, an authentic atmosphere and a full tummy - what more can you ask for?
One of the main lessons from this competition was to know the audience you’re speaking to.
For the first 2 stages of the competition, we had taken a balanced approach in our briefing response to the crises - an analysis of what needed to be done to tackle this issue, and what should be considered/completed in the long term.
Part of our downfall in the semi-final was not clearly explaining what should be done right now to deal with the issue. We had an equal amount of short-term and long-term implications and strategy, whereas the audience - a pretend Cabinet Office - was most interested in what they needed to do right after this meeting.
One of the VIP judges in the final was spot on with his analogy - “it’s like going into a wildfire response team meeting and discussing how to reduce climate change”. 🎯
Lesson 1 - tell them what they need to hear.
Next, a useful reminder about the human psychology in high-stakes situations.
When you’re briefing ministers or any key decision-makers, the thing running through their mind, explicitly or not, is “does this mean I will lose my job?” 😂 Primitive but true, it’s at the heart of what we do.
Remember to address this point, or more specifically, whatever is running through the audience’s mind. It might even be “is this a waste of my time?”, which would make your job challenging but certainly clearer.
Lesson 2 - tell them what they want to hear.
The other element of presenting to ‘senior government officials’ is that their mind is often bouncing around the multiple situations they are dealing with. They aren’t focusing solely on you, what you’re saying or the crisis you’re advising on.
This makes structuring your response incredibly important. You want to minimise the work the audience has to do to understand the content. The less energy they spend on that directly relates to them having more energy to process, consider, understand and question what you’re saying to them - a sign of effective communication.
There are multiple ways of structuring a presentation - in time order/chronology, zooming out of or into a problem, pros/cons/conclusion and others. What’s crucial is having one, following it strictly and making it obvious that you are. It isn’t clever to be secretive about you having 3 points in your speech - just say that you’ve got 3 points.
I’ve learnt, through both practising in normal life, in interviews and also being the recipient of others doing it, that saying “I’ve got x number of points to make” or “the x number of points I’m going to make are” is incredibly powerful. It primes the listener to expect those exact number of points, their mind can already start preparing to remember and you come across being very clear.
Lesson 3 - have order and structure in whatever you’re delivering
As an optimiser, I find myself often trying to fit in as much as I can, into a given resource (case in point - trying to get a fourth lesson into a blog, when three will suffice 😭)
One thing we noticed in the finals (yes, they did their briefings on stage in front of us all!), was that each team had about half of the content we’d discussed. While this is because of their limited time to prepare, it allowed them to speak slower, emphasise what they wanted to and be thorough and clear in their points.
This worked here because the ‘audience’ had the opportunity to ask questions. By saving some knowledge for the questions, you’re able to directly address the concerns the audience has, framing it in that particular way, which might have been different to how it could have been included in the speech. An underlying key point - a speech is for the audience to learn, not for you - it’s about serving the client.
Furthermore, you’re giving yourself less room to tie up knots, both in spoken terms and in ‘getting your points muddled up’ terms, because you’re saying less.
Lesson 4 - less is more because you can prioritise; save some leftovers.
I hope these pointers are helpful for your next presentation - let me know what these examples mean to you, would love to hear your stories.
There’s a different structure of a post, although the core tenet of reflection is a constant. Sunday night tiredness has hit me twice in 2 weeks’ now - the holidays are a valuable opportunity to get my health back on track.
Podcast of the week🎙️
WSJ Tech News Briefing: How China’s Cyber Threat Looms Over America
A very accessible listen into the issues I was knee-deep in this week.
What I’m grateful for this week 🙏
The wonderful staff at BT Tower, they were very friendly and helped to ensure an enjoyable 2 days.
Quote of the week 💬
Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose - Bill Gates
Back to the Maths tomorrow, let’s see how much progress in a week - we’ll check back in next time.
Adi