subject: Strategic Designing - Why Commas Cause Problems [print this page] Strategic Designing - Why Commas Cause Problems
In September, I gave a speech to a bunch of skilled speakers in Arizona. One amongst the primary things I asked the audience to try and do was write a list of the topics they speak on. After they were finished, I asked how many of the speakers had commas in their answer. As an example, it is not uncommon to have a speaker say "motivation, team building, change management and leadership". I think every comma in their answers represents a spotlight drawback that's pretty acute for a ton of speakers. And after I talked to audience members when that, I used to be taken with how many of their business problems were wrapped up during this focus issue.
One in every of the speakers who agreed to be interviewed on stage had a significant "comma downside" - she was doing a "fluffy" topic - employee motivation - and a "exhausting" topic - IT. I convinced her to either get rid of 1 - or take into account combining the 2 into something like "motivating IT staff" (that I liked a ton additional). Last week, I heard that she did this and has more than doubled her revenue for next year. Why? I think it is as a result of she can now stop expending all of her energy switching hats and explaining the two terribly completely different services she was selling - and she can focus all of her energy on being the very best in the globe at the one factor she does.
Focus may be a serious, major problem for a skilled speaker for 2 reasons. Initial, after you speak you are fully selling your experience, experience and polish. These increase dramatically with repetition, and a speaker who gives the same speech twenty times is way higher than one who gives twenty speeches once. Secondly, it is therefore terribly terribly easy to lose focus as a speaker. In manufacturing, you have to develop new merchandise or markets, rent new people, and typically acquire new facilities or equipment to lose focus. For a speaker to wander away focus, all she has to do is scan a few books and agree to speak on a subject that's outside of his or her focus.
Do you have commas in your list? Why are they there? And can you imagine how abundant higher you'd be if they weren't?
Copyright 2007 by Center for Simplified Strategic Coming up with, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan - Reprint permission granted with full attribution.
