How to rehearse (or not) a presentation

Best of both worlds

How a stand-up comedian rehearses for both flexibility and confidence.

An over-rehearsed presentation - like an over-rehearsed show - can really stink. It can be so automatic that it loses touch with the audience. It becomes a polished set of actions and words and ceases to be two-way communication, a persuasive dialogue.

On stage, we know that the comic aside - the gag improvised when the scenery collapses or a cellphone in the audience rings - is usually the biggest laugh of the evening. It's because the audience knows it was one-off, one-time, authentic creativity. So should we always improvise?

Usually, no. Bluffing your way through Shakespeare (or a complex presentation) on a wing and a teleprompter will not get you far. You need the confidence to know what happens next, the experience to get you through the technically challenging parts. And that only comes from practice. Lots of practice.

Hmm. So - we are in a quandary. Authentic, spontaneous flexibility, or calm rehearsed confidence? What to do?

The answer is this: you should not rehearse your presentation, you should rehearse your presentations. Plural.

When I'm developing a stand-up routine. I have many of my gag ideas on little index cards which I can add notes to, reshuffle, tear in half, or even eat in frustration. I will stand in a room away from the world (this is embarrassing) and rant my way through the cards. I'll try every line ten different ways. I'll try ten different orders. I'll throw cards away, and dig them out of the bin. I'll try missing out this part, and go off on a stream-of-consciousness tangent expanding that section. I'll even try running the cards backwards - seriously, it can teach you a lot.

After a while, I don't need the cards much, and I can play with my material while jogging, driving, or screaming at the top of my lungs while zooming down the Autobahn on my motorcycle. (If you've ever seen a lunatic doing this, now you know it was me. It feels as mad as a brush, but it's very effective.)*

At the end, I have not just rehearsed one routine - I have rehearsed dozens of routines based on basically the same material.

This stand-up rehearsal technique works for presentations too. Play with the pieces and bang them together until you know every angle.

After a while, you will know what the best order is. You can use it for your test audience. But you will not be tied to that order...

You will have all the confidence you need, because you will have mastered your material. But you will also have the flexibility you need. You will know that there is more than one path through the presentation, and that you can cope with anything.

Most importantly, you will be able to adjust your presentation with confidence to genuinely respond to the audiences signals - making it a real two-way exchange, not some polished performance that could have been done by DVD.

Have fun!

*Actually, a shouted rehearsal is a great technique. I know classical actors who rehearse monologues by shouting them from the beach into the ocean waves. Of course, this works best if you have a Victorian greatcoat and rather wild hair.

Photo of some of my index cards by me.

(This post is based on a comment I made last year on TJ Walker's blog)

!!! More great showbiz tips for presenters here.

Instinct helps you move people

... so stop thinking too hard

Watching the extras to the Bourne films on the train, I came across this piece of advice which every service manager should take to heart.

"Often when you are a director you are trying to free everybody from thinking too hard. Because if you think too hard, you're not instinctive.

The power to move, the power to excite, the power to propel people - is instinctive."

(Paul Greengrass, Director)

As a manager, what can you do to free your people from thinking too hard? Remember, it's easy to make things complicated. Simplicity is dang hard, and freedom is scary.

But you need them both to engage customers and release creativity.

Start by cheering up the customer

Starting out right

David Zinger posted a nice overview of his time with impromaster Keith Johnstone. There's a lot worth reading there, but I was especially struck by one side note:

Start by cheering up the audience.

Now, replace "audience" by "customer" (that's one of my favourite hobbies), and we have some powerful medicine. If you set out to start every contact by "cheering up" your customer, you will automatically find yourself:

... being present in the moment.
If you are fully tuned in to the customer's feelings here and now, I promise you will not find yourself thinking about the stack of 27B-6 forms waiting on your desk.

... empathising with the customer's expectations.
A customer comes to you with a particular emotion based on what they think is going to happen next. To cheer them up, you are going to have to read - and beat - that expectation.

... caring about first impressions made by your site, location or appearance.
Everyone knows that first and last impressions are crucial. How do your physical surroundings (colour, light, signage, access) contribute to cheering up the next customer?

... being human.
True smiles can only work over a true person-to-person connection. Humour is the same. Without giving at least a glimpse of the person you are, you are not going to spread cheer. So be yourself - you might enjoy it.!

So, here's a challenge: cheer up some customers as soon as you meet them today.

And here's another: cheer them up even more as they take their leave.

Happy face shot by litanmore at flickr

Everyone can be a star - if you let them

Mark Hurst put me on to this terrific wedding video. It's great fun, but it can also teach us something...



Presumably nobody in this clip is a professional performer, but they all give amazing performances. Why?

* Because they are doing something that feels new.
* Because they are allowed to play around while doing it, which makes it fun.
* Because the only pressure on them to "get it right", is their desire to do a good job for their friends.

LOCKDOWN Projects are onto a winner here. They took an oversubscribed service (wedding videos) and shook it up with a great idea. Then they made the idea work by trusting average people to be stars.

What could your workplace learn from that?

PS I hope Brian and Eileen's marriage is as good a party as their wedding was, and I hope that LOCKDOWN get rich and famous rather fast.
I have a feeling they will.

Exemplary experience design

Why the Alamo Drafthouse's sneak premiere was so dang good

By now, you will have heard about the Alamo Drafthouse Theater's amazing coup with the new Star Trek movie. If you haven't heard, here's the plot:

1. The scene: a cool but globally insignificant cinema in a rather insignificant town.
2. The background: everyone's talking about the new Trek film. Opinions are divided, emotions are high. But the film is not out yet, and when it comes out it will first be seen somewhere globally significant. Somewhere far away. Not here. (See point 1). No sir, we are too insignificant for that. Sigh.
3. Because we are too insignificant to see the new film, we content ourselves with watching an old classic instead. Better than nothing, eh? It's a fun idea that fits our theater, but it has a slight aftertaste of valiant loser (see point 1). Sigh.
4. But then - the old classic melts and burns in the projector. The aftertaste of valiant loser gets stronger.
5. Sigh.
6. The management take the stage and try to get a discussion going while the film is re-spliced. Unfortunately, nobody has any questions.
7. Sigh. Sigh...
8. THEN... Mr Spock walks out on stage. MISTER SPOCK!
9. Mr Spock asks us if we'd rather be watching the new film. The one that isn't out yet. The one we are too insignificant to see first.
10. Mr Spock - MR SPOCK!! - tells us that the world premiere for the new film is here and now! Losers we are not!

This is just brilliant experience design for a bunch of reasons. So many, it almost becomes a "best of". How about:

• It takes your customer's expectations (go see an old movie) and exceeds them (go see the World Premiere of the hot new movie presented by your childhood hero in person). What a terrific surprise!

• Beforehand, we have the burned print and the lame discussion attempt. This massages our expectations down and makes the upswing to the climax even more dramatic. (Remember, this only works with captive audiences).

• Of course this wrong-wrong-right is the classic one-two-and-a -THREE! of bait-and-switch dramatic structure seen in jokes. Two points are enough to establish a tendency, which you break with the punchline.

• This whole shebang is supported by of the excellent customer community set up around the cinema. These guys have theme nights, food, live heckling by stand-up comedians, customer tours for renegade karaoke parties, their own beer...

• The management have obviously gone the extra mile for their customers on this one. Not only did they get the world premiere of what is potentially the film this summer, they also got Leonard Nimoy - the nearest thing to a saint in the Trekiverse - to present it. That was more than one phone call, I suspect.
  

• The idea and its execution shows the Drafthouse crew as hard working real people with the same groove as their audience. Remember, people buy from people.
  

• The whole story is eminently tellable, as evidenced by its rapid dissemination through the internet today.

Great stuff. Oh, and here's the YouTube link.

Via Church of the Customer.
Trekpik by TCM Hitchhiker at flikr.

Instant USP - for free

Your people know how

The human factor is probably the biggest single piece of your customer experience. If you have good people working for you, agree on the goals and then let them be themselves, it might even be this good:



Fair enough, not everyone has this gentleman's charm or musical talent - but his rap is most successful because he is initially not completely sure if he can pull it off. He shows his humanity, and that is the crucial part. He could have been equally successful doing something far less spectacular - as long as he were doing it his way.

The customers see a real human being doing something unique and - most tellingly - they know they wouldn't get anything like it from the competiton.

Are you brave enough to let your people be this good?

Via the Creative Generalist
PS. Hmm. I wonder if he has read this?

Emotion and sound

Berlioz, Beatles or Benny Hill?

Make sure your volume is not set too loud, then take a look at this film.
(Click on the white rectangle to change the backing music; try a few different tunes).

Isn't it extraordinary how exactly the same images can become intimidating, uplifting or comic just by changing the music? How some music makes us sit back and observe, and other music makes us want to join in? How some feels timeless, some immediate?

A lot of customer experiences, especially in retail and hospitality, feature music in some way. It is usually chosen to be pleasant, non-intrusive and non-offensive. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with that - until it goes too far into musak - but it rather misses the point.

Your service offering should be designed to stimulate certain emotions in your customers. (Do you know what they are? You really should.)

Ask yourself if the music you are using in your retail location, on your answering machine or in your elevator really fits the emotion you want to create? Or is it just inoffensive pap, like all your competitors?

Gramaphone shot from djking at flickr

Customer orientation in 30 seconds

All you need to know

Step into the Spotlight put me onto this one.

If your company understands this and - the tough bit - embodies this, you will get everything you want for Christmas.

An experiment...

Look here --->

This is how it works: if this post got more of your attention than usual, simply post a comment by clicking on the word "comments" in orange below. Or mail me.

That's it. Thanks!

Adam

Happy staff = happy customers, again

In 2008, Norway's Flytoget Airport Express Train...

1. was the Best Place to Work in Norway.

2. was Number 1 in Customer Satisfaction in Norway.

Hmmm... I wonder if there might be a link?

Number 1 pic by Leo Reynolds at Flickr

Fake smiles are dangerous

Take the test

I've written before on the dangers of fake smiles in customer experience design. Customers spot them - can you?

The BBC's psychology crew offer this test.

The best way to avoid fake smiles (and uneasy customers) is to make sure that your team are having a blast at work. That's not just a hunch - the Sunday Times Great Places to Work Survey showed that companies whose staff were enjoying their daily grin(d) grew four times faster than average.*

More on what to do about fake smiles here and here.

Plastic smile pic by colodio by at flickr.

* Over the past five years, companies rated as “a good place to work” have shown 25 per cent growth in share and dividend returns, compared to an average return of only 6.3 per cent.
(Source: Sunday Times Great Places To Work Survey, 2002)

Tools for finding meaning

What's it all about, then?

In theatre rehearsals (and in service design workshops), we spend a lot of thought on our message . We ask ourselves what we are trying to say with our play or customer experience.

Hang on! Don't exit stage left pursued by a groan!

This is not wishy-washy heart searching, tree-hugging or vibrating crystals, it's cold hard business. If our offering does not reflect who we truly are, our audience (or customers) will rapidly smell the inauthenticity, and will stay away in droves.

To the surprise of many (and at the cost of much initial eye-rolling) one of the more powerful tools we use to find out what we are talking about is the collage. Remember the heady smell of paper glue in fourth grade art class? That's the one. A table gets filled with ripped-out pictures, Post-its, sections of underlined texts, snapshots, sketches, even small props. When you sit back and look, you can see connections you never saw before. And - very often - the dominant themes are staring you in the face.

The Intarweb offers some tremendous (and addictive) tools for doing much the same thing, without the Copydex headache. One of my favourites is Wordle, which produces word clouds based on any text. Often, the meaning hits you right in the eye - along with a couple of surprises.
Here, for example, is Churchill's famous "fight them on the beaches" speech:



Obviously, the repeated fight refrain dominates - but so do defend, confidence, island, British, and strength. Just the sort of positive, rousing words that master orator Churchill wanted to be heard.

And here - in dangerous proximity - the word cloud for the five most popular posts on this blog:



Hmm. Stage. Audience. People. Wow. Customer. Experience....

I think it about sums it up, but I would have expected another order - so a valuable lesson for me there. Perhaps I should spend more words on the more theatrical side of my thinking...

Go on, go crazy. Stick your website, handbook and ads through a few of these visualisation tools, and see what message you are really leaving with your customers.

PS Thanks for the Wordle heads-up to ConversationAgent.

Collage tools pic by VaguelyArtistic at flickr.

Improvised solutions impress customers more

Throw away the script to be more authentic

Those of us who work on the stage are fortunate indeed - for we are blessed with an immediate and clear feedback system. If we work well, we are immediately rewarded with applause or laughter. If we do poorly, we are punished with silence, or jeers, or departure. (Or with another kind of laughter. Or with people throwing things. Or with people coming up on stage and trying to punch my head. But that's another story.)

The ace bit about this phenomenon is that it often lets you know precisely which bit of your experience design is working best. It's simple - if they responded well to that bit tonight, it was good. If they didn't, it needs some work. No problems there. But what does it tell us?

Now, much to our writer's chagrin, it is often the case that the biggest laugh of the night is rewarded to an "aside" - something you say which is outside the script. This can be a quick put-down to a heckler, a humorous reaction to a cellphone going off in the house, or a rapid quip in response to collapsing scenery or colleagues.

These asides are not usually the wittiest gag of the evening. To be honest, they are not usually very funny at all. They are not rooted in your character, or in the dramatic form, and they often lack depth and/or cleverness. But if they are halfway quick, and halfway decent, they get a monster laugh. Odd, isn't it?

The crucial bit is that - because these asides arise in response to a particular unplanned situation - they are obviously unscripted. And this makes them two things. They are:

1. unique
2. authentic

They are unique because the situation was a one-off, and the audience know it will never happen that way again. That laugh will not be there in tomorrow's show - it is their laugh.

They are authentic, because they obviously came from the actor himself - not from some highly paid, uncaring jokewriter. The gag was obviously invented right here and right now, by that living person standing right there.

All too often in service experiences, we feel that the employee is working to a script. And when they leave that script to improvise a solution for us, we are deeply impressed. We feel it was our personal solution - unique and authentic, invented by a real person.

So, how often do you ditch the script in your services? Or, if you are the big cheese, how do you respond when your staff throw the book away? Is there perhaps a way you can make your customers feel that every solution is authentic and unique - just for them?

improvised first aid pic from gregor_y at flickr
ditched script pic from z1784 at flickr

Unexpected... and thus authentic

Avoiding the cliché

I was flicking through my review copy (thanks Joe! - I'll review as soon as I possibly can) of Pine & Gilmore's "Authenticity", and I got to thinking about authentic places.

I've written now and again about why I prefer Dominica to other Caribbean islands I have visited - Antigua and Martinique, for example. A lot of my love for the place comes from its unspoiled character, from the pioneering feeling you get from being one of very few tourists, and from it's non-sanitised atmosphere. (Yes, it can pong a bit.)

Another reason that strikes me is that Dominica is not like you expect. We all have a vision of "Caribbean" in our heads, comprised in varying measures of beaches, cricket, rum, Bob Marley and Jack Sparrow. When you arrive there for the first time, you find Dominica looks very little like that. "Hey," you think, "this isn't like the catalogues - it must be the real thing!"

This Heineken ad (a very popular beer in Dominica, though I prefer the local Kubuli) hits the nail on the head.

Avoid the cliché, if you want to be authentic.

Fishermen picture by the author. Ooo!

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Earned experiences feel authentic

Heaven is hard work

One of the things that makes - and keeps - Dominica special is that it is a pig to get here. There is no international airport (yet*), so you are forced to island-hop. For us Europeans, it's two days with an overnight hotel stop, multiple borders, wads of forms and all the usual travel unpleasantness. Blurgh.

Of course, when you finally get here it feels even more special because it was hard work. You feel terribly intrepid, and can scoff at the "tourists" who get off the cruise boats for six hours of faked-up Dominica on a Tuesday afternoon.

And that very feeling can cause you to do silly things - like me this evening.

Having spent the day down in the capital, I had three possible ways to get home up the mountain:
1) jump in a taxi-bus and pay five bucks (EC) for the twenty minute ride;
2) hop in the back of a Rasta-driven pick-up and bounce home in a holy haze of ganja at the cost of a few bruised ribs;
3) or, call Q, the long-suffering (and wonderful) Stepdad, and get picked up in style.

Of course, I chose Option 4. Walk.

Now, it's only about four miles up the hill, but it is almost vertical, pitch dark, and terrifyingly precipitous. Substantial stretches of the road are washed out - or at least ankle-breakingly uneven - and most of the strangers you meet on the darkest, loneliest corners are frightfully polite fellows who openly carry knives as long as your arm.

And of course, it was wonderful.

I arrived at the top an hour and a half later, soaked to the skin with sweat. I had taken off the shirt after the first mile - the cataclysmic white flash no doubt causing several ships to run aground. I was sporting two prize blisters on my feet, and grinning like a loony. My family have been here almost two years, but I doubt they have ever experienced "their" road like I did: dancing fireflies, agutis in the undergrowth, glimpses of parties down side roads, the lyrical sound of domestic disputes through open windows, late-night hymns carried on the sultry air, teenagers trying to sell me stuff which they really shouldn't be selling, night birds hooting, and a million billion dwillion stars splashed across the sky. Brilliant.

Now, another traveller could have come up in a taxi, walked about for a bit in the dark, and got many of the same impressions. He would probably have enjoyed himself no end. But not as much as I did.

If we feel we have worked for an experience, we enjoy it more. That is hardly an new insight. But it occurred to me tonight that an earned experience is not just more satisfying, it also feels more authentic, feels more real. And if Messrs Pine and Gilmore are right, the Next Big Thing that customers want is authenticity.

So, how can you make customers think they have earned an experience? A tip: putting the price up is not the only answer - or the best one.

Moonlight photo by jackhynes at flickr
Slender loris by Joachim S Müller at flickr
(I know there are no lori on Dominica. Just testing.)

(* Incidentally, most Dominicans are crying out for that international airport. When they get one, they will lose a major part of their uniqueness. If they are not very careful, they will end up competing on price like all the rest of Disneyland-Caribbean, instead of turning Domenica into the premium destination it should be. Sigh. It's not their fault. People living in a shortage economy do not understand what a USP is...)

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Work•Play•Experience: get the book

My e-book is ready to download

Twelve show business tools for your business:

• Storyboarding
• Showing hidden values
• Prequels and sequels
• Depth and meaning
  
• Stagebuilding
• Backstage
• Light
• Costume
• Rehearsal
• Getting the lines right
• Letting stars be stars
• Timing

Download the 20 pages here. It's free.

All comments and feedback gratefully received...
x

Lies, damned lies and experience design...

Truth, authenticity and show business

Right, there are two things I have to set straight. Here goes.

1. Experience design is not about pretending to be something you are not.

When I talk to people about experience design, they often get a funny look in their eyes. "Hmm," they seem to say, "that sounds awfully fake".

Experience design (or service design) is indeed about creating memorable experiences that our customers will appreciate. To do this, we engage our customers' senses to move their emotions. That makes it a whole lot like show business - so... we can brazenly steal a lot of tools and techniques from theatre and film. Lighting, costume, staging, scripts and even character work can all play a part.

This does not mean pretending to be something you are not. It means getting better at showing what you are.

This is true in "real" showbiz too. A brilliant actor like Sir Anthony Hopkins is not a dissembler. He does not pretend, he reveals, showing parts of himself that we would not usually see. Shakespeare understood this, and all his characters - even the baddest of the bad - speak the truth to the audience. And for good reason: we care about what people really are, not what they pretend to be. In experience design, we look for ways to throw the spotlight on our best work, to reveal values that the customer might otherwise have missed. But we must remain authentic. If we fake anything, the customer will know. And he will not forgive.


2. Experience design is not about making people laugh.

Let's get back to our sceptical prospective customer. Giving me a steely look, he says (probably with a Cherman accent), "Customer emotion? Ve are a serious business! Laughter vould be out of place."

I admit it, I'm a comedian. I will do pretty much anything for a cheap laugh - in fact, I just did. And I draw a lot of my experience design tools from the world of comedy. So sue me.

What this means is that many of the service design success stories that appeal to me are ones that speak to my sense of fun. I love the Geek Squad, for example. I think turning a car factory into a theme park is a scream. But I do not think that laughter or even "fun" is an essential part of experience design. No, the essential bit is emotion.

Let's take an extreme example - an undertaker. Gags would usually be out of place in that trade, but sharing emotion - stories, reminiscences, sadness, love - is very much part of the business. A good funeral director (director! Hah!) will create an experience where people are able to see their grief as part of a more complex set of feelings, and share in celebrating a life.

No, the emotions we need in experience design can be of every hue - pleasure, serenity, shock, exhilaration, awe, contentment, Gemütlichkeit, pathos... you name it. Fun is one option, but the big picture is about gut feelings, not belly laughs.

Luvvies need love too

or, is the guy in the chicken suit truly happy, deep down inside?

In a private mail exchange recently (yes, it was with someone you have heard of, but Mick Jagger told me - personally - never to name-drop), we were talking about the authenticity of face to face experiences.

It struck me that a lot of H2H experiences - like the Charmin one in Times Square - rely heavily on what the adult industry calls talent, but which you might call actors, cast members or poverty-stricken students. They are those people, often costumed, with whom the customers react directly, and whose enthusiasm, skill and interpersonal skills can make or break the experience.

Very often, these folks have to act in a scripted way - or at least are given a limited range of interactive options. Your chaps in the Charmin experience (which I like, by the way) are pretty much doomed to spend their workdays saying the same phrases over and over again, and smiling. A lot. Possibly while dressed as a toilet.

Now I too make my living by dropping my pants in amusing ways, and I know how crushingly dull it can be to go through the same routine over and over again. Sure, the audience is different every time, and sure their smiles and laughter can give you an immense amount of energy, but eventually you just get fed up with the gig. If you are supposed to be happy about things - a common situation in experiential marketing - this is a problem.

"Never mind", I hear you cry, "for you are a gifted, professional thespian who is able to smile through the greatest suffering". A fair point, and here's a fiver, but where does that leave authenticity?

Let's be honest - there are few actors good enough to convincingly fake happiness at a range of two feet for several hours. And even if they are technically brilliant, you are not necessarily going to believe them. When Robert de Niro cries his eyes out on the big screen, his face, voice and tear glands do everything that they would do in a real trauma. But we know it is fake, because it's a movie, stupid! Similarly, when we see folks in comical animal suits smiling at us, we tend to to treat their emotion with scepticism.

So in the interests of authentic experiences, we need to make sure that the talent we use is showing genuine emotions. How can we do that?

• Give your talent a chance to believe in the product. Truly believe. As I always expound in my presentation training, "if you don't believe what you are saying, shut up about it". The best way to help them love the product? By giving them the knowledge they need, and by bringing them into close contact with people who love it already.
• Give your talent a chance to show emotion. Think about your costume design, and your staging. Are they going to allow the character the freedom of facial and physical expression that they need? Do you really need that mask? Wouldn't make-up be better? If someone absolutely must be dressed as a carrot, must it be the person with close-up customer contact?
• Give your talent breaks. This is basic stuff here, but you know already that real breaks make all the difference. As does a decent wage, by the way. But not as much as when you...
• Give your talent the freedom to shape the experience. Open any airport bookshop volume on motivation, and you will see that the thing which we dig most is the feeling that we are shaping our own actions and being valued for them. So encourage your folks to do it their way, not yours. Yes, they might drift from your CI, but they will glow while they are doing it and people buy from people, remember? So recruit good people, and let them play.
• Give your talent applause. In a lot of experiences, the status of applause is unclear. If the experience is highly theatrical, applause may be welcome. However, if the experience design is more personal, more intimate, very immersive, continuous, or just plain dark, applause might not seem appropriate. Often, the customers are simply unsure if applause is "allowed". Nonetheless, your talent probably chose this profession - at least partly - for the roar of the crowd. Don't underestimate the importance of that buzz factor in keeping your folks motivated - and authentic.

If the pundits are right, and I think they are, then we are heading for a huge boom in the experience biz. This will mean more and more talent getting better and better at what they do. One day, there will be superstar talent, glitzy awards, and pawprints in the concrete outside the Pine and Gilmore University of Experience Art. And even before then, the best folks will insist on the above.

Keep your talent happy. Your customers will feel it if you don't.