Tristan de Montebello: preference

Transcript context

…Awesome. I'm glad you mentioned all that and we'll point people to that URL in the show notes. Okay, final topic is the bow and arrow technique. Let's talk about what that is and how folks can use that to give better talks. The bow and arrow starts with a, it's really a mindset shift that most of us are in the weeds, so we're very sensitive and familiar to all of the content that we're working on. If you're in data, then you have all of the data. If you're sharing ideas, you still have all of the ideas. And the mistake that most people do when they're preparing a talk, a presentation, an all hands a meeting, whatever it is we tend to focus more on what we want to say than what we want our audience to remember. So the mindset shift here is stop focusing as much on what you want to say and focus more on what you want your audience to remember. What we found out is if you think about your last all hands, the last big meeting, the last talk you saw on YouTube or in person, you probably don't remember much. In fact, I wager you might only remember one thing from that talk. And that's what this is all based on. We call it the bow and arrow technique because we think you can only remember one thing out of a talk and that it's very powerful to go through that framework or that kind of thinking when you're building a talk. And the one thing is your arrow. And so when you have that one thing to me I say it's literally a single sentence that is the only sentence people would remember if they left your talk. Would you be satisfied with that sentence? It takes some times to get to a good one, but if you have a good one, it unlocks everything. It's like you're having a north star or a compass in your pocket. You can always pull it out. You always know where you're going. It gives you a lot of clarity. It's also giving a lot of clarity to your audience obviously. But you can't just throw an arrow at somebody's face. You need to notch it in the bow and pull the bow back. And so to pull the bow back, you need to add in weight to that sentence. And that often comes in the form of an interesting anecdote or a data point that's going to support that or a story that's going to add emotion or illustrate it. So you want to find ways in which you can give weight or pull back the bow so that your arrow has that much more impact. So usually the process of clarifying what your arrow is is a back and forth between the bow and the arrows. So if you're going down the accordion method after the first one you might write or before the first one, you might write a tentative arrow, "Here's my one thing", and then the next one you say, "Okay, actually my one thing might be a refined version of that." And so you might rewrite it a little bit and then you might tentatively put in what you think the bow is. "I like the anecdote I used here. I like this data point that I thought was powerful and maybe I can end on this story or this call to action." Then you'll put that in and then you go back in and you give that a try and that's starting to simplify in your mind. And as you go, usually one informs the other. this story or this call to action." Then you'll put that in and then you go back in and you give that a try and that's starting to simplify in your mind. And as you go, usually one informs the other. By the time you finish the accordion for example, you should have a very clear arrow and those clear bookmarks, which is the bow. But really the thing to remember with the bow and arrow, if you can only remember one thing, is switch your mindset from what I want to say to what I want people to remember and limit whatever that is you want them to remember as much as possible and that's going to give you extreme clarity.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.