3Cs of idea communication illustrated through Andrej Karpathy’s LLM talk

Communicating your idea effectively is important be it to customers, team members, or investors. We presented 3 attributes of idea communication – curiosity, concreteness, and credibility in our book “8 steps to innovation”. In this blog, I would like to illustrate the 3Cs using Andrej Karpathy’s talk “Intro to large language models” which he published on his YouTube channel.

Andrej Karpathy is one of my favorite teachers in the deep learning area. The OpenAI founding member and ex-director of AI at Tesla has a hands-on approach to teaching involving Python, Pytorch, and technical papers. Hence, I was surprised when Andrej uploaded a PowerPoint presentation on his YouTube channel. I was familiar with half the information in the talk. And yet, there was a lot I could learn from the way Andrej presented. It is an excellent example to illustrate how 3Cs – curiosity, concreteness, and credibility improve the effectiveness of a presentation. Let’s look at each C one by one.

Curiosity: A good presentation not only makes you curious early on, it keeps you engaged by maintaining a curiosity flow. What does curiosity flow in Andrej’s talk look like? He begins with the question, “What is an LLM?” (21 min), then he moves on to the second part, “The promise and future directions of LLM” (17 min), and in the third and last part, Andrej talks about “the challenges in LLM paradigm” (13 min).

Within each part, Andrej is maintaining a curiosity flow. For example, while explaining what an LLM is, Andrej asks questions like “How do we get the (neural network) parameters?” “What does a neural network do?” “How do we obtain an assistant?” etc. While presenting the future directions in LLM research, Andrej explains problems like – what is equivalent of system-2 thinking? Or how do we get tree search in chess to language? How do we create a self-improvement sandbox environment for LLM like how it happened for AlphaGo? And, in the final part, he shows how different jailbreaks like “prompt injection” “data exfiltration” or “data poisoning” pose a security challenge for an LLM. In short, it helps to build a curiosity flow while designing an idea presentation.

Concreteness: Large Language Models are high-dimensional and abstract and as Andrej alludes to in the talk, how they work is not fully clear. Hence, it makes sense to use lots of concrete examples to make the concept understandable. And that’s what Andrej does. In many places, he shows how LLMs respond in certain situations by showing how ChatGPT behaves when you prompt it in a particular way. For example, he illustrates the “reversal curse” by showing how ChatGPT answers the question “Who is Tom Cruise’s mother?” correctly while saying “I don’t know” when asked, “Who is Mary Lee Pfeiffer’s son?” He gives a demo of how LLMs use tools like browser search, calculator, and Python libraries to solve a given problem and present the information as a plot. 

Andrej also uses several metaphors or analogies to explain concepts. For example, he says an LLM is like a zip file of the Internet, except that it is a lossy compression. Or, LLM is not like a car where you can understand and explain how different parts work together to give its function. Or, current LLMs are like speed chess which uses an automatic and fast system-1 mode of thinking, and while it is yet to learn how to solve problems like competitive chess where players use deliberate, slow, system-2 mode of thinking involving tree search.

My biggest takeaway from the talk comes in the form of a metaphor when Andrej explains that it is better to think of an LLM as the kernel of an emerging operating system (like Windows or Linux) rather than as a chatbot or a bot generator. To explain this, he maps various components of current OSes to LLM components. For example, he says the Internet is like the hard disk in the traditional OS, and context window is like the working memory or RAM, etc. I thought it was a powerful metaphor to convey the paradigm shift.

Credibility: Most idea presenters like you and me need to worry about making our ideas credible. Given his position and brand and given the popularity of LLMs, Andrej probably doesn’t have to pay special attention to this aspect. However, he is making forward-looking statements in this talk, and he needs to ensure he doesn’t divulge any information confidential to OpenAI. He achieves this by citing academic papers while mentioning future directions and security challenges. His demo also adds to the credibility. He is not making any “AGI is around the corner” kind of hyperbolic statements and devotes time to talking about the limitations and challenges of the current LLMs.

I hope this illustration helps one to see how the 3Cs - curiosity flow, concreteness, and credibility help in designing better presentations.

What to do when boss says “Be more innovative”?

“What do I do?” asked a participant in a one on one conversation during a coffee break in one of my workshops. He felt he had been doing all he could on the innovation front. And yet his boss told him, “Be more innovative”. He was a bit upset. What could he do? Here are a few tips.

Listening: In my opinion, the most effective response is perhaps the most difficult one as well. i.e. to listen. Perhaps the boss has some important point to tell. At the very least, everybody carries a need to be listened to. Boss is no different. It could also be an opportunity to understand what innovativeness might mean to the boss. Sometimes the crux lies in the subtle differences in meanings. And an abstract concept like innovativeness can carry so many shades. Hence, I feel the most important thing to do is to listen and understand what boss means by “more innovative”. Perhaps ask questions so that he can elaborate it with examples.

Communication: Sometimes one is doing a number of things related to innovation – identifying new challenges, generating ideas, involving team members, building prototypes etc. However, one area which is sometimes overlooked is communication. Communicating innovation efforts may involve a short write up, a dashboard, a presentation, a demo or a combination of these. I would at least check if the innovation efforts are communicated regularly to the boss.

Challenge seeking: When boss says, “be more innovative” it could also mean following. Some of the key challenges that are important to him are perhaps not getting adequate attention. Hence, it may be a suggestion to prioritize the challenges that are given attention during the innovation efforts. Hence, it may help to probe and find out what according to him are the key challenges worth addressing. When the challenge comes from the boss, there is a higher chance of getting sponsorship for a promising idea.

In short, we looked at three things one can do when boss says, “Be more innovative” viz. listening, communication and challenge seeking. Will it always work? No. But carrying a grudge in the mind is not known to work either.

An idea presentation template based on a 2 minute pitch by The Wand Company founders

A lot of people talk about “Elevator pitch”. But can I really present my idea in 2 minutes? If so, how? Is there a template we can use for such a pitch? In this article I would like to present a template with the help of a 2 minute pitch given by Richard and Chris, The Wand Company founders to investors in the TV show Dragons Den. This template is an extension of an earlier template based on Steve Jobs’ iPod launch speech in 2001.

The pitch by Richard and Chris has all the three elements from the iPod-speech-template - viz. Why-What-How - Why magic market? What is real magic wand? How does it work? However, the pitch has two unique characteristics. One, it gets over in less than 2 minutes (1 minute and 40 seconds). And two, the presentation includes a fourth element – the Ask viz. How much investment do we need from you? Both, the timing and the ask, I feel, are very important aspects of an idea pitch. Here is how it looks.

Let’s briefly look at the four elements:

1.      Why magical products? This has two parts – First, why magic market? How big is it? Etc. They say, “Magic market, fantasy market is huge - Hundreds of millions of people spending billions of pounds each year.” The second part is: Why should we play in this market? They say, “We thought with our combined experience of over forty years of design, development, electronics development we will make some really magical products.” This part took 35 seconds.

2.      What is the product? This is the shortest of the four elements and takes only 15 seconds. They say, “Our first product is a real magic wand. And this is it (shows the wand). It looks pretty much as you expect for a wizard’s wand. And the real magic wand should actually do something. And so with this wand, I can…” And the demo starts.

3.      How does it work? (demo) This part is the longest – 35 seconds – where they demo the product. How it works on a music player, a TV and on a light.

4.      How much investment do we need? In this part they mention when they started the company, how many units have been sold and with the help of the investors how much revenue they can achieve in three years. The exact amount of investment they are looking for is something they mention upfront at the beginning of the presentation itself. Together this part might be around 20 seconds.

Which parts are tricky in this?  First, I think idea presenters need to watch out for the balance between “What” and “How”. They tend to spend more time explaining what the product is about instead of product doing the talking through a demo. Second, idea presenters don’t come prepared with “the Ask” – an important aspect of the last element “How much”.

If you plan a longer presentation, you can include your answer to the first question – What technology does it use? in the “What” part (part-2). This is what Steve Jobs does in the iPod launch speech.

Hope you find it useful.

An idea presentation template based on Steve Jobs’ iPod launch speech in 2001

This nine minute clip showing Steve Jobs launching iPod for the first time in 2001 is one of my favourite videos. I have watched it dozens of times, had several discussions on it in my innovation workshops, and referred to it in our book as well. Somewhere along with way a thought came – can we create a simple template from this video that others may find useful while presenting their ideas? In this article, I would like to present the template which came as a response to that question. Several of my workshop participants have found it useful and hence thought of sharing it.

To appreciate the template, let’s break the presentation into three parts: Why, What and How. In this presentation, they answer the questions (1) Why music? (2) What is iPod? (3) (Let me show you) How it fits into my pocket.

Why music? In the “Why” part, Jobs tells us why this space of digital music was important to Apple at that juncture. Through following table, Jobs communicates the options available, associated trade-offs and the position Apple had taken (to go for hard drive option).

What is iPod? In the “What” part, Jobs presents brief description of what iPod is – an MP3 music player, has CD-quality music and it plays all of the popular open formats of the digital music, holds 1000 songs and fits in your pocket. He unleashes the tagline – Your entire music library fits into your pocket. He articulates the three things unique about the iPod – storage, portability and design. He also highlights several user scenarios such as iPod running out of charge. Note how Jobs covered a few what-if scenarios. E.g. What-if I am on the road and my battery is dead? What-if I have to transfer CD to iPod?

Let me show you: The easiest way to build credibility is to showcase a key feature of your idea. Here Jobs shows the picture of iPod on the screen (design) and then shows how the iPod fits into his pocket (portability).

The three aspects of the this presentation: Why-What-How can be extended to any idea. Following picture illustrates the template.

The template incorporates three core communication design principles: curiosity flow, concreteness and credibility. Curiosity flow is introduced through Why-What-What-if-How questions. Concreteness is ensured through what-if scenarios, by showing experiential imagery like the deck of cards and by showing the demo. Credibility is enhanced by showing a trade-off analysis table and by showing a working demo. Note that unlike Steve Jobs establishing credibility is the most difficult of the three aspects for most idea presenters.

Here is an example where the template is applied to an idea of starting “A Mexican restaurant in Sarjarpur Road area” (where I live). It is a fictitious example and hence used for illustration purpose only.

How smart guys pitched their ideas to Steve Jobs, the prickly perfectionist

Steve Jobs looked at the world in binary mode. Either your idea was shitty or it was fantastic – nothing in between. That made the life difficult for people presenting ideas to him. How did they manage it? What tactics did the smart folks employ to get their ideas accepted? Let’s see in this article. Your boss or reviewer may not be as “binary” as Jobs, but the techniques may still come handy.

Show it privately: This is how Jonathan Ive, the key designer behind iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad and Steve’s close friend dealt with the situation. Ive and his team were working on multi-touch technology for the MacBook Pro in their spare time. He knew that it could be a game-changer technology. Ive says, “Because Steve is so quick to give an opinion, I don’t show him stuff in front of other people,” Ive recalled. “He might say, ‘This is shit,’ and snuff the idea. I feel that ideas are very fragile, so you have to be tender when they are in development.” Ive demoed the multi-touch idea in a one-on-one meeting. Fortunately, Jobs liked it and said, “This is the future.”

Create a Fine-tune-It-Yourself kit: Chris Espinosa was a Berkeley drop-out and part of Mac development team. On his own he decided to design a calculator for Mac. When he showed the first demo to Jobs, he said, “Well, it’s a start, but basically, it stinks.” Jobs felt that the background color is too dark, buttons are too big etc. Espinosa started to refine the design based on Jobs’ feedback. But with every iteration came more criticism. After a number of iterations, Espinosa got fed up and created a brilliant solution - “The Steve Jobs Roll Your Own Calculator Construction Set”. It allowed Jobs to tweak and personalize the look-and-feel. Jobs spent ten minutes and fine-tuned it to his taste. This design shipped on the Mac and remained the standard for fifteen years.

Quietly disregard the comment and go ahead: During the Mac development, the team desperately needed a 5 ¼ inch hard drive. The one being developed in the Apple corporate office was buggy.  Belleville, head of Mac Engineering team, suggested two options to Jobs. One, sourcing it from Sony,  and two, sourcing a Sony-clone from Alps Electronics, a smaller Japanese supplier. Jobs and Belleville flew to Japan and saw both the products. Jobs thought Alps was great and Sony was shitty. Belleville was appalled as he felt that Alps could not deliver it within the required timeframe. Anyway, Jobs ordered Belleville to cease all work with Sony.

Belleville gave a go ahead to both the companies. One engineer from Sony, Hidetoshi Komoto, would work clandestinely at Mac engineering team. They would hide him whenever Jobs visited. Eventually, Alps folks admitted that they would need eighteen more months for production to start. At that point, Belleville told Jobs that he might have an alternative to the Alps drive ready soon. With a big grin on his face, Jobs said, “You son of a bitch!”

Source: “Steve Jobs” by Walter Isaacson. Jonathan Ives story is on page 468, Espinnosa story is on page 132, Belleville story is on page 145-147. Photo source: wikipedia.org

Idea communication: The Edison way

In a previous article we looked at Thomas Edison’s method of innovation. As Edison’s innovation factory churned out incremental and radical innovations, Edison had to communicate his ideas to various stakeholders like the technicians in the factory, investors, patent officers, journalists and of course, potential users. What kind of methods did Edison employ in communicating his ideas? Let’s take a look in this article.

· Sketches: Henry Ford writes in Edison as I know him - If there is anything to be made or an experiment is to be conducted in a certain way, he draws a diagram in such clear, quick fashion that no further explanation is necessary. The speed with which Mr. Edison does all this is remarkable. He sketched the model of his first phonograph in less than five minutes.

· Analogies: We saw how Edison pursued the analogy of subdividing electric light so that it can be used like gas in small units (eventually turned out to be independent bulbs). Note that the analogy was not restricted to technical features alone. Edison established price points for electricity distribution based gas system comparison. On another occasion, Edison wondered, “Can we do to eye, what phonograph did to the ears?” (the innovation he worked on was motion picture camera).

· Use-cases: Edison invented phonograph in 1877. He articulated 10 possible uses of the phonograph in North American Review in 1878. They were: (1) Letter writing / dictation (2) Audio books (speaking to blind) (3) Teaching of elocution (4) Reproduction of music (5) Family record – sayings from members of family (6) Music boxes / toys (7) Clocks announcing going home, going for meals (8) Preservation of language (9) Education (10) Connection with telephone. Note that Edison suspended phonograph for almost 8 years in 1978 to focus on electricity.

· Prototypes: Demonstrating his prototypes was Edison’s pet method of attracting investments and publicity. Here is how he narrates his experience with Phonograph sometime in 1877 - That morning I took it over to New York and walked into the office of the Scientific American, went up to Mr. Beach's desk, and said I had something to show him. He asked what it was. I told him I had a machine that would record and reproduce the human voice. I opened the package, set up the machine and recited, 'Mary had a little lamb,' etc. Then I reproduced it so that it could be heard all over the room. They kept me at it until the crowd got so great Mr. Beach was afraid the floor would collapse; and we were compelled to stop. The papers next morning contained columns. (source: Edison his life and inventions)

Generative metaphors: Disney’s “cast members” vs Subway’s “sandwich artists”

Metaphors and analogies are useful in communicating abstract ideas. For example, when Arun Shourie calls BJP “kati patang” (adrift kite) we get the point immediately. Some metaphors are so useful they don’t merely shed light on a concept; they actually become platforms for novel thinking. Dan and Chip Heath call these powerful metaphors “Generative Metaphors” in their bestseller “Made to Stick”. Let’s see how they explain this concept using two examples: one from Disney and the other from Subway.

Disney calls its employees cast members. This metaphor of employees as cast members in a theatrical production is communicated consistently throughout the organization:

· Cast members don’t interview for a job, they audition for a role

· When they are walking around the park, they are onstage.

· People visiting Disney are guests, not customers

· Jobs are performances, uniforms are costumes

Beauty of generative metaphors is that they help you predict things associated with the concept. For example, one can guess that employees are not allowed to be on break while in costume and in public area (An actor would never have a chat and a cigarette in mid-scene). Street sweepers are evaluated on criteria other than cleanliness of their sidewalks. That’s because they are highly visible onstage and obvious target for customer questions. “Employees as a cast member” is a generative metaphor that has worked for Disney for more than fifty years.

Let’s contrast this with a non-generative metaphor, “sandwich artists” which Subway created for its frontline employees. As Chip brothers explain, this metaphor is “utterly useless” as a guide to how employees should act. Defining trait of an “artist” is individual expression. And anyone who has been in Subway knows how much individual expression frontline employees have – in dress, in interaction, in the presentation of sandwiches.

Managers are from Mars and Storytellers are from Saturn

Last month I asked a question - Why don’t we hear more stories in presentations? I didn’t know the real reason that time. Now I do. It is because: Managers are from Mars and Storytellers are from Saturn. Stephen Denning, the father of organizational storytelling, explains this in his book “The leader’s guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative”

Stephen himself hails from Mars. For several decades, as a manager in the World Bank, Stephen talked the Martian language of rate of return, cost-benefit analysis, risk analysis, performance targets, bottom line. I guess you get the point. Then one day, Stephen was “sent to Siberia” and asked to head a newly created department of knowledge management. Like any other fellow Martian, he created a PowerPoint presentation that offered cogent arguments about the need to gather the knowledge scattered throughout the organization. The ppt demonstrated the value of sharing and leveraging knowledge. Audience looked dazed (sounds familiar?). And then in a moment of desperation, something happened. Some may say it was a flash of insight. But I think it was a bug from Saturn that bit him (remember Spiderman story?) This is how Stephen narrated his vision from this point onwards. Remember this was 1996 – Internet was still like a baby learning to crawl.

In June of last year, a health worker in a town in Zambia went to the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and got the answer to a question about the treatment of malaria. Remember that this was in Zambia, one of the poorest countries in the world, and it was in a tiny place six hundred kilometers from the capital city. But the most striking thing about this picture, at least for us, is that the World Bank isn’t in it. Despite our know-how on all kinds of poverty-related issues that knowledge isn’t available to the millions of people who could use it. Imagine if it were. Think what an organization we could become.

This simple story had a remarkable effect on the audience and it helped World Bank staff and managers envision a different kind of future for the organization. Subsequently, knowledge management became an official corporate priority for World Bank and Stephen continued to use similar stories to maintain the momentum.

But the best of Stephen was yet to come. In fact, over the last few years he has developed organizational storytelling as a discipline. In “The leaders guide to storytelling” he looks at eight different uses of story—sparking change, communicating who you are, transmitting the brand, getting people working together, transmitting values, sharing knowledge, taming the grapevine and leading into the future—and the different narrative patterns associated with those uses.

Stephen likes to think of it as the possible “sixth discipline” Peter Senge referred to in his classic “Fifth Discipline”; something as profound as the other five disciplines but perhaps more easily actionable. Bestselling author Chip Heath deservedly calls Stephen “The Warren Buffett of business communication”. I prefer to call him the “The Aesop of organizational innovation”.

Applying the curiosity flow technique: An example

How do I design my presentation more effectively? We looked at, what can be called, the first principle: curiosity before content in this previous article. We also looked at how Steve Jobs has applied this principle and created a curiosity flow in his famous iPod launch presentation in this article. In the current article, we show a sample “bullet point” presentation and what it looks like after applying the curiosity flow technique.

If you are serious about improving design of your presentations, here is an excellent opportunity to practice the curiosity flow technique. I would recommend following:

1. If you are not familiar with “curiosity flow technique”, please read about curiosity gap theory and curiosity flow example first. This will not take more than 15 minutes.

2. Now browse through the bullet point presentation (given below).

3. Take a pencil and paper and jot down how you can create curiosity flow for this presentation

4. Now browse through the second presentation (crossing the cost-value chasm).

Chances are high; you might come up with a different curiosity flow. Please add your ideas to this article so that all the rest of us will benefit.

Bullet point presentation:

Crossing The Cost Value Chasm Bullet Version

crossing-the-cost-value-chasm-bullet-versionfrom vpdabholkar

View more documents from vpdabholkar.

Presentation after curiosity flow:

Technology captives in India & crossing the cost-value chasm

View more documents from vpdabholkar.

Cabbages and Condoms: Story of how Mechai gives something to talk about

Imagine yourself visiting a Thai restaurant “Cabbages and Condoms” over a weekend with your friends. Apart from relishing excellent Thai food you enjoy looking at beautiful lampshades, clothing items, table settings and other decorations, all made out of condoms. At the end of the meal, along with coffee, instead of mint, you get … you guessed it. Now, we don’t need Sherlock Holmes to predict that you will be talking to your family and friends about this visit for the next few days or perhaps weeks. Emanuel Rosen calls this principle “Giving something to talk about” in his book Anatomy of buzz that explores how buzz is created and spreads.

“Cabbages and Condoms” is a restaurant chain based in Bankok and run by an NGO Population and Community Development Association (PDA). Mechai Viravaidya started this NGO more than a quarter of a century ago and he was awarded 2007 Gates Award for Global Health by the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. As Rosen says in his book, Michai is a master in creating buzz. Here is a story of how Michai “gave something to talk about” in a lecture on family planning delivered to two thousand teachers in Bankok in 1974 (i.e. 35 years ago!). (source: Anatomy of buzz)

As Michai started talking about various methods of birth control, he noticed that he was getting a lot of blank looks. People looked either self-conscious or bored. This is what Michai did: He pulled out a condom from his pocket and said, “Let’s open it up. A lot of you maybe heard about condom but have never seen it or touched it.” He tore its packaging and started talking about alternative uses of the condom. He said, “It could be used carry water, cover a barrel of a gun, tie your hair. It can also be used as a balloon.” And he started blowing into his new toy. He says, “It was like magic. One minute they were sitting there looking stiff and self-conscious, and the next they were roaring with laughter.”

He asked his staff to distribute sample condoms. Some in the audience had no problem; others were more reluctant. He didn’t let them off the hook. He said, “The condom is really clean if your mind isn’t dirty. If you have a dirty mind, please don’t take one.” Then he invited those with the “cleanest minds” to join him onstage for a condom-blowing contest. Dozens of teachers ended up onstage. Michai said, “On count of three, start blowing your condoms. The one to blow up the largest condom in one minute will win a year’s supply.” Two thousand people were laughing uncontrollably. Imagine what a buzz this event would have generated!

To quote Chip and Dan Heath’s “105% rule” from Give’em something to talk about: From a word-of-mouth perspective, it is virtually impossible to discuss an experience that is 5% better than the norm on all dimensions. When you are preparing a presentation, ask yourself, “What am I giving the audience to talk about?”

Story of how Bill Gates brings a little reality to the room

Metaphors serve as a powerful tool in communicating ideas. For example, award winning presentation “Pani Puri: an introduction” uses metaphors like Mother Earth and Web 2.0 very effectively in showing what PaniPuri is about. (If you haven’t seen the presentation, you should) What could be even more powerful than such metaphors when it comes to explaining Panipuri? Of course, a few samples of Panipuri passed around in the audience. No amount of metaphors can beat what Chip and Dan Heath call, bringing a little reality to the room (see rule-5 in Making presentations that stick). Let’s see how Bill Gates uses this principle effectively in his TED talk.

Bill wanted to communicate what a terrible thing malaria is and how it deserves a lot more attention than what is given. Before we see what Bill did, let’s look at a few options available to him for his presentation (I am sure you can find more). He could:

1. Tell about the large number of deaths caused by malaria around the world
2. Show pictures of malaria infected people especially from developing world
3. Show video on lack of affordable treatment on malaria
4. Tell a story about a specific individual suffered from malaria
5. Bring a little bit of malaria to the room

Bill does use option-1 and talk about the millions of deaths caused by malaria. In fact, he puts the number in context by saying “There is more money put into the baldness drugs than in

malaria. Now, baldness is a terrible thing and rich men are afflicted by it. Hence, the priority is set”. But what he does brilliantly is in using option-5. How does he bring a little bit of malaria to the room?

He says, “Malaria is, of course, transmitted by mosquitoes. I brought some here so you could experience it.” Then he opens a jar of mosquitoes and says, “Let those roam around the auditorium a little bit. There is no reason only poor people should have the experience.” He gives some time for the mosquitoes to go around and more importantly for people to visualize some of the mosquitoes biting them and causing malaria. Finally saying, “Those mosquitoes are not infected”

When you are preparing your next presentation, ask yourself, “Can I bring a little reality to the room?”

Invoking emotion through one individual: Ann Nixon Cooper and Obama’s victory speech

Do you want to make an impact with your idea? Then make people care about your idea. And how do you make people care about your idea? By adding an element of emotion to the idea. One way to add emotion is by doing what Mother Theresa describes aptly: “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will”. In other words, when it comes to our hearts, one individual trumps the masses. (source: Made to stick). Let’s see how Obama used this principle in his victory speech.

Obama wanted everyone to see what America has gone through in the past century. He could very well have summarized them one by one e.g. slavery, cars, planes, depression, world war etc. However, he decided to do it differently. This is what he said:

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voices heard in this election, except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106-years-old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America, heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes, we can.

At a time when women’s voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes, we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, and a new sense of common purpose. Yes, we can.

When the bombs fell on our harbour and tyranny threatened the world she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes, we can

She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma and preacher from Atlanta who told people that, “We shall overcome.” Yes, we can.

A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our science and imagination. And this year, in this election, she touched a finger to a screen, and cast her vote because after 106 years in America through the best of time and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change. Yes, we can.

What a difference addition of Ann Nixon Cooper made to the narration!

Why don’t we hear more stories in presentations? Story of (lack of) storytelling

Some of the oldest surviving ideas have been passed on in the form of stories e.g. Aesop’s fables like “Fox and sour grapes” are more than 2500 years old. In fact, authors of best selling book Made to Stick, Dan and Chip Heath offer following tip in the article: Making presentations that stick. If you use only one tip, this is the one – In a compelling presentation, stories and examples aren’t garnish, they’re the entrée. If this truth were so obvious to all, our life as listeners to various presentations would have been so much more interesting. However, most of the presentations we attend are boring. Why don’t we hear more stories in presentations? Here is a story from researcher Gary Klein that gives us an insight (source: Made to stick).

The organizer of a conference once asked Klein’s firm to sum up results of a conference. The organizer wanted a useful summary of the conference. Klein’s firm assigned one person to monitor each of the conference’s five parallel tracks. The monitors attended each panel and each time someone told a story they jotted it down. Finally the group structured and organized the stories and sent the packet to the conference organizer.

She was ecstatic. She found the packet much more vivid and useful than the typical conference takeaway: a set of dry, jargon filled abstracts. She even requested funds from her organization to convert the notes into a book. As a courtesy, she sent the summary notes to all of the conference presenters. Guess what was the response?

Presenters were furious. They were insulted to have the stories scooped out of their overall structure – they didn’t want to be remembered as people who told a bunch of stories and anecdotes. They felt that they’d invested countless hours into distilling their experiences into a serious of recommendations, such as “Keep the lines of communication open” and “Don’t wait too long when problems are building up.”

It is as though you have built an amazing intellectual edifice and Gary’s crew plucks a few bricks from the wall and tries to pass them off as sum of all your labors. The problem, of course, is that it is impossible to transfer an edifice in a 30 or 60 minute presentation. The best you can do is to convey some building blocks. Question is, where do you pluck those blocks from? You can’t pluck building blocks from the roof which is what you are doing with recommendation like “Keep the lines of communication open”. They are too abstract.

As Heath brothers say, “Stories can almost single handedly defeat the Curse of knowledge”. It is time we learn a few tips from Aesop.

Confirmation bias and curse of knowledge: The villain connection between “Black Swan” and “Made to Stick”

The villain connection: The two bestsellers “Black Swan” and “Made to Stick” appear to deal with completely different topics. “Black Swan” by Nassim Taleb deals with events which are high impact and highly improbable. “Made to stick” by Dan and Chip Heath, on the other hand, is about how some ideas survive while others die. However, I believe that these two books are deeply connected. In fact, I suspect that the chief villains of both these books are close cousins. Let’s find out how. Let’s start with the chief villain of Black Swan: Confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias: Before the discovery of Australia, people in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white. It was an unassailable belief completely confirmed by empirical evidence. Until one day, the sighting of the first black swan shattered this belief. This shows we have a tendency to generalize things based on what we know (such as all swans are white belief) and underrate the importance of what we don’t know (possibility of black swans). This tendency is known as “confirmation bias”.

Why is “confirmation bias” the chief villain of Black Swan? Confirmation bias makes it difficult for us to predict Black Swans like 9/11 attack or Harry Potter’s iconic popularity. It also gives us a false sense of “expertise”. And we act as though we know how future is going to unfold by projecting the past knowledge. For example, we invest in real estate assuming its prices will always go up because that is what has happened in the past.

Curse of knowledge: OK. So, who is the close cousin of “confirmation bias”? It is called the “Curse of knowledge” (see my previous article: In love with the villain). In a 1993 conference on “Algebra for All” a number of points were articulated in response to the question “Why study Algebra?” Two of the points were (1) Algebra provides procedures for manipulating symbols to allow for understanding the world around us (2) Algebra provides a vehicle for understanding our world through mathematical symbols. (source: Made to stick). This description assumes the reader is already familiar with “symbols” and their “manipulation”. A layman is likely to find this description abstract and uninteresting. As this Algebra description shows, experts have a tendency to forget what it is like not have the knowledge or expertise. This tendency is known as “Curse of knowledge”.

Why is curse of knowledge important? It is important because it is the chief culprit why presentations by experts are many times abstract, uninteresting and plain simple boring.

Next time when you are preparing a presentation for your idea or discussing the price of your favorite stock, see if you can watch the villains within yourself in action.

Deconstructing the curiosity flow from Steve Jobs iPod launch presentation

How does a master presenter like Steve Jobs apply “curiosity before content” principle we saw in an earlier article while launching new products? Let’s try to get a feel in this article from his iPod launch presentation in 2001.

Principle of curiosity before content tells us that a good presenter creates curiosity before talking about her idea. In fact, Dan and Chip Heath in their article How to avoid making a bad presentation go a step further and say: The best presenters don’t structure their presentations by thinking, What’s the next point I should make. Instead, they decide, What’s next question I want them to wrestle with? Let’s calls this sequence of questions: curiosity flow.

Here is the curiosity flow Steve Jobs uses in iPod launch presentation followed by his explanation:

1. Why music? Music has been around forever and it will always be around. It is a very large target market all around the world. Interestingly, there is no market leader. No one has really found the recipe in the digital music space.

2. What is iPod? iPod is an MP3 music player, has CD quality music, and it plays all of the popular open formats of the digital music world. It holds 1000 songs, your entire music library and it fits in your pocket.

3. It is ultra-portable (1000 songs fit in your pocket). How do we do this? We start-off with an ultra-thin hard-drive with 5GB capacity.

4. How do we get 1000 songs on iPod? It has FireWire built into it. You can download an entire CD in 5 to 10 seconds. For 1000 songs you can do it under 10 minutes.

5. It doesn’t matter how many songs are with you if your battery is dead, right? We have 10 hours of batter life.

6. What happens if I am on the road with my iPod, I didn’t bring my Mac & my battery is running low? What do I do? You have got a really cool charger that ships with iPod.

7. This is cool. I have iBook, iTune and I am happy. What is so special about iPod? It is ultra-portable. iPod is the size of a deck of cards.

The master of all curiosities is, of course, the picture of actual iPod. And Steve presents it in the last 15 seconds in the presentation. In fact, he teases the audience by showing the picture of a deck of cards to give an idea of iPod size. As they say, a little teasing goes a long way.

Hats off to Steve Jobs!

Idea communication and curiosity gap theory

When I met Sachin last week he wasn’t in a good mood. Sachin is a Quality Assurance (QA) engineer working for a Fortune 500 company’s India office. He is passionate about two areas: test automation and security. He has been studying micro-viruses for the past few months. In fact, he sent an email to an onsite technical expert about how some of the applications can be made micro-virus proof. It has been a few weeks and he is yet to receive any response. What went wrong here? We don’t know about the correctness or novelty in Sachin’s idea. However, what we know for sure is that he violated a basic principle of idea communication: Curiosity before content.

In the bestseller Made to stick, authors Dan and Chip Heath outline a six-point framework to make ideas sticky. The book has one chapter for each of the six principles: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotion and Story (S-U-C-C-E-S for short). The chapter on “Unexpected” talks about a theory called “gap theory of curiosity”. This theory proposed by behavioral economist George Loewenstein explains why some domains like movies, mystery novels, crossword puzzles create fanatical interest.

According to Loewenstein curiosity happens when we feel a gap in our knowledge. These gaps cause pain. It’s like having an itch that we need to scratch. For example, movies cause us to ask, What will happen? Mystery novels cause us to ask, Who did it? Sports contests cause us to ask, Who will win?

One important implication of the gap theory is that we need to open gaps before we close them. Our tendency is to tell people the facts (perhaps what Sachin has done in his email). First, though, they must realize that they need these facts. We have been coached to “Tell’em what you’re gonna tell’em, then tell’em, then tell’em what you told’em”. Steve Jobs doesn’t do this in his presentation, nor does Barak Obama.

So how can Sachin apply “gap theory of curiosity”? Perhaps he can point out some of the past issues due to security loopholes and ask if these are important to address immediately? Perhaps he can introduce a micro-virus in an application (without causing any real damage) and show step-wise how easy it was to introduce it. And then ask if this is an important enough issue to address. Sachin can write a blog on micro-viruses and what they can cause and send a link to onsite folks. If such techniques don’t arouse any curiosity, perhaps he is working on the wrong problem. He should move on to a different one. Any other suggestions?

Bullet point jokes

Let me start with my most favorite bullet point jokes from Dilbert.

Dilbert: As requested, I fit my presentation on one powerpoint slide.
Dilbert: I had to use all of the white space, but I think it was worth it to fit everything on one page.
Dilbert: It’s actually only one bullet point, but it’s a long one.

Now, here are the rest. It is between Paresh the presenter and Friedo, Paresh’s friend.

Friedo: What are you doing?
Paresh: I am rehearsing my presentation.
Friedo: Why? Anyway you look at the slides and read.
Paresh: But, I tend to skip some bullets while reading.

Paresh: In our organization each slide has exactly 3 bullets.
Friedo: How many slides do you have today?
Paresh: That's easy. Divide no of bullets by 3 which makes it 72.3.

Paresh: My manager suggested I should have more pictures than bullets
Friedo: So what did you do?
Paresh: I added one picture per bullet.

Paresh: I have found a new way to keep audience awake.
Friedo: What?
Paresh: I read odd numbered bullets first. Then even numbered.

Paresh: I am feeling really old.
Friedo: Why?
Paresh: My boss says, Bullet point era is over.

Paresh: What is deadlier than bullet points?
Paresh: Bullet points and laser pointer combination.

In love with the villain: Curse of knowledge

I am addicted to reading. And like any addict, I look for excuses to indulge. When my friend RamP sent me an email a couple of weeks back that I should buy the book “Made to stick”, I immediately went and bought one copy.

“Made to stick” written by Dan and Chip Heath is about how to design a message such that it becomes more sticky. All of us know how much we remember from the last presentation that we attended. On the flip side, the same thing must be true about the last presentation we made as well. The book talks about attributes such as simplicity, unexpectedness, and concreteness that are common to all sticky messages.

Apart from these interesting attributes, the story has a villain too. The villain who makes it really hard for us to generate sticky messages. And it is this villain which has got stuck to my mind more than anything else. In fact, I would say I am in love with the villain! Who is this villain, after all? It is called “Curse of knowledge”. When we, as experts, know something, it is extremely difficult to imagine what it means to “not to know” that something. I don’t know about you, but I have felt this “villain” in me active many times during my training sessions.

It is no surprise that the Stickiness Aptitude Test created by Guy Kawasaki & Co takes away 3 points if you are an engineer and takes away 4 points if you are an MBA. It does not even consider PhD worthy of mention (perhaps, you are not even qualified to take the test). I have learnt my lesson.

You may want to check out Chip Heath's interview with McKinsey Quarterly. And Guy Kawasaki's interview with Dan Heath. And Chip Heath's interview podcast at iinnovate.com.