RareBird
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- Four keys to great public speaking
- How David beats Goliath (more often than you th...
- Swine Flu Primer
- Jessica G. asks, "Please disregard my prev...
- Web Review: Vimeo Shows Off Creative Pedigree
- Web Review: Uncrate great stuff
- Great (and slightly) random things from 2008
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Rare Bird Blog
Four keys to great public speaking
Friday, May 8, 2009
Nick Morgan, founder of Public Words, Inc., is a former Fellow of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and one of America's top communication and speech coaches. He's penned a new manifesto with for keys for turning any public speaking engagement into an opportunity to change the world. (After all, isn't that the point?)Morgan thinks most speeches are awful because:
- Speeches are awful because speakers make it about them instead of the audience
- Speakers don't take their audience on a journey
- Speakers don't rehearse
- Speakers think about their content but not their body language
He then offers simple, practical advice that I wish everyone would read, take to heart, and put to use before they stand before us and subject us to "Death by Powerpoint."
Labels: Nick Morgan, public speaking, speeches
How David beats Goliath (more often than you think)
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Underdogs win a lot more often than you think. Malcolm Gladwell explains how.
We're all familiar with the story of David and Goliath, where David stood before the giant of the Philistines and survived to tell about it. For forty days, Goliath had been dispensing soldiers with relative ease, until David came along. David rose to the challenge and, at first, girded himself with a helmet and mail and sword. But David recognized that waging this battle using conventional warfare would be suicide against Goliath. So he changed his strategy to take advantage of this strengths.
Malcolm Gladwell, in an article for The New Yorker, argues that this simple act of adjusting strategy is the key for weaker opponents – the Davids – to win against foes that greatly overpower them. He tells a compelling story of Vivek Ranadivé, who took on the job of coaching his daughters woeful basketball team, a bunch of “little blond girls” from Menlo Park, daughters of computer programmers. He says, “They weren’t all that tall. They couldn’t shoot. They weren’t particularly adept at dribbling. They were not the sort who played pickup games at the playground every evening.” Yet he was able to take them from obscurity to a national championship by changing the way they played: Instead of playing to the strengths of opponents, the adopted a relentless full-court press strategy and crushed the better-abled competition.
Gladwell suggests successes of this type aren't all that uncommon. In fact, political scientist Ivan Arreguín-Toft recently looked at every war fought in the past two hundred years between strong and weak combatants. The Goliaths, he found, won in 71.5 per cent of the cases. Thinking about the original David, who took off the heavy, unfamiliar armor and picked up five smooth stones, Arreguín-Toft wondered, when the underdogs likewise acknowledged their weakness and chose an unconventional strategy? He went back and re-analyzed his data. In those cases, David’s winning percentage went from 28.5 to 63.6. When underdogs choose not to play by Goliath’s rules, they win, Arreguín-Toft concluded, “even when everything we think we know about power says they shouldn’t.”
Which begs the question, what should you be doing to change the game to play to your strengths?
[Read Gladwell's article, "How David Beats Goliath"]
Labels: basketball, business consulting, coaching, daughters, David and Goliath, email marketing, strategy, underdogs, Vivek Ranadivé
Swine Flu Primer
Monday, April 27, 2009
I was involved in several conversations over the weekend with folks from Harvard Medical School and Staywell Consumer Health Publishing about the current swine flu outbreak. It's becoming increasingly clear that this epidemic – now found in Mexico, the United States, Canada, and Spain – has broken through to be called a pandemic.Indications are that most of the cases that have spread beyond Mexico's border, like the school in Queens, NY, or the cases across Spain, have been the result of travel to and from specific regions within Mexico. But with the introduction of NAFTA years ago, the amount of business travel to Mexico has increased greatly and we can expect these cases to continue showing up across the country.
At this point, while the death toll in Mexico climbs, the US health care system has been able to deal with the disease. How long we can control both the severity and spread remains to be seen, of course, but there are some can do to prepare and prevent swine flu from hitting home.
Harvard Medical School offers an overview on their site of things each of us need to know, as well as a more complete Special Health Report covering swine flu in detail:
Labels: infectious diseases, swine flu
Jessica G. asks, "Please disregard my previous email(s)..."
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
So this morning I received an email from Jessica G. at Donatos Pizza informing me of the April specials for Donatos catering. I didn't recall ever asking to receive this information, but hey, things happen right? I glanced at it and trashed it. A few minutes later I got another one. And then another. And another. At last count, I had received the same message at least seven times. Ooops. Looks like someone is learning how to use their new email software (at my expense.)Then I realized that the messages actually included in the To: field all of the intended recipients, and there were *a lot.* Some names I know and recognize, others I don't, but I got that sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about all the mail I would likely get from this hackneyed inclusion. (Best practice tip: Never send an email to several people unless you put the recipients in the blind carbon copy [BCC] field.)
A couple hours went by, and then I got this gem:
From: Jessica G.
To: (Me and everyone else on the original list)
Subj: Recall: April Specials from Donatos Catering
Jessica would like to recall the message, "April Specials from Donatos Catering".
Oh, Jessica. Poor lass. I feel your pain. How many of us have wished, at one point or another, that we could recall an email we'd previously sent? Unfortunately, the Internet (and, in many ways, life) doesn't work that way. Generally, once you hit "Send" it's sent. I suppose you could try calling each of the recipients and asking them to "Please disregard the email message I sent to you and hundreds of other people seven times this morning."
In the end, however, you're probably better off just forgetting it and hoping that the rest of us do, too. I hate to think of the ill will that was created toward Donatos Catering by this unfortunate turn of events, but people generally have short memories and will (eventually) forgive and forget.
(So you should probably stop sending me the message about recalling your message. Three times is enough.)
Labels: email marketing, spam
Web Review: Vimeo Shows Off Creative Pedigree
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Most people are aware of video-sharing site YouTube. In fact, it would be hard to have missed its meteoric rise as a household Internet name. But there are other sites out there providing similar services, some of which are just plain better.
In this article, I explore the world of video sharing online and call attention to two sites you should know about: Vimeo and blip.tv.
Labels: web development, web reviews
Web Review: Uncrate great stuff
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Uncrate is a blog that provides a daily email digest featuring the absolute best in random stuff for men. Think cars, watches, clothes, gadgets, books, food... if men will like it, the best of it is found on Uncrate.Labels: web reviews
Great (and slightly) random things from 2008
Sunday, January 4, 2009
I can't help it... I see these compilation and retrospective lists (things like "Top 20 Viral Videos of 2008" or "21 Worst Business Bloopers of 2008") and while I don't think that I'm all that interested, I feel compelled to read them. May be some sort of psychological fear of missing out, I don't know, but I thought I'd create a list of my own for the final Indianapolis Business Journal article of 2008. (Though, as it turns out, it's actually the first article of 2009.)Anyway, here goes:
See the "Great But Random, 2008" list.