与 Nancy Duarte 聊故事叙述:如何打造引人入胜的演示并讲出令人难忘的故事
Storytelling with Nancy Duarte: How to craft compelling presentations and tell a story that sticks
Nancy Duarte: A lot of people think that the only time you really need to present well is when you have a big stage talk and you make the big investment in the script. The big investment in the contrasting story. I’ll tell you a dirty little secret. I can get my husband to do chores for me on the weekends with a real quick, what is, what could be new bliss. So, the ability to just have that contrast as a framework in your brain during a meeting, on a phone call, any moment of influence, like literally it works. It works in any format.
The Surprising Volume of Presentations
Lenny: Welcome to Lenny’s Podcast where I interview world class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today’s most successful products. Today my guest is Nancy Duarte. Nancy is the type of guest that I never imagined being able to get on this podcast, but I’m so happy that it happened. Nancy is a bestselling author, speaker, and CEO of Duarte Incorporated, which has helped create over 250,000 presentations for the world’s most influential business leaders, brands and institutions including Apple, TED, Google, the World Bank, and famously Al Gore on his Inconvenient Truth presentation. In our conversation, Nancy shares a ton of tactical advice for how to improve your own presentations, how to tell better stories, how to lay out convincing arguments, how to reduce your nerves when you present, and even a simple communication framework to improve your relationship dynamics. I had such a good time chatting with Nancy and I’m sure you’ll love this episode. With that, I bring you Nancy Duarte after a short word from our sponsors.
Are you hiring or on the flip side, are you looking for a new opportunity? Well, either way, check out lennysjobs.com/talent. If you’re a hiring manager, you can sign up and get access to hundreds of hand curated people who are open to new opportunities. Thousands of people apply to join this collective and I personally review and accept just about 10% of them. You won’t find a better place to hire product managers and growth leaders. Join almost a hundred other companies who are actively hiring through this collective. And if you’re looking around for a newer opportunity, actively or passively, join the collective, it’s free. You can be anonymous and you can even hide yourself from specific companies. You can also leave anytime and you’ll only hear from companies that you want to hear from. Check out Lennysjobs.com/talent. Nancy, welcome to the podcast.
Nancy Duarte: Thank you for having me, Lenny.
Most Memorable: An Inconvenient Truth
Lenny: How many presentations have you helped craft at this point, both directly and indirectly?
Five Years in the Making
Nancy Duarte: That’s a great question. People know I’ll like take a swag at data and pretend it’s real. So, I had a president who took us a whack at that number in, it was 2014, and he said at that time it was 225,000, and that was almost 10 years ago, so I can’t even tell you, I mean we stopped tracking, but it’s a lot. I mean, in 35 years we have thousands of projects we open and each sometimes has two to a hundred presentations in it, so it’d be hard to tell.
The Origins of Apple Collaboration
Lenny: 200,000.
Nancy Duarte: He said 250,000, but that was 10 years ago and I didn’t do the math. So, when my team questioned it, I’m like, oh, Dan did the math. They’re like, “Oh, then it’s accurate.” Because they thought I was just making up this number. I’m like, no, no, we actually went in and looked.
The Evolution of Presentations
Lenny: Okay. I was not expecting it to be that large. That’s insane.
From Tool Abuse to Reshaping the Medium
Nancy Duarte: It’s so funny because I have the whole history of the Silicon Valley in a way. It’s like every little startup and then they grew to massive brands like Cisco and you could actually look at the rise and fall of all these companies. And then I actually have all the decks. I still have a lot of these archives, so I could actually verify that number exactly.
Three Core Principles
Lenny: Okay, well this next question’s going to be extra hard then. Of all the presentations you’ve worked on, which one stands out to you as the most memorable or most impactful?
Nancy Duarte: I mean, it has to be Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. It kind of hit the world in a season where nobody really knew or had an example of a really well done presentation. So, it came out before TED Talks were even out on the web, and so people had never seen someone tell a data story and stand in front of data and the scale in 90 foot screen, but we had worked with him for five years before an Inconvenient Truth. People think he went from vice president to this presenter and I didn’t work with him. I let my team work with him. So, they were the ones jetting around jumping backstage at Oprah. They loved it. It was a real peak season.
But the thing actually that was most memorable is we work with these 20 some year old CEOs here in the Valley and they tend to show up and act like they know better than someone who’s been doing this for so long. And what was so interesting about this large figure politician communicator is the team would sit in a room and say, “Hey, we think you need to do this way. We think you needed to convey it this way. We think it should be visualized this way.” Or whatever it was we were proposing. And he would literally pause and touch his chin and really think, and really consider that we might actually be experts.
And more times than not he would adopt the way we said it should be done. And so I think as the customer who actually probably had some of the most power in the whole world to thoughtfully defer to us as experts was delightful customer and consulting experience. I mean, I remember when they called me to say it was going to become a movie and that it had gotten funded and I started to get the information. They wanted us to do a lot of work to get it movie ready. And I’ll never forget, I said, “Wow, that’s going to be a lot of work we’d have to do for free, and who’s going to go see a movie about a slideshow anyway?” That’s literally what I said. So, yeah, I just didn’t believe it would become what it became. So, the whole process was amazing.
Empathy as the Methodological Core
Lenny: Did you expect the impact of what happened after that presentation or was it just like, oh, we got this one job we got to do, let’s just get through it and then move on?
Nancy Duarte: Well, we’ve been doing it for five years. I think the strategy, whether it was intentional or not, I don’t know. So, he would go city to city to city, because he was traveling for five years seeding, like planting seeds for a groundswell, and he went into, he would go to the Stanford campus invite the Bay Area Elite, and it was always private and it was always VIP. And so he did a really good job for five years, traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling and really delivering that talk. And I think that created a desire. I don’t know that it would’ve gotten that much traction. I don’t know if people already didn’t know about the presentation and hadn’t already seen the presentation and they brought their friends to the movie, is how I kind of picture at least that part happening.
And he was generous, Lenny. I mean, at the end, when he traveled around for those five years at the end, he always had a slide with our name on it and would thank us if you’re in the audience. I mean, super, and paid, mostly paid for what we did that we did give a lot of our own time. But yeah, super generous and yeah, movie became what it was. It was a bit of a surprise. It was good. The movie was good.
The Speaker’s True Role: Mentor
Lenny: It was good. It also makes me think about a pattern that I often see of it wasn’t just one presentation that changed everything. It was, you said five years of prep ahead of that, and you always see these wow overnight success stories and you always find, okay, it wasn’t actually that.
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, and he did a good job after, once it got traction, we built a whole training program where he could fly people out to his place in Tennessee and start to train people. So, it almost became a train the trainer and he could sanction you as a ambassador for it. So, it was just the way the whole thing kind of unfolded and scaled and then got traction was lovely.
Making the Audience the Protagonist
Lenny: Speaking of impressive clients, I only learned this recently, but Apple has been a client of yours since the day you were founded as an organization. Is that right?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, it was. Yeah.
How Stories Create Desire
Lenny: Okay. How did you land that initially? And then also just what have you learned from that experience that’s informed your approach to presentation, design, communication, and how you work with clients?
Nancy Duarte: I love that question. So, yeah, I had a real job. I was working my real job and my husband had bought a Mac and he’s like, “I think this is a business. I think it could be a real business.” And he was an illustrator, wasn’t a designer, but he had been a fine artist. And he’s like, “Look, I can draw.” Of course it’s all pixelated and bit mappy. He goes, “Look, I could draw lines in here.” And if I could show you his art studio, his work is just gorgeous. So, he’s definitely a fine artist. And he’s like, “I think this is a business. I think this could be a business.” And I’m very pregnant. We were talking about that earlier. I am very pregnant with my son and I’m like, “Dude, you’re going to go get yourself a real job. I don’t want you playing around with this little Mac thing.”
And he begged me twice in our marriage. He literally has gotten on his knees and to try to get me to see his perspective begged me. He’s like, “Just read a Mac World magazine, just read it through once, and if you still don’t think this could become a thing …” Because I was working on a mainframe, I’m like, I work on a real computer. So, what happened was I made some phone calls. I called NASA and I called Tandem, which is now HP, and I called Apple and we won contracts at all three brands at the same time. And back then our company was called Duarte Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design.
The “What Is” vs “What Could Be” Shape
Lenny: Oh, wow.
Steve Jobs’ Presentation Techniques
Nancy Duarte: I know, I know. And we slipped in. When you talk about a product lifecycle, very early, everything was still bit mappy, was not attractive. Most people as users didn’t know how to typeset, didn’t know how to do columns, didn’t know how to make in this tool at all. And there’s about an 18 month window in the life cycle of the Macintosh where graphic designers refused to use it, refused. It’s a toy, it’s ugly, it’s bit mapped. Nobody would do it, a font like that. We use Linotype. It was very, the snobby kind of, we won’t touch it. And that’s right when we entered right then went and checked out books at the library on type setting, we tried to figure out what we could do, what could we do with this tool, and then the rest was kind of history. And so that’s how it started and the timing and just kind of pushing the tool that nobody was that interested in that we’re in the design community. It was small adoption.
Applying the Structure to Everyday Scenarios
Lenny: So, that’s interesting that it was cold emails basically are cold reach out just like, “Hey, we want to work with you.” Yeah, that’s an awesome [inaudible 00:11:42]-
Nancy Duarte: Cold calling. Cold calling, yeah, it was.
A Quick Recap of Three Tips
Lenny: What did you take away from that experience that kind of informed what works and doesn’t work in presentations?
Nancy Duarte: Presentations used to be 35 millimeter slides in an old carousel. In fact, that’s what Al Gore had when he showed, he was like, here’s my slide carousel from the seventies. It was just how it was done. But Apple was the first company to hook up the computer to a projector at scale. Now the projectors at these big venues like San Jose Convention Center, I mean it was huge and it was risky. So, because we were first in, they pushed us to start to do the presentations in this tool and it was black and white. Everything was black and white when we first started. And then we started to push and push and push from how we illustrated things in the tool, how we would colorize clip art. I mean, I’m talking like clip art packages just came out and they’re like, “Hey, grab these, colorize them.”
And so it was a really momentous moment to win them as an account. And I remember the tool had started to really take off and it was ugly. You can call it fugly, I don’t know what you want to call it, but everyone who made slides did it so poorly, just so poorly. And we were kind of pushing the boundaries of it to make it look attractive. And there was a sales conference in 1992 in San Francisco and the leader of sales at the time was kind of a creative savant of sorts. And I remember he’s like, “I don’t know how you’re going to do it, but I want you to take the whole slide.” This is when slides were basically teleprompted covered in text. If you could stick a piece of clip art on it, you were lucky. And he said, “I want you to just make the whole slide, it’s just covered with the word big in hot pink. And I want the background black, because when this slide pops up in all pink big, I want it to actually light the faces of the people in the audience.”
And it was like I didn’t know how to, we couldn’t do that. We had to go into free hand, convert it to this, do these six steps, and then we came up with a small JPEG at the time or png or something and we scaled it up. So, it was still kind of pixelated. And I remember I was in that hall during the rehearsal and the production team gasped. Couple people squealed. They’re like, “Who did this? I mean, it was just the word big in magenta pink.” And I just remember thinking, this is how it’s supposed to be done. Putting the tool in the hands of the masses kind of destroyed the medium itself.
And I feel like the first 10 or so years I was in business, it was reshaping this medium that ran amuck when it got into the hands of the users, it just went completely the opposite way that it was supposed to. So, it’s weird to say that was a real defining moment for me to say, wait, we can do this different and we can return to how they used to be done when they were 35 millimeter slides. So, that’s one story. And then I think we’re very good at mapping to the brand requirements. So, we take this tool, whatever the tool, we have all our brands use different ones. They use Slides, Keynote, they use PowerPoint. We use whatever tool the brand wants and we push it in each medium. But we take their brand guidelines and really push it into the spoken word medium where when they stand up on a stage, it’s cinematic. The visuals can become an experience in itself.
And I remember when Apple came up with the Think Different campaign. Steve Jobs was just back and my designer, everyone Photoshop was new. And everyone’s doing these beveled backgrounds with tons of crap on the background. And I walked by, I’m like, “No, oh, we can’t have a blue frame looking photo frame to for the Think Different campaign. This is not going to work.” And so I remember looking at all the posters and remembering the Alfred Hitchcock ones. It had these particulates like these particulates, and it was just shadows.
And I found a stock video that Adobe had made at the time, and it was just particulates floating through the air at the angle and we stuck the six color apple on top of it. That was so revolutionary back there to push the brand and get out of the way every, the whole world was making these hideous templates. So, there are these moments that pushed the company forward because of an idea that I knew would not be okay for the Apple brand, therefore it shouldn’t be okay for any brand. And I think those are just a couple stories of how to really push the medium in a way that is more pleasing to the audience. The audience just likes it better when it’s really clear what you’re supposed to focus on. We love that brand. We love it.
Making the Audience “See” Your Words
Lenny: Okay, so let’s get a little tactical, because you’re talking about some very specific things that you’ve found to be working. So, everyone listening to this podcast has probably heard many times it’s really important to be great at presentations that there’s so much power in storytelling and communication, all these things. And they probably read a bunch of books and blog posts and watch videos of how to give a great presentation. But myself, and I feel like most people sit down at a deck when they’re about to present to an all hand, say a week later or are going to do a meeting. And I’m always just like, okay, what do I do? Okay, there’s like a beginning, middle end, they should have some kind of problem. And it’s always like, I don’t know what I’m doing. So, if someone were to just be listening to this podcast and they’re like, I’m going to write a post-it to myself of three bullet points of things that I should remember when I’m starting a deck, what are those three bullet points?
Nancy Duarte: Your audience is the hero. That was in my TED talk from 2011. I would say it’s infuse your talk with story. And I would say it is asking yourself, can they see what I’m saying? Those would be the three tips other than starting with empathy. I mean that that’s, well, audience is the hero, is the empathy centric approach.
The Power of Gestures and Body Language
Lenny: Let’s dive into these then. And I was actually going to ask around empathy, and it feels like that comes up a lot in your recommendations to people’s empathy is kind of the heart of your methodology of telling great stories, telling great presentations. So, let’s spend a little time there. Why is that so important and what does that actually look like in practice?
Nancy Duarte: Empathy is important to Duarte, everything we do is empathy first. And some of it comes from my own childhood story a little bit. I was raised by a clinically narcissistic mom and narcissist are missing the empathy gene. So, I feel like that void of not having it modeled for me is why I keep clawing at empathy as being important. And I think a lot of people listening might work for a boss that does not have empathy, that isn’t other centric, that doesn’t think before they talk and all of those things. And I was raised by someone like that. And so every single book and every single model that I ever make has empathy at the core because you have to have to think about who am I speaking with, especially in communication, who am I speaking with? And so when I went on my journey through storytelling, I figured out that I thought, okay, the presenter’s the hero, for sure the presenter’s the hero, they’re the central figure. They’re talking the most. They’re well lit, they’re up on a stage.
So, when I started to look at all the archetypes, that’s where I landed. And then I was like, oh my god. When I got to really digging into the mentor, I realized it’s really the mentor in myths and movies that’s the presenter and who really holds the power in the room of a presentation is the audience, the audience gets to make a choice if they accept or reject your idea. So, the balance of power is with them and not you. So, it really is the role of the presenter to be the mentor. And in myths and movies, the mentor comes alongside the hero. In other words, the presenter should come alongside the audience and help them get unstuck or bring a magical tool. So, I think Obi Won Kenobi’s a great example.
He did two things for Luke Skywalker. He gave him a light saber, which was for his outer journey, the physical journey he was doing, and then an inner tool, which was the resolve, which came to him through the force. So, when you’re speaking to an audience, they’re going to have an internal conflict that you have to give them something to soothe. And then you’re asking them to therefore go and do this thing, take this action, do this call to action. That’s asking them to physically do something or physically change in some way. So, they’re not going to do that for you if you haven’t empathetically thought about how hard what you’re asking them is going to be for them to do. And so you have to change your mindset when you’re starting to build your deck to think about who am I talking to? How am I going to help them get unstuck? And that’s just a super foundational principle in everything we do.
Specific Slide Design Advice
Lenny: What is an example of that in practice as we go through these? Because this is really great of that implemented the deck that we know about maybe?
Nancy Duarte: Oh, that we know about. So, I could talk about our own internal ones. Most of what we do is under MSAs because they’re fantastical brands. So, in my own company, before I do a presentation that’s going to require goals or them reaching goals or we do an annual vision talk, we do a listening tour first. So, some of it’s based in survey, some of it’s based in interviews. And we feed that information up and then we compare it to what we’re going to ask them to do. And we do some gap analysis. We literally, there’s some actual questions you can ask yourself, which are somewhat classic design thinking kind of questions about where they’re at. And then what we do is I create a real rough cut or the exec team creates a real rough cut and then we invite the next level of leaders in and we do a fake, I mean the slides are ugly, we don’t spend time on the slides.
This is about the message and maybe a model or two or three that we’re going to go through to feel like it may amplify or make the message more concrete. And then they get feedback and that’s when it’s hard. It’s hard to go from rough cut, here’s what we’re going to say to making it absolutely resonate. And then we deliver it after all of that work has been done, then we share it to the company. So, we go through that knowing that’s the hardest presentation I deliver all year. I used to travel and speak and be a public speaker, but it’s my own internal ones I have to take more time with.
So, when I travel and speak, they’re like, oh my God, I love your models. Oh my gosh, can I get a picture with you? But when I’m standing in front of my own team, they’re like, I wonder what she’s going to say, because she’s about to either make my job harder or she’s going to change my priorities. They come in more skeptical. And we definitely have nailed the annual kickoff meeting. Definitely have nailed that. And then we do quarterly updates to that annual kickoff meeting. And it’s a cadence and people get enthused and we’re kind of killing it right now.
Stop Patching Together Your Slides
Lenny: Yeah, that’s what it feels like from the outside. I’m just thinking about the pressure to create presentations within Duarte Design. If you think about your job as hard, creating a deck for your company, imagine that.
Nancy Duarte: Presentations in front of presentation experts is like-
Leading with the Conclusion vs the Vision
Lenny: Oh my god.
Practical Slide Creation Tips
Nancy Duarte: And I get nervous. I get really nervous because I have one slide that’s kind of flawed or I say um or I pace too much. You lose a third of your team each time. They’re such experts. So, it’s hard.
Duarte’s Internal Collaboration Process
Lenny: I want to walk through these three bullet points. So, the first is make the listener the hero of your story. And that comes from being empathetic and understanding their challenge. So, if you’re trying to do that, what are signs that you’re doing it well or not well? Is there the way the flow of the story start? Is it the here’s the way it starts? Or what should people identify of I’m doing this well or I’m not doing this well?
Crafting Presentations Like Pixar Movies
Nancy Duarte: If the audience is the hero, you would see visible signs that they get it. People would come before I did a really good talk and people were tweeting saying, “Hey, come to this talk. It’s really good.” So, you’d see a reaction. You know you’ve done it well if you’re infusing your talk with story, which is the second bullet by utilizing story structures. So, when I say storytelling, I’m talking about an anecdote. When I say story structures, I’m talking about this format of a three act structure of storytelling that goes back tens of thousands of years, which is fused into the brain like FMRI machines now you can see them while a story’s being told and the science is beautiful, if you’re telling me a story and I’m listening, our brains are firing in the exact same order, in the exact same place. So, it has power to align our brains.
And so by implementing attributes of story like a beginning, a middle, and an end, and we have method for that. And in also incorporating the rise and fall story kind of builds tension and releases it. And that’s why we love it so much is we escape through someone else’s messy middle and conflict and problems like it’s messy and then it resolves. You build the tension and resolve it. And that’s what a really well structured presentation can do. It can pull on that rise and fall in a way that creates longing.
So, story creates longing. It helps people long for something they’d never wanted before because if the future is told in the shape of a story and they see this alternate future, so many people escape through sci-fi. They escape through movie making into these future worlds. And so picture that you could verbally paint a picture of this future state and then you could bring your whole audience to this future state in an amazing way using this cadence of rise and fall. That’s how you can incorporate story into a presentation where you need to influence others, actually really can be beautiful when it’s done well.
Challenges of Remote Presentations
Lenny: And so you gave a TEDx Talk on this exact topic. And so I want to go deeper here. And you kind of shared this very visual way of thinking about a great story where it kind of goes up and down and up and down these teeth almost. Can you actually talk about-
Nancy Duarte: [inaudible 00:25:51] pumpkin teeth. Yeah, it does.
How to Overcome Presentation Nerves
Lenny: Can you share what that structure visually looks like? And we’ll share a link in the show notes of what that actually looks like and then just why that is so impactful and important.
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, I love that. So, I went on a three year journey through story and I knew that the greatest speeches overall time did have that rise and fall and rise and fall. But it wasn’t one single story. It had a whole lot of other very important information, but it still did this rise and fall and risen fall. So, I am not a digital native. I took a quarter inch graph paper and I would listen to all kinds and map out, took the words. When I analyzed Steve Jobs’s iPhone launch speech, I did it all by hand. I wrote every word I did quarter inch graph paper. I needed to know, I needed to see it the way I work, which was analog. And so at first it was zigzaggy and I realized, wait, you can’t map something over time and have it be a zigzag.
There was too much data lost. So, to verbally describe it, you could picture a line at the bottom of your screen and that line going left to is what is. And you need to set up every talk by stating what is. And then it moves straight up and you move to what could be come back down to the bottom line again say what is, back up, what could be, what is, what could be, what is, what could be? And then at the last what could be you state the last horizontal line is what we call the new bliss. So, this motion of traversing between what is, what could be, what’s is, what could be, what is, what could be, that sense of longing for the future, it makes people leave their current state or the status quo or our current reality and makes them long for this future state by using contrast.
So, that rise and fall of hey, here’s our current problem, here’s a solution, or here’s the state of the union. But we imagine it could look like this. There’s so many different ways to build that cadence of contrast that’s so lovely. I mean it really works. I think the talk came out in 2011 and the amounts of notes and emails of things people have accomplished by changing the structure of their presentation has been really astounding.
Torchbearers and Illuminating Change
Lenny: The State of the Union is a really interesting example because I’m trying to imagine this and presentations I’ve seen and that totally resonates of just like, here’s the problem we’re having and here’s where we’re going to go. Here’s another problem we’re having. Here’s what I’m going to change.
Storytelling in Product Development
Nancy Duarte: Steve Jobs was great at that. When he launched the iPhone speech, he always did, here’s the state of the company, here’s how we’re doing. Oh my God, our stores are more full than 10 Mac world expos. He always did a setup of what was going on. And then he did a really rapid what is, what could be when he started to compare the iPhone to the Blackberry. It’s like, look how much it sucks now that you’ve seen what we’re doing. It’s just what is, what could be, what is, what could be. And so I took all the classic speeches, historical speeches, everything, presidential speeches and knew that if I could find a pattern in Dr. King and Steve Jobs’s iPhone launch speech that was the same, that had the same type of nature of cadence and pulsing to it, for lack of a better word, that I knew I had solved it using story. It was a really great moment to finally draw that out on my quarter inch graph paper.
Lightning Q&A Session
Lenny: I love that.
Nancy Duarte: It was awesome.
Recently Discovered Favorite Products
Lenny: I feel like there’s just so much opportunity for primary research that still I feel like that’s why my newsletter does well is I just spent the time doing that work that you’re describing of watching a thousand interviews and then just distilling, here’s a takeaway here.
Nancy Duarte: Pattern finding, that’s an interesting point. I worry sometimes with the emergence of new technologies and stuff, the ability to be able to sit and think, synthesize and all of that is because a human’s going to come up with different insights and synthesis than any future machine can do. So, I think it’s fascinating that you do that so well and it really shows that.
Improving the Deck Creation Process
Lenny: Wow, I appreciate that.
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, you’re really putting your mind and heart into it all.
Parting Advice for Presenters
Lenny: Enough about me, I’m thinking about, but I appreciate it, I’m thinking about product managers and founders maybe listening to this and they’re like, oh man, every time I do a deck, I need to create this whole story and this up and down thing. In your experience, when do you go that far to create? Is this when you have an epic important presentation, you think about a story structure like this, or is there always a way you should put this into your presentations of some kind of story with this contrast?
Nancy Duarte: It’s interesting question. I think a lot of people think that the only time you really need to present well is when you have a big stage talk and you make the big investment in the script, the big investment in the contrasting story. But I’ll tell you a dirty little secret. I can get my husband to do chores for me on the weekends with a real quick, what is, what could be new bliss, kind of just that first bit, what is, what could be new bliss. It’s like even the very, very short talk that Abraham Lincoln gave in the Gettysburg address, it was basically a funeral, it was a eulogy. And back then eulogies used to be two hours long. It was an Aristotelian structure and he only had a couple hundred words, so there’s no pictures of him giving it because it was so short, so tight and done.
They were setting up the cameras, still thinking they had tons of time. So, the ability to just have that contrast as a framework in your brain during a meeting, on a phone call, any moment of influence, getting the husband to do some chores for me, literally it works. It works in any format. And I think the investment that you make in the longer form or when it’s a huge audience, you add the visuals, you really hire the speaker coaches, you really make that moment. And there’s these moments that breach above all other moments where you really have to nail it just in basic conversations, in a moment of influence. If you practice it enough, it’ll live in your head as a mental model for when you’re in a situation where there’s influence in the air that you could do.
Lenny: How do you actually do it with your husband if you could share for helping you do the dishes?
Nancy Duarte: Well, I won’t get graphic about what the new bliss might be, but early in our marriage we figured out that, not early, I actually spent almost in the only the last 10 years we’ve been married for 40. And we realized that when we tangle it’s usually only about process. So, the gaps are if I ask or he asks me to do something or we start to kind of pick on each other, it’s because the way I’m executing something is different than the way he chose to execute it. And so it’ll be anything from like, “Why are you chopping onions like that?” He’ll say to me. And now I’m like, oh, we have a process gap. “Do you want to chop the onions or do you want me to chop them my way?” So, for the what is, what could be new bliss, it happens all the time.
So, he needs a lot of context. He’s a detail-oriented person and I’ve started to learn with him that my what is needs to be quite a bit longer than sometimes I have patience for as I start to frame, “Oh hey baby, I need you to take the dog over to the dog care.” I don’t start there. I start with, “Oh my gosh, tomorrow I’ve got back to back meetings, in fact, I’m going to be on Lenny’s Podcast right about here. And that’s when she’s whiny. And what’s going to happen is if that doesn’t happen, I’m going to have to reschedule next week and next week it’s just loaded up. And you know how it is when I’m stressed out at the end of the day and I’m kind of hard to deal with and I say, well, what could be, the doggy place, she was loved it last time she was spooning with a red cavalier king spaniel and loved it.”
It’s like that, I have to unpack it a little bit more for him. And then the new bliss could be any sort of marital promise you want it to be, but I just have to unpack the current state a little bit of the process, and then I state what could be. And it’s funny because acts of service like that, like him taking the dog to the doggy daycare for me or is I feel loved. So, when someone does something generous with their time for me, it’s how I feel loved. And so there’s a whole lot there in shaping how you communicate with someone. Empathetically at my company, everyone knows each other’s love language. They know that this person feels more appreciated when they get a written note. This person feels more appreciated when they get a gift and everyone knows that. So, that’s just baked into our, I don’t know, our marriage, our company, just how it rolls.
Lenny: I imagine people listening to this podcast were not expecting marriage advice. And so I love that. I’m going to try.
Nancy Duarte: You can scrap that if it doesn’t work the process tip though is good.
Lenny: This is going to be the best part. This is going to be the whole podcast is just the segment. Just joking. But this is really good advice. I’m going to try to use it myself. So, the structure, I think it’s even easier to think about this less as story, infused story. For me it’s more this, what is, what could be, what is the ideal bliss, that’s almost the simpler way to think about it. The story is this like, oh my God, I got to think of a story.
Nancy Duarte: It has a beginning, middle, and an end. So, the first, what is is the beginning. The middle is the messy middle. That’s where you’re trying to contrast and show them that it’s messy. It might be hard, it’s worth it. And then the new bliss, you end with what in western cultures, where’s like a happy ending. So, the new bliss is just imagine a world with your idea adopted, and then you paint a picture of that world poetically or pragmatically, and it works. It definitely works.
Lenny: Okay, this is really great. So, just to recap, point one is to make your listener the hero of the story and come at it with empathy. And I was actually thinking the Think Different campaign is an excellent example of that because it’s about you thinking differently and being this incredible creative. And then item two is infuse your presentation with story and this what is, what could be new bliss. And then, okay, and number three, what was number three again?
Nancy Duarte: Oh, it was ask yourself if they can see what you’re saying. Can they see what I’m saying would be written on the note?
Lenny: I love this. Okay, let’s talk about that. What does that mean and how do you do that?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, so for people to see what you’re saying, that you have an opportunity to use visual tools like the presentation software, you have opportunities to have live sketchers sketch it while you’re talking. There’s so many ways you can help people see what you’re saying. I would contend that you can use something in your talk that gives people something they’ll always remember. We call that a star moment. And it could be a piece of dramatic data where the big numbers put up there. It could be an evocative story, it could be a beautiful picture. And one of the things that happens really well, especially with tech companies, is demonstrating through a picture so you can get alignment. So, the concept of a diagram when you describe your product that you’re working on, is this thing inside of it, outside of it attached to it, is it on it is above it, especially architecture slides or just how technology works as something flows through a complex system.
When people can see that and it accompanies your verbal narrative, they can actually understand what you’re conveying and move on. If you only had a verbal narrative, it wouldn’t work as well. There’s a lot of times though, where you don’t have the support of a presentation or slides. You could be at a dinner table. If you’re in a interesting conversation and you want someone to see what you’re saying, that’s where you pull out the napkin and you draw it. So, you could both see it, in meetings sometimes someone will just walk right up to the board and draw something. And my team, especially my design team is so good at this because they’ll just stand up and say, I want to draw for you what I see, because we’re about to prepare them to present to an audience. When you verbally said that, I saw this, was that your intent?
And then the room will stand up and we’ll start all co-creating a graphic so that everyone sees the exact same thing, the exact same steps, the exact same insights in the order. So, nobody leaves with a question in their mind. And that’s just so important for there to be an alignment around what is this? What are we all fighting for? What are we all living for? What are we all working for? And those moments of alignment are so, so important. And I’m a leader who sees things in the air. I just see it. And to me, my pattern finding nature, which you’re like that too. I could see these patterns and to me, I see a whole scene and I could see it all clearly, but when my team’s trying to look at the same thing, they might see 22 mosaic tiles out of a massive mosaic beautiful picture.
I see the final beautiful picture, but I’ve only served up a little tiny mosaic tile in a few places. And so I even have to be better about really bringing it to earth and saying, oh, here’s the seven steps to get to this amazing outcome. Sometimes we see things so plainly in our mind’s eye, and I was working with a really famous, powerful CEO and as she was talking, it’s like, yeah, I could see her. I was watching her hand motions too, and she was like in this thing and she’s moving her arms around in a distinct way and I said, I can tell you you have a picture in your mind’s eye.
Let me draw for what I, and I did the same thing, walked up, drew had this, had this, had this. And she’s like, “Exactly.” And we were brought in because nobody could articulate at all what she saw in her mind’s eye. And so that was a massive program to be rolled out to the entire retail. It was like a hundred thousand retail workers needed to understand this graphic and the whole process she was trying to roll out wasn’t getting traction. So, the minute people could see what she was saying, then it had all the breakthroughs that needed to happen around that program.
Lenny: That reminds me of when I was working on the super host program at Airbnb. I don’t know if the story will be of any interest to anyone, but I just remember I had this very clear handset of motions that described the strategy of the super host program. And then my friend’s like, you should draw this on a slide-
Nancy Duarte: You should draw it. Unless it’s such a powerful hand gesture, right? Yeah, you could do that because your body is visual. And the other thing we try to get our customers to do is, if Dr. King had slides that day of the I Have a Dream speech, it just wouldn’t been as beautiful. His words painted the pictures in our mind’s eye. And so when we can have the slides off so people are focused on the verbal stream and what’s coming out of your mouth that is such a powerful moment is to not have any visuals supporting you. So, they’re a hundred percent focused on your body, how you’re showing up and on the words coming out of your mouth and they’re verbally seeing what you’re saying versus actually pictorially seeing what you’re saying. It’s good.
Lenny: I like the idea that people are not staring at me and I prefer them distracted with a slide and I want to talk about nerves and stuff presenting in a bit. But that’s interesting. So, you were talking about very kind of some concrete tips for slides and something I’ve heard a lot is when you’re sharing a deck internally or talking an internal meeting, it’s really powerful to just have obviously just a quick image thing, but then also the title of the slide is the point you want them to get from that slide. Is that something you recommend? And then generally any just very tactical advice on how to make a slide effective?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, the concept that each slide should make one point. So, your whole presentation should be grounded in what we call the audience journey, which is the big idea where you’re trying to move them from where you’re trying to move them to. Then a big idea is what is your point of view and what’s at stake if they do or do not adopt it? That’s the organizing mechanism for your whole deck. And then each slide itself that supports that one big, big idea, each slide itself should make one point in support of that big idea. People can’t process too many things at one time, so depending on where you work, some people want something that’s not the key insight at the top of the slide, some people do. So, some might want the action to be taken or some might want the dreamy future state to be clear.
Some consulting firms where the slides are much denser because they were paid millions of dollars to make a big old deck. Some of them are like, “Oh, it always belongs in the lower right corner.” So, it’s kind of a little bit up to the brand and everyone believes it belongs somewhere else. If you’re making what we call a slide doc, which I think your listenership would be interested in, presentations go from big staged event to in a meeting where you’re trying to persuade your peers too. Can I make a presentation I can just circulate on email and everyone gets it? Well, that’s called a slide doc. You put more words, you put stronger picture. You could have a hundred page appendix and maybe the front of it’s only five slides, but everything they need to see your thinking, it follows behind it.
And you could circulate those and people read it. You write full sentences, you write full pros. It’s kind of like the six page memo that’s so popular to Amazon, but we contend that the F words and pictures, the six page memo is better. So, how do you send a memo around without the help of a presenter? And that’s on one extreme. And those are called slide docs that you build in presentation software. And then the other extreme is I’m on a massive stage somewhere and there’s all kinds of usage in between. And so I think the one idea per slide is important. And then this guiding principle, don’t make a single slide unless it supports the one big idea of your whole talk. That’s another principle for slide making, because most people go back to some sort of repository in some data store somewhere and they dig through old crappy slides and see if they can assemble something super quickly.
And that’s a cop out. Most of the time if you really think empathetically about your audience, going to the repository might get you halfway there, but you should be modifying and mapping all of the content based on who you’re talking to and especially if it’s high stakes. And sometimes you’re speaking to an audience that wants high density slides, because that’s how they communicate in their culture. And if you showed up with cinematic stage ready slides, they’d laugh you out of the room. And so you really got to, I mean, you got to know your audience, you got to know how they communicate, who they talk to and map to that.
Lenny:
Nancy Duarte: Sometimes it’s effective. So, the Minto principle is amazing. She’s got the, was it horizontal and vertical thinking? So, your main segues or your main section head should add up and then all the slides should support it. And then also how the construct of it is and when you state the conclusion first, that’s a great thing to do with execs. It’s a great thing to do when you are fundraising. There’s a certain type of an audience that works for, and there’s other audiences where they really need to be taught to long for this future state and you need longer to unpack it. So, one of the reasons you would start with the conclusion is especially in a funding round, now my version of a conclusion or result or is different than how she describes it. Because I would say you start with the new bliss. So, if you’re trying to raise funds, you would say, I am going to share with you something today and you share how your solution increases human flourishing.
It needs to be tied to the humanness and the big problem you’re going to solve and how humankind will benefit. Well, that’s different than just a consultant would show up and say, hi, I have this 800 page deck and the results of it are this. Let’s unpack it. It’s just a completely different motion and we use a three act story structure that’s quite a bit different too. But that work is solid and it was based kind of like my work, her work was based in going super deep in McKinsey’s thinking over time, whereas my work is going laterally across the 35 highest performing brands in the world that have been our customers. So, I went laterally across all those brands and then come up with solutions that are based, foreign story and are based in a bit of a broader application across companies that I have tons of respect for that body of work.
Lenny: Awesome. And willing to, I wrote a post about this whole concept for folks that want to dig deeper. Maybe one more question around tactical slide stuff, and I know this is, people ask you about this stuff all the time, but I can’t help it. I guess just any other tips for just like you’re sitting there trying to create a couple slides. What else maybe people should keep in mind to make it effective and let’s say this is for a small meeting kind of thing.
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, that’s a good question. I think that if do some thinking first, if it’s important, if it’s an important point of the meeting, my team is taught to just kind of sketch, change your environment up a little bit. A lot of people will fire up the deck, which is very linear. It’s like make one slide, second slide, third slide. So, just think and plan for a minute. And we tend to draw up storyboards. It’s like, okay, the first point, the second point, the third point or the just think first. It can be analog or digital. Put a page in front of all your decks. It’s just boxes. Just get the narrative right. And then when you actually open up the software, that’s where you have to think about, what’s the slide type that will convey this the most? Is it a table? Put a table. Especially for program managers, you have to convey dense project information, program information, product information, and that comes with density.
So, if you’re in a room with your peers and everyone in the room is a team and everyone has their own shorthanded and way of working, put that common slide up there. That common slide for that team might be dense to the outside world, but everyone’s used to using it so there’s no harm in using a commonly known, commonly acceptable framework or slide or table or Excel spreadsheet because you’re aligning around a process. And so don’t feel like every needs like cinematic pictures of kittens because that’s not going to get you anywhere. You’re trying to move an objective along, and that does mean that your slides might be more dense and sometimes internal slides have a lot more important information that needs to be on it to kick a product along or kick a process along.
Lenny: You were just talking about process and that is a great segue to a question I wanted to ask is just what does your process look like when you’re working with a company to help them craft an awesome presentation?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny because I don’t have to do this much anymore. I haven’t done it for about 15 years, which is nice. I have a gorgeous team of strategist, writers, conceptual thinkers, beautiful design.
Lenny: I was curious.
Nancy Duarte: Coaches. Yeah, I know. I get coached. It’s fun. I definitely, my books look awesome, not because of me, but because I’m followed around by people that do really gorgeous work. But the phrase that we use internally and sometimes with customers is we make presentations the way Pixar makes movies. And that’s very similar to the way we get somebody that has this high stakes moment where it’s a big deal in this moment. You have to win in the moment to push things along. And so we do, we literally craft a narrative, craft the big idea, craft the script and visualize certain moments. We start to map it out, we start to chunk it out.
And then big models sometimes when you’re really making a revolutionary model, one that could drive all the web assets, a lot of that stuff people don’t realize actually happens in the presentation first as an idea. So, sometimes we’ll start working on some of the key models right away too, and we start to circulate that around the company, because everyone has to build consensus around it. So, sometimes there’s multiple motions happening at the same time. Let’s sketch this. You go away, you work with this department, you try to get this settled, you get that set, you get this.
And then it gets reassembled at the end. And then the narrative is where you work all the kinks out and then when they stand and deliver, it’s like, yes, it’s the voice track that all the process supported. And then other times we’re building a report in a slide doc, or there was a time where we had a head of a multinational company that will remain nameless and the guy that was head of all of India was going to come over here and petition the CEO for a hundred million dollar budget.
It’s not trivial. And he comes, is like, “Okay, I need your help with these five slides.” And he just sends us the five slides and we’re like, “Well yeah, a hundred million. That’s kind of a lot. You really want to put technology between you and the CEO. Do you really want to sit side by side and both be looking at a computer in this moment where it’s like you’re petitioning him for, that’s a lot of money.” And he’s like, “Yeah, you’re right.” So, what we did is we made a mental model he could hold up in his head and the structure was so simple and clear. And then there was three moments where we’re like just, I don’t know, just grab a piece of paper or go to a whiteboard and just start to draw in front of him. Let him see your eyes, let him have eye contact.
Let him see your passion. Don’t be dispassionately looking at this computer. And he did it and he called us and he’s like, “I got a hundred million bucks.” So, it’s just those moments where you have to realize, wait, wait, wait, wait. Do I need a deck? Who am I talking to? And should is this a cookie cutter thing? And does the same process work every time? No. So, every time we solve something it’s very different and we try to make it unique to the presenter and the audience that they’re speaking to.
Lenny: Along the same lines, a lot of presentations now are actually remote and on Zoom and virtual. What do you recommend to people in terms of how they present and put presentations together being remote?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, it’s funny, we spent a lot of time coaching people to look in the camera. So, while I’ve been talking to you, I’m not actually looking at your face. I’m looking at the little dot at the top of my screen and my camera. And not a lot of people can do that. So, it’s gotten to where I can see that little white glowing dot and my heart warms, I know you’re there, I feel you. I can get sensations in my skin when I know I’m talking to someone that I adore or admire. And that took a long time to get there. And I was presenting remotely pre COVID. So, a lot of our coaching was about eye contact and doing that. The other thing that happens is people don’t see our hands anymore. They’re under the table. They can’t see how much space in a room we’re taking up.
They can’t see a lot of the characteristics that are common in communicating. And so there’s a lot of coaching around presence and how do you have presence in a room? How do you even get the microphone away from someone that’s remote and all those kinds of things. And a new study just came out, I just came across my desk today and it said that soft skills really suffered. And the people who did it right say and looked at the camera, they don’t have good eye contact skills anymore. When they are looking face-to-face in someone’s eyes, it’s like, oh, they’re not used to it. It’s been so long.
And then the other thing is, where do I sit in a room who’s got the position of authority? Just kind of some classic things that convey information in real life. So, it’s interesting, it peaked and now people are going back to the office some. A percent are back in the office. And now we have this weird place where it’s, oh, it’s half in the office and half people are remote. And the people that are remote are having a hard time getting their voices heard because the people in the room consume most of the air. So, it’s kind of going through this undulating life cycle of new communication skills people need while they’re remote. It’s all changing.
Lenny: I’m glad that I was not a PM in this remote world to be honest. I never experienced it, but I have a lot of empathy for being a product manager in this remote work world. Feels like the job got a lot harder.
Nancy Duarte: It did. I think it did.
Lenny: Yeah. So, let’s talk about nerves and stage fright. So, I hate public speaking. I get extremely nervous people. They may not feel this when they watch me, but it’s not my natural state. You work with a lot of people that I imagine are like, oh my god, I’m so scared to give this presentation. What advice do you give them to help them through that and feel more comfortable?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, I think people who are more thoughtful and contemplative about speaking have better content. They tend to really think through stuff than someone who’s like, I got this. I’ll just wing it. I’ll just walk on the stage. Anyone who’s like, tells me I am a nervous presenter, I’m like, you have probably got gorgeous content in your heart that the world needs to hear, because usually they are really deep and thoughtful. Like you already mentioned, you’re a pattern finder and you like to do thoughtful work. And so it’s hard. My husband is actually a brilliant communicator, just getting him to feel like he wants to take up the space. He’s a better communicator than I am. And so what happens is the reason you get scared, it’s a fight or flight instinct. For some reason stepping out on that stage, you feel your body and your mind and your psyche is feeling threatened like you would be attacked by an animal.
That’s literally what’s happening. And so you couple things you could do. You can actually sit in one of the seats of the auditorium and just sit there and look at the stage, look at the setting so you can imagine yourself on it. But then picture yourself as that friendly face, the one that’s happy to see you, the one that’s delighted that you’re speaking. And then as you’re standing up, remember that you saw yourself sitting there smiling and very happy. You have to change your visual model that people’s faces will be scowling, they’ll be judging you, they’ll be doubting you. All of those things are only in your head because getting you out on the stage to be able to start to expose people to this amazing content you have, the biggest battle is to get you out on this stage and delivering it.
And I asked a bunch of people once, I did a survey of all these public speakers and was like, how do you prepare? How do you prepare? What’s your pre-talk ritual? And some of them were like, “I play heavy metal music and I skip around the entire convention center, just get all fired up.” I’m like, “Wow, I have to calm myself down because I already have over to the top energy.” So, I literally find the dark. I don’t go to the green room, that stuff. I don’t like to hear gibber jabber. I have to be focused on my content. And so I find the darkest corner of the backstage and calmly sit and just breathe. I just breathe. Sometimes if I’m nervous, if there’s someone real famous in the audience, I have a little list playlist of funny things that people sent me, but I never watch. And that way right before I walk on stage, I chemically, my whole body chemically shifts from nervous to laughter. And that really helps me too, because it’s chemical and you have to train your chemistry a bit.
Lenny: I really like that tip. What are these funny things you watch if you-
Nancy Duarte: It’s like YouTube things, TikTok things. Just things that I tag and I try not to watch them or things that make me laugh. There’s this dorky low watched video of a guy with tin cans wrapped around his waist and he plays them. And my husband walks around the house like him and making the noise and I could probably sing the beat if I had to. And so sometimes I just play that, because it just transports me home, because a lot of times I’m presenting away from home and it just makes me laugh at my husband who’s hysterical. So, it’s just random things, but if you laugh and somehow can transport yourself outside of the fear of walking out there, it helps reset you before you walk out on stage.
Lenny: I really like that. Is there anything else just off the top of your head that just like right before you go on stage that you find to be really effective? So, watching funny videos, I love that. [inaudible 00:59:47] use it. Anything else?
Nancy Duarte: I breathe. I think I’ve learned a breathing pattern. I take a deep, deep breath and then I take that one while my lungs are full, I take another gulp of breath and I have to let it out real slow. But when I got the feedback that my friend and some people get over their fear by headbanging to heavy metal, so I’m not saying that’s not the wrong thing. So, I thought, well, maybe I should try that before I do a talk. And so I literally didn’t do that. But I stretched, I jumped a little, just low jumps, put my arms real big up in the air. And then I walked on stage and I happened to be speaking at a massive medical company, like big brand. And I finished my talk and my assistant got a call and they were like, “We’re little worried about Nancy. We think she might need to see a doctor. She could never control her breathing and we’re really concerned.”
And it was just because I just pumped myself up a little bit. So, I don’t do that whatsoever anymore. I went back to my calming, contemplative, meditative pre-talk ritual. So, for some people, literally I do encourage people to try headbanging to heavy metal. It might work. It’s just a matter of what you need. And nobody would guess that I’m not one to dance around or pump myself up, but I am not, I have to calm myself down. It’s the opposite.
Lenny: Awesome. Just a few more questions.
Nancy Duarte: Sure.
Lenny: So, you wrote a book called Illuminate and something that stood out to me from that book is this idea of a torch bearer and torch bearer leader. Can you just talk about what that is and why that is important in power?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, I loved writing that book. Co-author Patty Sanchez, a hat tip to her. So, to come up with this book, we knew that there’s one presentation, there’s a single presentation, could be on a stage, could be in a meeting, just updating people on a project status. And we knew though that every presentation usually is part of a larger movement where you’re trying to move people in mass to this alternate future. So, we studied movements, we deconstructed the largest movements. We met with Marshall Ganz at Harvard to say, “Hey, could this be true?” Because he studies movements. It was so fun. And then movements have a five act structure. So, picture, there’s this moment where you have to verbalize the dream like, hey, we’re going to head to this new place and this is what I have to do at my kickoff meetings. It’s like imagine this place in the future that we’re headed to.
So, it’s five steps, it’s a five act story structure, if you want to call it five acts. It’s dream, leap, fight, climb, arrive. So, the torch bearer, the reason we called that is the leaders know where they’re headed, but they might not ever see it super, super clearly. And we chose a torch because a torch, if you’re in a cave and you have a torch, you only see about five, eight feet around you, but it’s enough to dissipate the fear of the people following you in. And so nobody sees the future clearly. Nobody has that kind of level skill. All we know is I need to traverse this direction to be at the right place in the future so all my staff is safe, all are, we stay a leader in the industry. That’s all I know. And as we start to head there, there’s these moments of communication you need to do, which is, hey everyone, here’s the dream. Here’s where we’re headed. That’s the dream phase.
Then there’s this moment where they either choose to jump in and go with you or they choose not to. You could talk about Frodo like Sam and only a few hobbits followed him. And so it’s like people select to commit this journey. That’s the beginning of your movement. But then the middle is the messy middle of a story. We call it the fight and climb phase. So, what happens is they commit to your idea, they commit to your program, your project, and they’re like enthused at first. And then they go into the state of, oh my God, this is harder than I thought. It’s a long slog. This climb is getting exhausted. I don’t know if I have this much fight in me to make this all work, not fight with each other, but like, oh my God, I’m having to overcome this roadblock and that roadblock and we have to go get that budget.
So, it’s just, it’s like a fight, climb, fight, climb, fight, climb. And then ultimately you arrive. Each one of those five phases you need to use speeches, stories, ceremonies and symbols at each phase to give the people traveling with you the emotional fuel they need to keep going, to keep seeing that idea become realized. And it literally is about fueling the right emotions with speeches, stories, ceremonies, and symbols while you’re moving people toward a bigger initiative. So, it’s bigger than just one presentation, it’s multiple presentations, multiple stories, multiple ceremonies. So, I loved that book. People are really feeding off of it right now because leading change has been nonstop. It’s just been change, change, change the last especially few years.
Lenny: Change is the only constant like they say.
Nancy Duarte: Exactly.
Lenny: I really like this metaphor of the torch giving you a sense of, as a leader, you can see some portion around you, but you’re not going to see the entire cave necessarily. That is really interesting. Maybe a final question very tactically is I give an interview where you shared that you had kind of two videos, one where it’s very informal, you’re just standing in front of whiteboard in jeans or something, just talking about some about data, I think in presentations. And then you had a similar video where it was very well constructed, high production value, and the informal video did a lot better. Is that something you’re seeing? Just that kind of content ends up being more successful and why do you think that is?
Nancy Duarte: I think video content, production quality now isn’t the expectation for it being high quality. It’s just completely shifted over the last five, eight years or so as everyone’s an expert and can show up as an expert. There’s a big difference to me about showing up as a keynoter, which is like, I’m going to stand, I’m going to look right. I’m going to have this eye contact, I’m going to nail it. My slides are gorgeous, I’m driving the industry. And for people to think that our explanations of things needs to be done as a stand and deliver keynote, that’s just not true. So, I experimented with that and I had some videos I had done, and one of them, like you said, was me looking in the camera. I even had HD makeup, a film crew. I was well lit, I looked amazing. I mean, I did look amazing and it was polished.
I delivered it really well. And then I thought, because on LinkedIn I post a lot, that’s where my primary channel is, and I thought what would happen if I just posted a rando shot of me? And I’m maybe airing on a little bit like orange, I look a little Trumpian, a little bit orange. It’s not color corrected, but it’s super informative, really full of information. And that was my highest viewed video so far. And I realized that it’s like people want the content and we do as a presentation company, I have to nail it maybe more than others, but it doesn’t have to be fully video edited, infographics spinning, swooshing things forward and swooshing things back.
That kind of nature of it is not necessary to get the message across. And so we actually have a whole process and program we’re rolling out where you’re going to see a lot more video from us, partially from that insight, but partially because my team, I have a team of experts, they have a lot of great things to share, and so I’m trying to give them, I’m trying to make it be like Duarte does not equal Nancy Duarte. I’m trying to make it so it’s like so many experts work at Duarte, you got to watch any video from any of them is where we’re moving at Duarte. They’re freaks of brilliance and just experts. They’re world class experts. So, that’s what we’re trying to do.
Lenny: I feel like you have a similar challenge to me where I named my newsletter, Lenny’s Newsletter.
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, same thing.
Lenny: [inaudible 01:07:33] talk about that.
Nancy Duarte: Same thing.
Lenny: Yeah, can never be anyone else. It’s a challenge, but yeah, don’t know, it worked out. Okay. Actually, real final question before we get to a very exciting lightning round. Have you seen examples of product managers specifically telling really good stories?
Nancy Duarte: The product management process has multiple phase. There’s the creative explorative process all the way through to getting it produced. And I think story can take you along in each phase. So, there’s example, which I read about, I wasn’t actually even part of, but Brian Chesky at Airbnb, there was a whole article where he unpacked this moment in their product development cycle where they decided they would take a walk in the shoes of their customer and they hired a Pixar illustrator to illustrate each scene as the team’s like, okay, okay, they said this is her name. And they were like, okay, what happens? Her alarm goes off. Okay, what happens next? What happens next? Okay, now she’s decided she needs to book something. What does she do? She wants to do that. They realized from this little walk in the shoes of their customer just this day in the life, which is a classic storytelling method for any product, they realized that they had their strategy wrong, that they needed to move as soon as possible to a mobile first strategy.
And it was just because they actually thought about, okay. She goes, brushes their teeth, they do this. They were just literally walking through the life of their ideal customer and that was when they realized they had it all messed up. But the other phases, after all this work people put into product and the making of the product and the managing of pushing it through. We have a large client that makes shoes or athletic things. I love telling stories, but I can’t say this. And there’s this moment where we get brought in and could you please train our product people in story? We’re like, “What’s the big problem?” They’re like, “They’ll spend a year or two on a shoe and be like, chunk, put it on the table. And they’re like, what do you have to say about it?” They’re like, “It’s red.” And it’s like all these years of investment, all these years, they couldn’t unpack any sort of story or any sort of reason or even their passion for why they chose red.
And it was like, here’s my shoe, it’s red. And so this ability to move things along by adding meaning or why and then wrapping it in a story actually can get a product chosen or rejected or there’s just so many examples of different spaces in the product cycle that could benefit from a really well told story from, like I said, how the products innovate in the roadmap all the way through to what gets accepted. And then the big reveal, you think about even all the big Apple launches, it’s about a big product reveal. It’s about revealing this thing that had been hidden for so long and it’s another moment to tell amazing stories. So, that’s kind of a little bit of an insight on the product side of how to use story.
Lenny: The Airbnb example is an awesome example. It’s all true. When I joined Airbnb is actually right there in the process of doing that.
Nancy Duarte: I love that.
Lenny: And they ended up drawing these key frames of the journey as you described, and they put it right in the center of the office. Here’s the journey of a host and a guest that’s like 12 frames of that journey. And that actually became the strategy of the company is let’s pick six of these frames and make them awesome. And that’s what we’re going to do.
Nancy Duarte: That’s awesome.
Lenny: Make booking experience awesome. Make the arrival experience awesome. So, there’s a lot of truth to that.
Nancy Duarte: And it was visualized, right? The vision was visualized like what you’re saying we’re headed in the future. And it was super clear. I love that story. So cool you were there.
Lenny: Yeah, it was very cool. And they actually were very mobile. You could grab one of these drawings and bring it to your desk and how are we going to make this moment better this week?
Nancy Duarte: That’s awesome.
Lenny: And it was actually indeed, Pixar storyboard artist that they hired for a year. That was his job. Draw these key frames.
Nancy Duarte: Oh, that’s amazing.
Lenny: And it connects so directly with your point about empathy. That was the epitome of empathy. Here’s what the guest and hosts are going through, and here’s where we can do better.
Nancy Duarte: Yeah, it’s amazing. Yeah, it does tie together.
Lenny: If folks want to look this up, by the way, we’ll link in the show notes. If you just Google Snow White Airbnb, you can watch a video of how they all kind of came about this. Well, with that, we’ve reached our very exciting lightning round. I’ve got six questions for you if you’re ready.
Nancy Duarte: Yep, I’m ready.
Lenny: What are two or three books that you recommended most to other people?
Nancy Duarte: I think I always classically recommend the gospels because there’s just so much love and groundbreaking thinking there. And then for people who do wind up taking an interest in story, I think one of the best books, if you want to pick that up, is Chris Vogler’s, The Writer’s Journey, where he took Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey, made it 12 Steps, and he was a Disney story analyst. So, it’s just really classic body of work that had really helped people get their minds around story and the archetypes.
Lenny: What is a favorite recent movie or TV show?
Nancy Duarte: It’s my little sinful pleasure. It’s way into K drama, Korean drama. Don’t even ask me how, but I’m way into that. I’ve seen almost all of them now. I’m at the bottom of the barrel of them.
Lenny: Is there a favorite?
Nancy Duarte: No, my husband just watched one. It’s called Business Proposal, and he watched it with me and he’s like, oh no, now I’m going to be hooked too. They’re just real. They’re just cute as a button. And they have a longer arc. They’re like an epic length tail. They drop in 12 part seasons or one season 12. Anyway, don’t even get me started. It sounds dumb, because I like the epic tales and the dramas, but they’re cute.
Lenny: I love it.
Nancy Duarte: They’re just cute.
Lenny: This is great. Getting very real. What is a favorite interview question that you like to ask people that you’re hiring?
Nancy Duarte: Oh, favorite interview question. We ask a lot about who they are. So, we use psychometrics a lot here, and we really understand who they are, and we actually ask people to tell a story. And if that’s uncomfortable or those psychometrics are uncomfortable, they’re not really a fit, because we are a systemic story culture, and we define empathy at the company as know yourself, accept yourself, kind of work on yourself, and then adapt to others. So, if people aren’t open to really understanding how they show up then and then adapt and change under our care, then we don’t hire them.
Lenny: What is a favorite product you’ve recently discovered that you love?
Nancy Duarte: I’m excited about a tool I just paid for last week. It’s called writer.com. So, it’s built on multiple language models and including, it’s going to be trained on our own, all my IP, all my books, every blog post, it’ll learn the voice and it’ll use my own kind of language model to help us write faster. So, we put really good prompts in and we get a really good product out. So, I’m super excited about that.
Lenny: I’m actually an investor in that company, so this is great to hear.
Nancy Duarte: Oh yeah. That’s awesome.
Lenny: Writer.com. What is something relatively minor you’ve changed in your approach to developing presentations that has had a big impact on your ability to execute and get them out?
Nancy Duarte: Yeah. I think there’s the biggest roadblock for so long that made things painful was the edit cycles. How do we do a round with a client? Then you have multiple version, then you have version control. So, we’ve come up with this annotation system, so everyone on a project knows exactly the status of that slide, and there’s no way really to check slides in and out. And so we’ve come up with this amazing, beautiful, very visual process where everyone knows the exact status of the slide, and it’s really easy. You could put it in thumbnail mode and be like, hmm, we’re 80% complete. Everyone’s going to focus on just these two things. So, that part of the process, especially enterprise at scale where 20 or 30 people are contributors to a deck. That process we made is the clients are really liking it.
Lenny: To leave people with one final tip to give better presentations. What would that be?
Nancy Duarte: To become a better presenter, pick a topic you are passionate about, something where you’re like, oh my gosh, I’ve got to see this happen. And pick that topic and be so passionate about it. Work on that talk or stand up at a volunteer thing and really work on something that makes you feel passionate. And then in the future when you’re presenting something that you’re not passionate about, everything you learned will apply to a business presentation, but you’re going to have that feeling. You’re going to know what it’s like to present from your soul and from a place of passion and the great presenters tap into that passion point and pull from that, and that’s what makes them a great presenter on other topics, that they might not be as passionate about.
Lenny: Nancy, I so appreciate you making time for this. It’s been an honor.
Nancy Duarte: You’re amazing.
Lenny: Everything. You’re amazing.
Nancy Duarte: You’re amazing.
Lenny: You’re amazing. Two final questions. Where can folks find you if they’d like to reach out, and how can listeners be useful to you?
Nancy Duarte: Oh, they can find me at duarte.com. There’s also a duarte.com/nancy where I’ve got a ton of free stuff where you could find a lot of the things I’ve talked about. I’m on Twitter @NancyDuarte, and I do connect to everyone who connects to me on LinkedIn, which is kind of fun. So, I think, how could they be useful to me? I think it will cure so many problems if everyone became a really good communicator, so you can help me by working hard on your communication skills, working hard on your clarity, and making everyone around you much happier people.
Lenny: What a beautiful way to end it. Nancy, again, thank you so much for being here.
Nancy Duarte: Oh, you’re amazing. Thanks for having me.
Lenny: We’re amazing. Let’s end it.
Nancy Duarte: We are. Let’s just say it.
Lenny: All right. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.com. See you in the next episode.
Glossary
| English | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Abraham Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln(美国第十六任总统,保留原名) |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 希区柯克 |
| annotation system | 批注系统(团队协作中对幻灯片状态进行标记的流程) |
| archetype | 原型(文学与心理学中反复出现的角色类型与叙事模式) |
| audience journey | audience journey(听众旅程,Duarte 方法论术语) |
| B2B | B2B(企业对企业) |
| big idea | big idea(核心观点,Duarte 方法论术语) |
| Blackberry | 黑莓(早期智能手机品牌) |
| cavalier king spaniel | 骑士查理王小猎犬 |
| Duarte Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design | Duarte 桌面出版与平面设计 |
| fMRI | fMRI(功能性磁共振成像,functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) |
| Freehand | Freehand(矢量绘图软件,保留原名) |
| Frodo | 弗罗多(《指环王》主角,国际知名虚构角色) |
| Gettysburg Address | 葛底斯堡演说 |
| hero’s journey | 英雄之旅(Joseph Campbell 提出的叙事结构模型) |
| Linear | Linear(知名项目管理工具,保留原名) |
| Linotype | Linotype(传统排版铸造机系统,保留原名) |
| love language | 爱之语(人际沟通中表达与感受爱的方式) |
| Luke Skywalker | 卢克·天行者 |
| MacWorld | MacWorld(苹果相关专业杂志,保留原名) |
| Marshall Ganz | Marshall Ganz(哈佛大学社会运动研究学者,保留原名) |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr.(美国民权运动领袖,保留原名) |
| McKinsey | 麦肯锡(全球知名管理咨询公司) |
| mind’s eye | 心智之眼(内心的视觉想象能力) |
| Minto Pyramid principle | Minto 金字塔原理(Barbara Minto 提出的商务写作与沟通框架,先结论后论证) |
| MSA | MSA(Master Service Agreement,主服务协议) |
| new bliss | 新理想国(Duarte 演讲结构模型术语,指最终的美好未来状态) |
| newsletter | newsletter(定期通讯/邮件订阅刊物,保留原名) |
| Obi-Wan Kenobi | 欧比旺·肯诺比 |
| Patty Sanchez | Patty Sanchez(Duarte 的合著者,保留原名) |
| Photoshop | Photoshop(图像处理软件,保留原名) |
| Pixar | 皮克斯(知名动画电影工作室) |
| PM | PM(产品经理,Product Manager) |
| psychometrics | 心理测评(通过标准化工具测量个体心理特征的方法) |
| Sam | 山姆(《指环王》角色,国际知名虚构角色) |
| slide doc | slide doc(可独立分发阅读的幻灯片文档,Duarte 方法论术语) |
| star moment | star moment(Duarte 提出的演讲设计术语,指让听众永远难忘的关键瞬间) |
| State of the Union | 国情咨文(指美国总统年度演讲,此处也用作比喻) |
| Steve Jobs | Steve Jobs(苹果公司联合创始人,保留原名) |
| storyboard | 故事板(用草图规划叙事流程的视觉工具) |
| Superhost program | 超赞房东项目(Airbnb 的房东等级认证项目) |
| TED | TED(Technology, Entertainment, Design,保留原名) |
| TEDx | TEDx(TED 组织授权的本地独立演讲活动,保留原名) |
| Think Different | Think Different(Apple 经典广告活动,保留原名) |
| torch bearer | 火炬手(Duarte 著作 Illuminate 中的核心概念,指引领团队走向未知未来的领导者) |
| version control | 版本控制(管理文档多版本变更的机制) |
| Zoom | Zoom(视频会议平台) |
Reformatted by reformat_english.py
与 Nancy Duarte 聊故事叙述:如何打造引人入胜的演示并讲出令人难忘的故事
文字记录
Nancy Duarte: 很多人以为,唯一需要认真做演示的时候就是大型舞台演讲——需要投入大量精力打磨脚本、构建对比叙事。但我告诉你一个小秘密。周末我能用一句极其简短的”现状是什么、可以变得多美好”就让我丈夫乖乖做家务。所以在会议中、电话里、任何需要施加影响的时刻,只要脑子里装着这套”对比”框架,它就真的管用。无论什么形式都管用。
Lenny: 欢迎收听 Lenny’s Podcast,在这里我采访世界级的产品负责人和增长专家,从他们辛苦积累的经验中学习如何打造和发展当今最成功的产品。今天的嘉宾是 Nancy Duarte。Nancy 是我从未想过能请到的一类嘉宾,但我非常高兴她来了。Nancy 是畅销书作者、演讲者,也是 Duarte 公司的 CEO。这家公司已为全球最有影响力的商业领袖、品牌和机构制作了超过 25 万份演示文稿,客户包括 Apple、TED、Google、世界银行,以及大名鼎鼎的 Al Gore 那场《难以忽视的真相》演讲。在这次对话中,Nancy 分享了大量关于如何改进演示、如何讲好故事、如何构建有说服力的论点、如何在演讲时缓解紧张情绪的实用建议,甚至还有一个可以改善人际关系动态的简单沟通框架。我和 Nancy 聊得非常开心,相信你也会喜欢这期节目。
(跳过赞助商广告)
演示文稿的惊人数量
Lenny: Nancy,欢迎来到播客。
Nancy Duarte: 谢谢你的邀请,Lenny。
Lenny: 到目前为止,你直接和间接参与制作的演示文稿有多少份了?
Nancy Duarte: 这个问题很好。大家都知道我喜欢拍脑袋给个数字然后假装它是真的。我们之前有位总裁在 2014 年的时候认真算过一次,当时他给出的数字是 22.5 万份,那已经是将近十年前了,所以我现在也说不准了。我们已经不再追踪这个数据了,但数量肯定非常庞大。35 年来我们启动了数千个项目,每个项目里有时包含两到上百份演示文稿,所以很难给出确切数字。
Lenny: 20 万份。
Nancy Duarte: 他说的是 25 万份,不过那是十年前的数字了,我自己没去重新算过。所以当我的团队质疑这个数字时,我说,“哦,是 Dan 算的。“他们就说,“哦,那应该是准确的。“因为他们以为我只是随口编了个数。我说,不不不,我们确实去查过了。
Lenny: 好吧。我没想到这个数字会这么大。太疯狂了。
Nancy Duarte: 有意思的是,某种程度上我手里握着整个硅谷的历史。每一个小创业公司的演示文稿都在这里,后来其中一些成长为 Cisco 那样的大型品牌,你可以真切地看到这些公司的兴衰起落。而且我至今仍保存着大量档案,那些演示文稿都还在,所以理论上我可以去精确验证那个数字。
最难忘的演示:Al Gore 的《难以忽视的真相》
Lenny: 好的,那接下来的问题就更难回答了。在你参与过的所有演示文稿中,哪一份最令你难忘或影响最大?
Nancy Duarte: 那肯定是 Al Gore 的《难以忽视的真相》(An Inconvenient Truth)。它出现的那个时代,没有人真正知道、也没有人见过一份做得如此出色的演示是什么样子。它甚至在 TED 演讲上网之前就问世了,所以人们从未见过有人用数据讲故事、站在数据前面、在 90 英尺的大屏幕上呈现的场面。不过在《难以忽视的真相》之前,我们已经和他合作了五年。人们以为他从副总统直接转型成了那个演讲者,而且是我亲自指导他的——其实我让我的团队去和他合作。是他们满世界飞、跳上 Oprah 的后台。他们乐在其中,那真是一段巅峰时期。
但最令我难忘的其实是另一件事。我们经常和硅谷那些二十出头的 CEO 合作,他们往往会带着一种比我们这些做了这么多年的人更懂的态度来。而这位身居高位、本身就是杰出政治家兼沟通者的人却截然不同。当团队坐在会议室里对他说,“我们觉得你需要这样说,我们觉得应该这样传达,我们认为应该这样可视化”——无论我们提出什么建议,他都会停下来,摸着下巴,认真思考,真的去考虑我们也许确实是这方面的专家。
而且大多数时候,他都会采纳我们的建议。所以作为客户——一个可能是全世界最有权势的人之一——能够如此谦逊地将专业判断交付给我们,这是一次非常愉快的客户合作经历。我记得当他们打电话告诉我这个演讲将被拍成电影、已经获得投资时,我开始收到各种相关信息。他们希望我们做大量工作把它改到适合电影呈现的水准。我永远忘不了我当时说的话:“哇,那意味着我们得免费做一大堆工作,而且谁会去看一部关于幻灯片演示的电影啊?“那真的是我的原话。所以是的,我当时完全没想到它会变成后来那样。整个过程堪称奇迹。
Lenny: 你当时有没有预料到那场演示之后产生的巨大影响?还是仅仅觉得”这是接到了一个活儿,做完就完了,然后继续下一个”?
五年磨一剑
Nancy Duarte: 嗯,我们做这一行已经五年了。我觉得那套策略——不管是有意为之还是无心插花,我不清楚——他一个城市接一个城市地跑,因为那五年他一直在旅途中播种,就像为一场浪潮埋下伏笔。他会去斯坦福校园,邀请湾区精英参加,活动始终是私密的、VIP 性质的。整整五年,他就这样不停地四处奔波,反复打磨、呈现那场演讲。我觉得这营造了一种渴望。我不确定它是否会有那么大的传播力,我不知道如果人们之前不曾了解那场演示、不曾看过那场演示,还会不会带着朋友去看那部电影——至少我是这样想象那部分是如何发生的。
他也很慷慨,Lenny。我的意思是,后来那五年他四处旅行演讲时,结束时总会放一页幻灯片,上面写着我们公司的名字,还会当着观众的面感谢我们。超级大方,而且也付了费——大部分工作是有报酬的,当然我们也投入了大量自己的时间。不过确实,非常慷慨,然后电影就变成了它后来的样子。有点意外,但结果不错。电影很好看。
Lenny: 确实很好。这也让我想到一个我经常观察到的模式——改变一切的从来不是某一次演示,而是像你说的,之前有五年的铺垫。你总能看到这些所谓”一夜成名”的故事,然后你一深挖就会发现,其实根本不是那么回事。
Nancy Duarte: 是的,后来它获得关注之后他也做得很出色。我们开发了一整套培训项目,他可以把人请到他在田纳西的住处进行培训。它几乎变成了一种”培训培训师”的模式,他还可以正式授权你成为代言人。所以整个事情从展开、到规模化、再到获得关注的方式,都非常美妙。
与 Apple 的合作渊源
Lenny: 说到令人印象深刻的客户,我最近才知道一件事——Apple 从你们公司成立第一天起就是你们的客户,对吗?
Nancy Duarte: 是的,没错。
Lenny: 你们最初是怎么拿下的?另外,从这段经历中学到了什么,对你们在演示设计、沟通以及与客户合作方面产生了怎样的影响?
Nancy Duarte: 我很喜欢这个问题。那时我有一份正式工作,正在上班。我丈夫买了一台 Mac,他说:“我觉得这是一门生意,它可能成为一个真正的生意。“他当时是插画师,不是设计师,但他是学纯艺术出身的。他说:“你看,我会画画。“当然,那会儿全是像素化的、点阵式的。他说:“你看,我能在这里画线条。“如果你们能看到他的画室,他的作品真的很漂亮。他绝对是一个纯艺术家。他说:“我觉得这是一门生意,这可能成为一门生意。“而我挺着大肚子——我们之前聊过这个——我儿子马上就要出生了,我对他说:“老兄,你得去找一份正经工作。我不想你整天玩那个小 Mac。”
在我们婚姻中他一共求过我两次。他真的跪下来,想让我理解他的立场。他说:“你就读一本 MacWorld 杂志,就从头到尾读一遍,如果你还是觉得这不可能成为什么的话……”因为我当时用的是大型机,我想,我用的是真正的电脑。后来我打了几个电话,分别打给了 NASA、Tandem(现在是 HP)和 Apple,结果三家同时都签了合同。那时候我们的公司叫 Duarte Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design(Duarte 桌面出版与平面设计)。
Lenny: 哇。
Nancy Duarte: 我知道,我知道。我们就这样挤进去了。说到产品生命周期,我们进入得非常早,一切还是点阵式的,毫无美感可言。大多数用户不知道怎么排版,不知道怎么分栏,不知道怎么用这个工具。Macintosh 的生命周期中大约有十八个月的窗口期,平面设计师们拒绝使用它,就是拒绝。“这是玩具,太丑了,是点阵的。“没人愿意碰它,字体也看不过去。“我们用的是 Linotype。“那种高高在上的态度,我们绝不碰它。而我们恰恰就在那个时间点切入了。去图书馆借了排版方面的书,研究我们能做到什么、用这个工具能做到什么,然后剩下的就成了历史。就是这样开始的,那个时机,以及去推动一个在设计圈里几乎没人感兴趣的工具——当时采用率很低。
Lenny: 很有意思——所以基本上就是冷邮件、冷 outreach,就是说”嘿,我们想跟你们合作”?
Nancy Duarte: 冷电话。就是冷电话打过去的,是的。
演示文稿的演变
Lenny: 你从那段经历中收获了什么,影响了你对演示中什么有效、什么无效的理解?
Nancy Duarte: 以前的演示是用老式转盘放映机放 35 毫米幻灯片。实际上 Al Gore 当时给我看的就是他的幻灯片转盘,七十年代的那种,当时就是这么做的。但 Apple 是第一家大规模把电脑接到投影仪上的公司。那时候像圣何塞会议中心那种大场馆的投影仪,体量巨大,风险也很高。因为我们是最早进入的,他们推动我们开始用这个工具做演示,而且当时全是黑白的。我们最开始做的一切都是黑白的。后来我们就不断推进、推进、再推进——从如何在工具中做插图,到如何给剪贴画上色。我说的可是剪贴画图库刚出来的那会儿,他们说:“嘿,拿这些素材,给它们上色。”
所以拿下这个客户真的是一个里程碑式的时刻。我记得那款工具开始大规模流行时,做出来的东西很丑——你可以说是”丑出天际”,随你怎么叫,总之每个做幻灯片的人都做得非常糟糕,简直一塌糊涂。而我们在努力突破工具的边界,让它看起来美观一些。1992 年在旧金山有一个销售大会,当时的销售负责人算得上是个创意方面的怪才。我记得他说:“我不知道你怎么做到,但我想要你把整张幻灯片铺满——“那时候幻灯片基本上就是文字提词器,密密麻麻全是文字,能贴上一张剪贴画就算不错了。他说:“我要你让整张幻灯片只铺满一个词——‘BIG’,用亮粉色,背景是黑色。因为当这张幻灯片弹出来,满屏粉色的’BIG’出现时,我要它真的照亮台下观众的脸。”
当时我完全不知道怎么做——我们做不到。我们得进 Freehand,转换格式,走六个步骤,最后生成一个当时很小的 JPEG 还是 PNG 之类的文件,再把它放大。所以还是有像素化的痕迹。我记得排练时我站在那个大厅里,制作团队集体倒吸一口气,有几个人甚至尖叫起来。他们说:“这是谁做的?“——其实只是一个品红色的”BIG”而已。我清楚地记得那一刻心想:演示就应该是这样做的。把这个工具交给大众,某种程度上反而毁掉了这个媒介本身。
从工具失控到重塑媒介
Nancy Duarte: 我觉得在我创业的头十年左右,我一直在重塑这个媒介——它一旦落入大众手中就完全失控了,走向了完全相反的方向。所以说来奇怪,那确实是我职业生涯中一个真正的决定性时刻,让我意识到:等等,我们可以换个做法,可以回归到当年 35 毫米幻灯片时代的那种水准。这是其中一个故事。另外,我觉得我们非常擅长对接品牌的视觉规范。我们会拿起这个工具——不管什么工具都行,我们服务的所有品牌用的都不一样,有的用 Slides,有的用 Keynote,有的用 PowerPoint。客户用什么工具我们就用什么工具,在每种媒介里把它推到极限。但我们会把他们的品牌规范真正融入口头表达的媒介中,当他们站上舞台时,呈现出来的效果是电影级的。视觉本身就能成为一种体验。
我记得 Apple 推出 Think Different 广告活动的时候。Steve Jobs 刚回归不久,我的设计师们——当时 Photoshop 还是新东西,所有人都在做那种带斜面质感的背景,背景上堆满了各种花哨的东西。我走过一看,心想:“不行,我们不能给 Think Different 广告活动搞一个蓝色相框风格的照片边框,这绝对行不通。“于是我记得我把所有海报都研究了一遍,想起 Alfred Hitchcock 那些海报——上面有这种颗粒感,就只是光影和暗影。
然后我找到了 Adobe 当时做的一段素材视频,就是颗粒在空气中以一定角度飘浮的画面,我们把六色 Apple 标志叠在了上面。这在当时非常革命性——推动品牌表达向前迈进一步,同时把所有多余的东西都剔除掉,而当时全世界都在做那些丑陋的模板。正是这些时刻推动着公司不断前进,因为我知道某个创意对 Apple 的品牌来说不可接受,那它对任何品牌也不应该被接受。我觉得这几个故事说明的就是,如何以一种更让受众愉悦的方式去真正推动这个媒介。当观众能清楚地知道应该把注意力放在哪里时,他们就是更喜欢。我们热爱那个品牌,由衷地热爱。
三个核心原则
Lenny: 好,我们来聊点实操性的东西,因为你刚才提到了一些你发现确实有效的具体做法。这档播客的听众大概都已经听过很多次了——做好演示真的很重要,讲故事和沟通的力量非常大,诸如此类。他们可能也读了一堆书、博客文章,看了各种关于如何做一场出色演示的视频。但包括我自己在内,我觉得大多数人在坐下来准备 PPT 的时候——比如一周后要在一个全员大会上做汇报,或者要去开一个会——总是手足无措:我到底该怎么做?好吧,有开头、中间、结尾,得提出某种问题……每次都是那种”我不知道自己在干什么”的感觉。如果有人正在听这期播客,心想:我要给自己写张便签条,列出三个要点,提醒自己做 PPT 时该记住什么——那这三个要点是什么?
Nancy Duarte: 第一,你的受众才是英雄。这个我在 2011 年的 TED 演讲里就讲过。第二,把故事注入你的演讲中。第三,问自己:他们能”看见”我在说什么吗?这三条就是核心建议——除此之外就是从共情出发。嗯,其实”受众是英雄”本身就是以共情为核心的方法。
共情是方法论的核心
Lenny: 那我们来逐条展开聊聊。我本来就想问你关于共情的事,感觉这个概念在你的建议中出现得非常频繁——共情似乎就是你在讲述精彩故事、做精彩演示这套方法论的核心。我们来多花点时间聊聊这个。为什么它如此重要?在实际操作中具体是什么样的?
Nancy Duarte: 共情对 Duarte 来说至关重要,我们所做的一切都是共情优先。这部分原因跟我自己的成长经历有些关系。我母亲在临床上患有自恋型人格障碍,而自恋者天生缺乏共情能力。我觉得正是因为在成长过程中没有看到共情的示范,我才一直拼命强调共情的重要性。我想很多听众可能也在为一个缺乏共情的老板工作——这样的老板不以他人为中心,说话前不会先考虑别人的感受,诸如此类。而我就是被这样的人抚养长大的。所以我写的每一本书、做的每一个模型,都以共情为核心,因为你必须思考:我在跟谁对话?尤其是在沟通场景中——我在跟谁对话?当我踏上探索故事讲述的旅程时,一开始我认为,好吧,演讲者才是英雄——肯定是演讲者,他们是中心人物,他们说话最多,他们站在灯光下,他们在舞台上。
演讲者的真正角色是导师
所以当我研究各种原型角色的时候,我得出了这个结论。然后我突然意识到——天哪。当我真正深入去研究”导师”这个角色时,我发现在神话和电影中,导师才是演讲者的位置,而在一场演示中,真正掌握权力的是观众——观众有权选择接受还是拒绝你的想法。权力的天平在他们那边,不在你这边。所以演讲者真正的角色是做导师。在神话和电影中,导师是走到英雄身边的。换句话说,演讲者应该走到受众身边,帮助他们走出困境,或者带去一件神奇的工具。我觉得 Obi-Wan Kenobi 就是一个很好的例子。
他给了 Luke Skywalker 两样东西:一把光剑,这是给他外在旅程的——他所经历的那段物理旅程;还有一个内在的工具,即信念,这是通过原力传递给他的。所以当你面对一群听众演讲时,他们会有一种内在的冲突,你需要给他们一些东西来安抚。同时你在要求他们去做某件事、采取某个行动、响应某个号召——这是在要求他们在物理上做出改变或采取行动。如果你没有设身处地地想过,你所要求他们做的事情对他们来说有多难,他们就不会去做。所以当你开始搭建 PPT 的时候,你必须转换思维方式:我在跟谁说话?我要怎么帮助他们走出困境?这就是我们所做一切的最底层原则。
Lenny: 能举一个实际操作的例子吗?我们继续聊这些原则的时候——这些理论非常好——有没有一个我们能了解的实际案例,某个做出来的 PPT?
Nancy Duarte: 哦,我们能公开谈论的例子啊。其实我可以聊聊我们自己内部的做法。我们大部分工作都是在 MSA(主服务协议)下进行的,因为客户都是些非常知名的品牌。所以在我们公司内部,每当我需要做一场涉及目标设定或要求团队达成目标的演示之前——比如我们每年会做一次”愿景演讲”——我们会先做一轮倾听之旅。其中一部分是问卷调查,一部分是一对一访谈。我们把收集上来的信息汇总,然后跟我们要要求他们去做的事情做对比,做一些差距分析。我们确实会问自己一些具体的问题,这些问题的思路比较接近经典的设计思维方法——了解他们目前处于什么状态。然后我们会做一个非常粗糙的初稿——或者由高管团队做一个粗糙的初稿——接着邀请下一层级的领导进来,我们做一次模拟演练。我说的是真的那种粗糙,幻灯片做得很丑,我们不会在幻灯片的视觉上花时间。
Nancy Duarte: 这时候关注的是信息本身,也许还会加上一两个模型,让我们在模拟中过一遍,看看能不能放大或强化信息的传达。然后收集反馈——这一步是最难的。从粗糙初稿——“我们大概要讲这些”——到让演讲真正引发共鸣,这个跨越非常困难。所有这些工作完成后,我们才正式交付,向全公司分享。我们深知,那是我全年要做的一场最难的演讲。我以前到处出差做公开演讲,但给自己团队做的内部演讲反而需要花更多时间。
所以,当我去外面演讲时,大家的反应是”天哪,我好喜欢你的模型”,“天哪,能跟你合个影吗?“但当我站在自己团队面前时,他们的心态是——“看她这次要说什么”,因为我要么会让他们的工作更难,要么会改变他们的优先级。他们带着更多的怀疑走进来。不过,我们确实把年度启动会做到了非常成熟。那场我们确实拿捏了。然后我们还会做季度更新,跟进年度启动会的内容。这形成了一个节奏,大家也变得有热情,我们目前这方面的表现确实很出色。
Lenny: 对,从外部看也是这种感觉。我就在想,在 Duarte 设计公司内部做演示的压力——如果你觉得自己公司的内部演讲都已经很难了,想象一下——
Nancy Duarte: 在演示专家面前做演示,就好比——
Lenny: 天哪。
Nancy Duarte: 而且我会紧张,真的会紧张。因为只要有一张幻灯片有点瑕疵,或者我说了一个”嗯”,或者我走来走去太多了——每次你都会流失三分之一的团队成员。他们太专业了。所以确实很难。
让听众成为故事的主角
Lenny: 我想逐条过一下那三个要点。第一条是”让听众成为你故事的主角”。这来自于共情——理解他们的挑战。那么,怎么做才算做得好,或者做得不好?有没有什么判断依据?是故事开头的方式吗?人们应该怎么判断自己这件事做得好不好?
Nancy Duarte: 如果观众是主角,你会看到他们理解了的明显迹象。以前我做了一场很好的演讲之后,人们会在 Twitter 上发帖说:“快来听这场演讲,真的很棒。“所以你会看到一种反应。你知道自己做对了的另一个标志是,你的演讲中融入了故事——也就是第二个要点:运用故事结构。当我说”讲故事”时,我指的是一个具体的轶事。当我说”故事结构”时,我指的是那种三幕式的故事结构,这种结构可以追溯到数万年前,已经深深嵌入我们的大脑。现在通过 fMRI 脑成像设备可以看到,当故事被讲述时,如果你在给我讲故事,而我在听,我们的大脑会以完全相同的顺序、在完全相同的位置同步激活。所以故事具有让我们大脑对齐的力量。
因此,通过融入故事的基本要素——开头、中间、结尾,我们有一套方法来做这件事。同时也要融入那种张力的起伏——故事构建紧张感然后释放它。这就是我们如此热爱故事的原因——我们通过别人的”混乱中间段”、冲突和问题来获得一种逃离,虽然一切一团糟,但最终会得到解决。你构建紧张感,然后释放它。一个结构精良的演讲就能做到这一点。它可以通过这种起伏来唤起渴望。
故事创造渴望
故事创造渴望。它帮助人们开始渴望他们从未想过要的东西。因为如果未来是以故事的形态被讲述的,人们看到了那个替代性的未来——很多人通过科幻小说来逃离现实,通过电影进入那些未来世界。想象一下,你可以用语言描绘出一幅未来状态的画面,然后借助这种起伏的节奏,把整个观众带到那个未来。这就是你如何在一场需要影响他人的演讲中融入故事的方式。如果做得好,真的可以非常美。
Lenny: 你正好就此做过一场 TEDx 演讲。所以我想在这里更深入地聊聊。你分享了一种非常直观的方式来理解一个好故事——它就像上上下下、上上下下,几乎像锯齿一样。能不能具体讲讲——
Nancy Duarte: 像南瓜牙齿一样的锯齿。对,就是那样。
“现状”与”可能”的波形结构
Lenny: 能不能描述一下那个结构在视觉上是什么样子?我们会在节目简介里放一个链接让大家看到实际的图。然后谈谈为什么这个结构如此有冲击力、如此重要。
Nancy Duarte: 好,我很乐意聊聊这个。我花了三年时间深入研究故事,我发现历来最伟大的演讲确实都有那种起伏、起伏的节奏。但它不是单一的某个故事,里面包含了大量其他重要信息,但仍然呈现出了这种起伏。我不是数字原住民,我拿了一本四分之一英寸方格纸,听各种演讲,把词一个个记下来——手工映射。当我分析 Steve Jobs 发布 iPhone 的演讲时,我完全靠手写,把每个字都写下来,用方格纸来标注。我需要看到它,我的工作方式是模拟的、手工的。一开始画出来是锯齿状的,然后我意识到——等等,你不能把一个随时间推移的内容映射成锯齿。
那样会丢失太多信息。所以用语言来描述的话——你可以想象屏幕底部有一条水平线,这条线从左到右代表”现状”(what is)。每场演讲都需要以陈述”现状”来开场。然后线条向上走,进入”可能”(what could be),再回落到底部的水平线,再陈述”现状”,再上去——“可能”,“现状”,“可能”,“现状”,“可能”。到了最后一个”可能”之后,最后那条水平线就是我们所说的”新理想国”(new bliss)。所以这种在”现状”和”可能”之间来回穿梭的运动——“现状”、“可能”、“现状”、“可能”——那种对未来渴望的感觉,让人离开当前的状态,离开现状或我们当下的现实,通过对比让他们渴望那个未来状态。
所以那种起伏就是在说——“这是我们当前的问题,这是解决方案”,或者”这是目前的全局状况,但我们想象它可以变成这样”。有很多不同的方式来构建这种对比的节奏,非常美妙。它确实有效。我觉得那场演讲是 2011 年发布的,后来收到的大量留言和邮件,讲述人们仅仅通过改变演讲结构就取得的成果,真的令人惊叹。
Lenny: “全局状况”(State of the Union)是一个很有趣的例子。因为我试着把这个模型套用到我看过的演讲上去,完全对得上——就是那种”这是我们遇到的问题,接下来我们要往哪走。这是另一个问题,我要做这样的改变”。
Steve Jobs 的演讲技巧
Nancy Duarte: Steve Jobs 特别擅长这一点。他在发布 iPhone 那场演讲时,他总是会先来一段——公司的整体状况,我们发展得怎么样。天哪,我们的门店比十场 MacWorld 博览会还要火爆。他总会先铺垫一下当前的情形。然后当他开始把 iPhone 和黑莓做对比时,就做了一组非常快速的”现状是什么、可以变成什么”。就像在说,你看看现在这有多糟糕,再看看我们在做什么。就是不断地”现状、可能、现状、可能”。
所以我把我能找到的所有经典演讲、历史演讲、总统演讲全部拿来做分析,我知道如果能在 Martin Luther King Jr. 的演讲和 Steve Jobs 的 iPhone 发布演讲中找到相同的模式——那种相同性质的节奏和脉动,找不到更好的词来形容——我就知道自己用故事解决了这个问题。当我终于在那种四分之一英寸的方格纸上把它画出来的时候,那真是一个非常棒的时刻。
Lenny: 我太喜欢了。
Nancy Duarte: 那种感觉太妙了。
Lenny: 我觉得真正的一手研究还有非常大的空间。我觉得这也是我的 newsletter 做得好的原因——我就是花了你说的那种时间,看了一千场访谈,然后提炼出:这里有一个收获,那里有一个要点。
Nancy Duarte: 发现模式。这是一个很有意思的观点。我有时候会担心,随着各种新技术的涌现,人们坐下来思考、综合归纳的能力会不会被削弱。因为人类得出的洞察和综合,跟未来任何机器能做出来的都不一样。所以我觉得你能做得这么好真的很了不起,而且这一点确实能看出来。
Lenny: 哇,谢谢你的肯定。
Nancy Duarte: 确实,你是真的把心思和热情都放进去了。
“现状—可能—新理想国”能不能用于日常场景
Lenny: 好了不说我了——虽然我很感谢你的夸奖——我在想那些正在听这个播客的产品经理和创始人,他们可能会想:天哪,我每次做演示文稿都要构建一个完整的故事,搞这种起伏对比的套路吗?以你的经验来看,什么时候值得做到那个程度?是只有那种史诗级的重要演讲才需要考虑这种故事结构,还是说每次做演示都应该融入某种带有对比的故事?
Nancy Duarte: 这个问题很有意思。很多人以为只有在大型舞台演讲的时候才需要认真准备,才值得在脚本和对比故事上投入大量精力。但我告诉你一个小秘密。我可以在周末用一套非常简短的”现状是什么、可以变成什么、新理想国”就能让我丈夫去干活——就是开头那一小段,现状、可能、新理想国。就像 Abraham Lincoln 在葛底斯堡发表的那篇极短的演说一样,那基本上是一场葬礼上的悼词。在那个时候,悼词通常长达两个小时,是亚里士多德式的结构。而他的整篇演说只有几百个词,所以甚至没有他演讲时的照片——太短了,太精炼了,一下子就结束了。当时摄影师还在架设相机,以为还有大把时间。所以,这种对比框架只要你内化到脑子里,不管是在会议中、电话里,还是任何一个需要施加影响力的时刻——让我丈夫帮忙做家务——真的就是有效。它适用于任何形式。
我认为,那种长篇的或面向大量观众时的投入,你加上视觉效果,请演讲教练,把那个时刻做到极致。而有些时刻是凌驾于所有其他时刻之上的,你必须在那种时刻精准命中。但即便是在基本对话中、在需要发挥影响力的时刻,如果你练习得足够多,它就会作为一种心智模型住在你脑子里,当你置身于那种充满影响力博弈的场景时,自然而然就能用上。
Lenny: 那你具体是怎么跟你丈夫用的?能不能分享一下,比如让他帮你洗碗?
Nancy Duarte: 好吧,我就不细说”新理想国”具体是什么了。我们结婚早期就发现——也不算早期,其实我花了差不多——我们结婚四十年了,也就最近十年才搞明白这一点。我们意识到,当我们发生摩擦时,几乎都是因为流程问题。差距在于,如果我请他做一件事,或者他请我做一件事,或者我们开始互相挑刺,根本原因都是我执行某个事情的方式跟他选择的方式不一样。比如他会跟我说”你切洋葱为什么那样切?“然后我就意识到——哦,我们之间存在一个流程差距。“你想自己切,还是让我按我的方式切?“所以”现状是什么、可以变成什么、新理想国”这套东西在我们家随时都在用。
他需要很多上下文。他是个注重细节的人,我也慢慢学会了跟他沟通时,我的”现状是什么”这一段要比我平时有耐心的程度还要长不少。我不会一上来就说”亲爱的,帮我把狗送到宠物看护那里去”。我会先铺垫:“天哪,明天我有一连串背靠背的会议,实际上那个时间段我正好要上 Lenny 的播客,而那个时间点她(狗狗)会开始哼哼唧唧的。如果这个安排搞不定,我就得把事情重新排到下周,而下周已经排得满满当当了。你知道我一天下来压力很大的时候就不好相处。“然后我再说”可以变成什么”——宠物看护那家,她上次在那儿开心极了,跟一只红色的骑士查理王小猎犬依偎在一起,喜欢得不得了。
就是这样,我需要给他多展开一些。然后”新理想国”可以是任何你想给的婚姻承诺,但我就是需要把当前的流程状况多铺陈一下,然后再陈述”可以变成什么”。说起来也很有意思,像这样的服务行为——比如他替我把狗送到宠物看护——会让我感到被爱。当有人用他们的时间为我做一些慷慨的事情时,那就是我感受到被爱的方式。所以如何与一个人沟通,这里面大有学问。在我的公司里,每个人都知道彼此的爱之语。他们知道这个人收到一张手写便条会更有被感激的感觉,那个人收到一份礼物会更觉得被重视。所以这套东西已经融入了——我不知道怎么说——融入了我们的婚姻、我们的公司,就是我们的运作方式。
Lenny: 我猜听这个播客的人肯定没想到会听到婚姻建议。我太喜欢了,我要试试。
Nancy Duarte: 如果不管用你可以把那段删掉,不过关于流程的那个建议是真好用的。
Lenny: 这可能会成为最好的部分。可能会变成整期播客最精彩的段落——开个玩笑。但这确实是很好的建议,我自己也要试试。所以这套结构——我觉得换一种更简单的方式去想,不必把它想成”注入故事”。对我来说更容易的理解就是”现状是什么、可以变成什么、理想的新理想国是什么”,这几乎是更简洁的思路。“故事”这个词让人觉得——天哪,我还得想一个故事出来。
Nancy Duarte: 它有开头、中间和结尾。第一个”现状是什么”是开头。中间是那段混乱的中间地带——你要在那里制造对比,让他们看到事情是混乱的,可能是艰难的,但值得去做。然后”新理想国”作为结尾——在西方文化中我们习惯一个圆满的结局。“新理想国”就是想象一个你的想法被采纳之后的世界,然后用诗意或务实的方式描绘那个世界的图景,就可以了。这确实有效。
简要回顾三条建议
Lenny: 好的,这些真的太好了。那我们来总结一下,第一点是让你的听众成为故事的主角,以共情的方式切入。我刚才在想,Think Different 那个广告活动就是一个绝佳的例子——因为它讲的是”你”以不同的方式思考,成为这样一个不可思议的创造者。第二点是在演示中注入故事,也就是”现状是什么、可以变成什么、新理想国”。那第三点是什么来着?
Nancy Duarte: 哦,第三点是问问自己,他们能不能”看见”你在说什么。“他们能看见我在说什么吗”——这句话应该写在便签上。
让人”看见”你在说什么
Lenny: 我太喜欢这条了。我们聊聊这个。这是什么意思,具体怎么做?
Nancy Duarte: 好的,要让人看见你在说什么,你可以借助视觉工具,比如演示软件;也可以请现场画师在你讲话时同步绘制。有很多方法可以帮助人们看见你在说什么。我想说的是,你可以在演讲中加入某种东西,给听众留下永远难忘的印象。我们称之为 star moment。它可以是一组令人震撼的数据——把巨大的数字投映在屏幕上;可以是一个引人共鸣的故事;也可以是一张美丽的图片。在科技公司里有一个做法效果特别好,就是通过图片来演示,从而达成共识。比如用一张示意图来描述你正在开发的产品——这个东西是在它内部、外部、连接在它上面,还是在它上面、它上方?尤其是架构图,或者展示某样东西如何在复杂系统中流转的图。
当人们能看见这些,再配合你的口头叙述,他们就能真正理解你要传达的内容并继续推进。如果只有口头叙述,效果会差很多。不过很多时候,你没有演示文稿或幻灯片的支持。你可能正坐在餐桌旁。如果你在进行一段有趣的对话,想让对方看见你在说什么——那就拿出餐巾纸画出来,这样你们都能看见。开会时有时候有人会直接走到白板前画东西。我的团队,特别是设计团队,在这方面特别擅长——他们会站起来说:“我想把我看到的画给你看”,因为我们正在帮他们准备面向听众的演讲。“你刚才口头描述的那些,在我脑海中看到的是这个画面——这是你的意图吗?”
然后整个房间的人都会站起来,我们开始共同创建一张图,让每个人都看到完全相同的内容、完全相同的步骤、完全相同的洞察,而且顺序一致。这样就没有人离开时会心存疑问。对于”这是什么?我们在为什么而战?我们在为什么而活?我们在为什么而努力?“能达成共识,这真的非常重要。那些达成共识的时刻实在太重要了。我是一个能在空中”看见”事物的领导者,我就是能看见。我那种发现模式的天性——你也是这样的人——我能看到这些模式,对我来说我看到的是一整幅画面,清晰无比。但当我的团队试图看同样的东西时,他们可能只看到一幅巨大而美丽的马赛克拼图中的二十二块碎片。
我看到的是最终那幅美丽的完整画面,但我可能只在几个地方给了一小块马赛克碎片。所以我自己也需要做得更好,真正把它落到地面,说:“哦,达成这个惊人成果需要这七个步骤。“有时候我们在心智之眼中看到的东西如此清晰。我曾经和一位非常知名、很有权力的 CEO 合作过。当她讲话的时候,我能看见她——我也在观察她的手势——她整个人沉浸在那个场景中,手臂以一种独特的方式移动着。我说:“我能告诉你,你的心智之眼中有一幅画面。让我把我看到的画出来。“我做了同样的事——走到白板前,画了有这个、有这个、还有这个。她说:“完全正确。“我们被请去,正是因为没有人能把她心智之眼中看到的东西表达出来。那是一个要推广到整个零售体系的庞大项目——大约十万名零售员工需要理解这张图和她试图推广的整个流程,但一直推进不了。所以,一旦人们能看见她在说什么,那个项目就取得了所有需要的突破。
手势与身体语言的力量
Lenny: 这让我想起我在 Airbnb 做超赞房东项目的时候。不知道这个故事有没有人感兴趣,但我记得我当时有一套非常清晰的手势,用来描述超赞房东项目的策略。然后我朋友说:“你应该把这个画在幻灯片上——”
Nancy Duarte: “你应该画出来。“除非那个手势本身就已经很有表现力了,对吧?是的,你可以这样做,因为你的身体本身就是视觉的。还有一件事我们常常建议客户去做:如果 Martin Luther King Jr. 那天发表《我有一个梦想》演讲时有幻灯片,那就不那么美了。他的文字在我们的心智之眼中描绘出了画面。所以,当我们能够关掉幻灯片,让人们专注于语言流——从你嘴里说出的话——那是一个非常有力量的时刻:没有任何视觉辅助,他们百分之百专注于你的身体、你的呈现方式,以及从你嘴里说出的话。他们在”口头上”看见你在说什么,而不是”画面上”看见你在说什么。这很好。
幻灯片设计的具体建议
Lenny: 我喜欢这个想法——人们不盯着我看。我倒宁愿他们被幻灯片分散注意力。等一下我想聊聊紧张情绪和演讲的话题。但这个很有意思。你刚才讲了一些关于幻灯片的具体技巧。我常听到的一个建议是:在内部会议上分享幻灯片时,很有效的做法是放一张简洁的图片,然后把幻灯片的标题写成你想让他们从这张幻灯片中获取的关键信息。你会推荐这样做吗?另外,关于如何让一张幻灯片真正有效,有没有什么非常实用的战术建议?
Nancy Duarte: 好的,核心概念是每张幻灯片应该只传达一个观点。你整场演示应该建立在我们所说的 audience journey(听众旅程)之上——也就是你的 big idea(核心观点),你要把他们从哪里带到哪里。big idea 是指你的立场观点,以及他们采纳或不采纳会有什么利害关系。这是你整副演示文稿的组织框架。然后每一张支撑这个 big idea 的幻灯片,本身应该只传达一个观点来支撑它。人们一次处理不了太多东西。所以取决于你在哪里工作,有些人希望幻灯片顶部放的不是关键洞察,有些人则希望放在那里。有些人希望放上需要采取的行动,有些人则希望清楚地展示那个令人憧憬的未来状态。
一些咨询公司的幻灯片密度要大得多,因为他们收了数百万美元来做一大套演示文稿。有些人会说:“哦,结论永远放在右下角。“所以这多少取决于品牌,每个机构都认为结论应该放在不同的位置。如果你在做我们所说的 slide doc——我觉得你的听众会对此感兴趣——演示的形态范围很广:从大型舞台活动,到会议室里说服同事,再到”我能不能做一份直接通过邮件分发的演示文稿,让所有人都看得懂?“——那就叫 slide doc。你会放更多文字,更强有力的图片。你可以有一百页的附录,而正文可能只有五张幻灯片,但所有能让人看懂你思考过程的内容都附在后面。
Nancy Duarte: 你可以把这些 slide doc 分发出去,人们自己就能读懂。你会写完整的句子,写完整的段落文字。它有点像 Amazon 那个很流行的六页备忘录,但我们认为加上文字和图片,六页备忘录会更好。那么,在没有演讲者辅助的情况下,如何通过一份备忘录传达信息?这是极端的一端。这种东西就叫 slide doc,是你用演示软件构建的。另一个极端是我在一个巨大的舞台上,中间还有各种各样的用法。所以我认为每张幻灯片只传达一个观点很重要。然后还有一个指导原则:除非一张幻灯片能够支撑你整场演讲的那个 big idea,否则不要做它。这是制作幻灯片的另一个原则,因为大多数人会回到某个数据仓库里翻找旧的烂幻灯片,看看能不能快速拼凑出什么东西。
拒绝拼凑幻灯片
这其实是在偷懒。大多数时候,如果你真的设身处地地为听众着想,去仓库里翻找可能只能让你走到一半,你应该根据你对话的对象来修改和映射所有内容,尤其是高风险场合。有时候你的听众群体就想要高密度的幻灯片,因为那就是他们文化中的沟通方式。如果你拿出电影级别的大舞台幻灯片,他们会把你笑出房间。所以你真的必须——你得了解你的听众,了解他们的沟通方式,他们和谁对话,然后据此去匹配。
Lenny: 你对 Minto 金字塔原理怎么看?我不知道你是否关注过这个。因为这个方法建议先从结论开始,然后再解释原因。而你说有时候这样有效,有时候不行。也许在某些——
Nancy Duarte: 有时候确实有效。Minto 原理非常棒。她提出了——是叫横向思维和纵向思维吗?所以你的主要过渡节点或者说主要章节标题应该能够加总在一起,然后所有幻灯片都支撑它。还有它的结构方式——当先陈述结论时,这对高管很有效。对融资也很有效。有特定的听众适合这种方式,但也有另一些听众,他们真的需要被引导着去渴望那个未来状态,你需要更多时间来展开它。
先讲结论 vs. 先描绘愿景
所以你之所以会先讲结论,其中一个原因是——尤其在融资轮次中——不过我对”结论”或”结果”的定义和她描述的有所不同。因为我会说你应该从 new bliss 开始讲。如果你试图募集资金,你会说:“今天我要和你们分享一样东西”,然后你分享你的解决方案如何增进人类的福祉。它需要与人性相连,与你将要解决的巨大问题相连,与人类将如何受益相连。这和咨询顾问出现并说”你好,我这份八百页的报告,结论是这样的,让我们来展开它”是不同的。这是一种完全不同的运作方式。而且我们使用三幕故事结构,也颇为不同。但她的那套工作是扎实的,而且有点像我的工作——她的工作是基于深入麦肯锡长期以来形成的思维体系,而我的工作则是横向覆盖了我们服务过的全球三十五个最高绩效品牌。所以我横向跨越了所有那些品牌,然后基于故事和更广泛的企业应用,提出解决方案。我对她那套体系怀有极大的敬意。
Lenny: 太棒了。我愿意补充说,我写过一篇关于这个概念的文章,供想深入了解的人参考。也许关于幻灯片战术层面再来最后一个问题——我知道人们总是问你这些,但我忍不住。就是,当你坐在那里试图制作几张幻灯片时,还有什么人们应该记住的、能让它更有效的建议?假设这是针对小型会议之类的场景。
制作幻灯片的实用建议
Nancy Duarte: 好问题。我觉得如果这次会议的议题很重要,先做一些思考。我的团队被训练成先画草图,稍微换一下环境。很多人会直接打开幻灯片软件,这是非常线性的——做一张幻灯片,第二张,第三张。所以先想一想、规划一下。我们倾向于画故事板(storyboard)——就是,好,第一点、第二点、第三点——或者先思考。可以是纸笔,也可以是数字化的。在你的所有幻灯片前面放一页,就画一些方框,先把叙事理顺。然后当你真正打开软件时,再去想:用什么类型的幻灯片最能传达这个内容?是表格吗?那就放表格。特别是项目经理,你需要传达密集的项目信息、产品信息,这天然就带有密度。
所以如果你和同事在一个房间里,每个人都是一个团队的成员,每个人都有自己的速记和工作方式,那就把那张大家共同熟悉的幻灯片放上去。那张对那个团队来说的通用幻灯片,对外人来说可能很密集,但每个人都习惯了使用它,所以使用一个大家熟知的、公认的框架、幻灯片、表格或 Excel 电子表格完全没问题,因为你们是在围绕一个流程对齐。所以不要觉得每张幻灯片都需要电影级的猫咪照片——那不会让你有任何进展。你是在推进一个目标,而这确实意味着你的幻灯片可能更密集,有时候内部幻灯片上确实需要承载更多重要信息,来推动产品或流程向前。
Duarte 的公司协作流程
Lenny: 你刚才谈到流程,这恰好很好地引出我一直想问的一个问题——你和公司合作,帮助他们打造出色的演示文稿时,你的流程是什么样的?
Nancy Duarte: 好的。说来有趣,我已经不怎么需要亲自做这件事了。我大概有十五年没做了,挺好的。我有一支很棒的团队,包括策略师、撰稿人、概念思考者,还有出色的设计师。
Lenny: 我很好奇。
像皮克斯制作电影一样做演示
Nancy Duarte: 教练。对,我知道。我也有教练,挺有意思的。说实话,我的书写得很漂亮,不是因为我自己的功劳,而是因为我身边总跟着一群做出极其出色作品的人。但我们内部、有时候跟客户之间会用一个说法——我们做演示文稿的方式,就像皮克斯制作电影一样。这跟我们服务那些身处高风险时刻的客户非常相似——这个时刻至关重要,你必须在当下赢下来,才能推动事情向前走。所以我们确实如此:我们真正地精心打磨叙事,打磨 big idea,打磨脚本,并将某些关键时刻视觉化。我们开始搭建结构,开始分块推进。
有时候大型模型也会同步启动——尤其是当你真正要做一个革命性的模型、一个能驱动所有线上素材的模型时——很多人没有意识到,这些东西最初其实都是作为演示文稿里的一个想法诞生的。所以,有时候我们也会立刻开始着手一些关键模型,并在公司内部流转征求意见,因为所有人都必须围绕它达成共识。因此,有时候会有多条工作线同时推进。我们这边画草图,你那边去跟某个部门对接,把这个敲定,把那个落实,把这个搞定。
然后最后所有内容会被重新组装在一起。叙事就是那个打磨掉所有问题的地方,当他们站上台去交付的时候,就是——对,是那条声音轨道,所有流程都在为它服务。还有些时候,我们在用 slide doc 构建一份报告。还有这么一次,一家跨国公司的某位负责人——名字就不提了——他手下掌管整个印度业务的人要飞过来,向 CEO 申请一亿美元预算。
这可不是小事。他来了之后说:“好,我需要你们帮忙看看这五张幻灯片。“他就把那五张幻灯片发给我们,我们一看就说:“嗯,一亿美元,这可不是小数目。你真的要在你和 CEO 之间放一台电脑吗?你真的想两个人并排坐着,一起盯着电脑屏幕——在这个你来申请一亿美元预算的时刻?“他说:“你说得对。“于是我们做的是:帮他构建了一个可以在脑海中举起来的心智模型,结构极其简洁清晰。然后有三个关键时刻,我们建议——就这么说吧,拿张纸或者走到白板前,当面画给他看。让他看到你的眼睛,让他和你有眼神交流。
让他看到你的热情。不要无动于衷地盯着电脑。他照做了。后来他给我们打电话说:“一亿美元拿到了。“所以,就是这样的时刻——你需要意识到:等等,等等,等等。我真的需要一套幻灯片吗?我在跟谁说话?这应该是一个千篇一律的东西吗?同样的流程每次都适用吗?不是的。所以我们每次解决问题的方式都很不一样,我们会努力让它独特地适配于演讲者以及他们面对的听众。
远程演示的挑战
Lenny: 顺着这个话题,现在很多演示实际上都是远程进行的,通过 Zoom、线上完成。对于远程场景下的演示方式和幻灯片制作,你有什么建议?
Nancy Duarte: 有意思的是,我们花了很多时间教人们看着摄像头说话。所以现在跟你聊天的过程中,我其实不是在看你的脸,而是在看屏幕顶部那个小圆点——我的摄像头。不是很多人能做到这一点。到了现在,我能看到那个小小的白色光点,心里就会一暖,我知道你在那里,我能感受到你。当我知道自己在跟一个我敬爱或欣赏的人说话时,我的皮肤都能感受到那种触动。这花了很长时间才达到这个状态。我在疫情之前就已经在做远程演讲了,所以我们的大量辅导都是关于眼神交流这一块的。另一件事是,人们看不到我们的手了。手在桌子下面。他们看不到我们在一个房间里占据了多少空间。
他们看不到很多日常沟通中常见的肢体特征。所以有很多关于”存在感”的辅导——你怎样在房间里建立存在感?你甚至怎么让远程参会的人拿到麦克风发言权,诸如此类的事情。还有一项新研究刚刚发表——今天才到我桌上——说软技能确实受到了影响。那些做得对的人——真正看着摄像头说话的人——他们现在面对面的眼神交流能力反而退化了。当他们看着对方的眼睛时,会感觉——哦,不习惯了。太久了。
还有一个问题是,我坐在房间的什么位置,谁拥有权威的位置感?就是一些在现实生活中传递信息的经典信号。所以这很有意思,远程沟通达到了一个高峰,现在人们又开始部分回到办公室了。一部分人已经回来了。现在我们处于一个奇怪的中间地带——一半人在办公室,一半人远程。远程的人很难让自己的声音被听到,因为在场的人占据了大部分话语空间。所以正在经历这种起伏的生命周期,人们在远程状态下需要不断学习新的沟通技能。一切都在变化。
Lenny: 说实话我很庆幸自己没有在远程时代当过 PM。我没有经历过,但我对远程工作中的产品经理充满同情。感觉这个工作变得难多了。
Nancy Duarte: 确实。我觉得确实变难了。
如何克服演讲紧张
Lenny: 对。那我们来聊聊紧张和怯场。我非常讨厌公开演讲。我会极度紧张——看我演讲的人可能感觉不出来,但这不是我的自然状态。你接触过很多人,我猜他们会说”天哪,我好害怕做这个演示”。你会给他们什么建议来帮助他们克服紧张、感觉更自在?
Nancy Duarte: 我觉得,那些对演讲更加深思熟虑、反复斟酌的人,往往有更好的内容。他们倾向于真正深入地思考问题,而不是那种”我搞定了,临场发挥就行,直接上台”的人。任何跟我说”我是一个紧张的演讲者”的人,我都会说:你心里很可能装着这个世界需要听到的精彩内容——因为通常他们都非常有深度、善于思考。就像你刚才提到的,你是一个善于发现规律的人,你喜欢做深思熟虑的工作。所以这很难。我丈夫其实是一个出色的沟通者——只是要让他觉得自己想要占据那个空间就很费劲。他比我更擅长沟通。紧张的原因是什么呢?它是一种”战斗或逃跑”的本能反应。不知为什么,走上那个舞台的时候,你的身体、你的大脑、你的心理都会感到威胁,就像被野兽攻击一样。
这就是正在发生的事。所以有几件事你可以做。你可以坐在观众席的一个座位上,就坐在那里看着舞台,看看周围的环境,这样你就能想象自己站在上面的样子。然后把自己想象成那个友善的面孔——那个见到你很高兴的人、那个为你上台演讲而欣喜的人。然后当你真正站上台的时候,记住你曾经看到自己坐在下面微笑、非常开心的样子。你必须改变自己的心理模型——你以为人们会皱着眉头、评判你、质疑你——所有这些都只存在于你的脑海里,因为要让你走上舞台、把这些精彩内容呈现给人们,最大的障碍就是让你走上那个舞台去完成交付。
Nancy Duarte: 我曾经问过很多人,我做了一次调查,采访了许多公开演讲者,问他们:你是怎么准备的?你怎么准备的?演讲前的仪式是什么?有些人说:“我放重金属音乐,在整个会展中心蹦来蹦去,让自己嗨起来。“我心想:“哇,我得让自己冷静下来,因为我本身的能量就已经过盛了。“所以,我会找一个黑暗的地方。我不去绿色休息室那种地方。我不想听闲言碎语。我必须专注于我的内容。所以我会找到后台最暗的角落,安静地坐着,只是呼吸。我就是呼吸。有时候如果我很紧张,比如台下有个特别出名的人,我会有一个播放列表,里面是人们发给我的搞笑东西,但我平时不看。这样在走上舞台之前,我从化学层面——我整个身体的化学反应会从紧张转变为欢笑。这对我也很有帮助,因为这是化学层面的,你得稍微训练一下自己的化学反应。
Lenny: 我很喜欢这个建议。你说的那些搞笑东西是什么,如果你——
Nancy Duarte: 就是 YouTube 上、TikTok 上的东西。是我标记下来但尽量不去看的东西,或者是能让我笑的东西。有一个很蠢的、播放量很低的视频,一个人腰上绑着铁罐头,然后敲着玩。我老公在家会学他的样子,发出那个声音,如果需要的话我可能都能唱出那个节奏。所以有时候我就放那个视频,因为它会把我带回家的感觉——因为很多时候我是在离家很远的地方做演讲——它让我想起我老公,他太搞笑了。所以就是一些随机的东西,但如果你笑了,不知怎么就能把自己从走上舞台的恐惧中抽离出来,这有助于在走上舞台之前重置自己。
Lenny: 我很喜欢这个。你还有什么脱口而出的建议吗?就是上台之前你觉得特别有效的?看搞笑视频,我喜欢这个。[听不清] 我会用。还有别的吗?
Nancy Duarte: 呼吸。我觉得我学到了一种呼吸模式。我先深深地吸一口气,然后在肺部充满空气的时候,再猛吸一口,然后慢慢地呼出来。不过当我得知有些人通过跟着重金属音乐甩头来克服恐惧——所以我不是说那样不对。我心想,好吧,也许我应该在演讲前试试那个。于是我其实没那么做,但我做了拉伸,跳了几下,就是小幅度的跳,把双臂大幅度地举向空中。然后我走上了舞台,那恰好是在一家大型医疗公司演讲,很大的品牌。我讲完之后,我的助手接到了一个电话,对方说:“我们有点担心 Nancy。我们觉得她可能需要看医生。她一直控制不住呼吸,我们真的很担心。”
那只是因为我让自己稍微兴奋了一下。所以我现在完全不再那样做了。我回到了我那种平静的、沉思的、冥想式的演讲前仪式。所以对某些人来说,我真的鼓励他们试试跟着重金属音乐甩头。也许管用。这只是取决于你需要什么。没人会猜到——我不是那种会蹦蹦跳跳或让自己兴奋起来的人,我确实不是,我需要让自己冷静下来。正好相反。
火炬手与照亮变革
Lenny: 太好了。还有几个问题。
Nancy Duarte: 好的。
Lenny: 你写过一本书叫 Illuminate,那本书中让我印象深刻的是火炬手(torch bearer)和火炬手领导者的概念。你能谈谈这是什么吗?为什么它很重要?
Nancy Duarte: 对,我很喜欢写那本书。合著者 Patty Sanchez,向她致敬。为了构思这本书,我们知道存在单一的一场演讲——可以在舞台上,可以在会议中,只是向人们更新项目进展。但我们同时也知道,每一场演讲通常都是一个更大运动的一部分,你试图把人们大规模地带向一个不同的未来。所以我们研究了各种运动,解构了最大的运动。我们与哈佛大学的 Marshall Ganz 会面,问他:“嘿,这个想法成立吗?“因为他研究的就是社会运动。非常有趣。然后我们发现运动有一个五阶段结构。想象一下——有一个时刻你需要把梦想说出来,比如:嘿,我们要去往这个新地方,这就是我在启动会议上要做的——想象一下我们未来要去的那个地方。
所以是五个步骤,如果你愿意称之为五幕的话,它是一个五幕故事结构:梦想、飞跃、战斗、攀登、抵达。火炬手这个概念,我们之所以这样叫,是因为领导者知道他们要去哪里,但他们可能永远不会看得超级、超级清楚。我们选择火炬作为隐喻,是因为如果你在一个洞穴里,举着一把火炬,你只能看到周围大约五到八英尺的范围,但这足以驱散跟随你进入洞穴的人们的恐惧。所以没有人能清晰地看到未来。没有人有那种级别的本事。我们只知道:我需要朝着这个方向前进,才能在未来到达正确的位置,这样我的所有员工都安全,我们所有人都能保持行业领先地位。这就是我所知道的。当我们开始朝那个方向前进时,有些沟通时刻是必须做的,就是:各位,这是梦想。这是我们前进的方向。这就是梦想阶段。
然后有一个时刻,他们要么选择跳进来跟你走,要么选择不跟。你可以想想弗罗多——山姆和只有几个霍比特人跟随着他。所以就是人们选择是否投入这段旅程。这是你的运动的起点。但中间是故事中混乱的中间部分。我们称之为战斗和攀登阶段。发生的情况是:他们投入了你的想法,投入了你的项目、你的计划,一开始很兴奋。然后他们就进入了”天哪,这比我想象的难多了”的状态。这是一场漫长的苦战。这个攀登让人精疲力竭。我不知道自己还有没有那么多战斗力来让这一切成功——不是互相打架,而是”天哪,我不得不克服这个障碍、那个障碍,我们还得到那笔预算”。
所以就是战斗、攀登、战斗、攀登、战斗、攀登。最终你抵达了。在这五个阶段中的每一个,你都需要使用演讲、故事、仪式和符号,为与你同行的人提供他们所需的情感燃料,让他们继续前进,继续看到那个想法变为现实。这确实关乎用演讲、故事、仪式和符号来激发正确的情感,同时把人们引向一个更大的目标。所以它不只是一场演讲,而是多场演讲、多个故事、多个仪式。我非常喜欢那本书。现在人们真的从中汲取营养,因为领导变革从未停歇。过去尤其是最近几年,就是变革、变革、再变革。
Lenny: 变化是唯一不变的,正如他们所说。
Nancy Duarte: 没错。
Lenny: 我非常喜欢火炬这个隐喻——作为领导者,你能看到周围的一部分,但你不一定能看到整个洞穴的全貌。这真的很有意思。最后一个比较实操性的问题:我看过你的一次访谈,你提到自己做了两个视频,一个很随意,你就穿着牛仔裤站在白板前面,讲一些关于数据的东西,我记得是关于演示的。然后你做了一个类似的视频,精心制作,制作水准很高,结果那个随意的视频效果反而好得多。这是你现在观察到的一种趋势吗?就是这类内容最终反而更成功?你觉得原因是什么?
Nancy Duarte: 我觉得对于视频内容来说,制作质量高不再是成功的必要条件了。过去五到八年里,这一点完全发生了转变,因为现在人人都是专家,都可以以专家的姿态出现。对我来说,以主题演讲者的身份出场和以日常分享者的身份出场是完全不同的。前者是——我要站上去,我要姿态到位,我要保持眼神交流,我要完美呈现,我的幻灯片要精美绝伦,我在引领整个行业。但人们总以为我们对事物的解释也必须以那种站在台上做主题演讲的方式来完成,其实完全不必如此。所以我做了一个实验。我之前拍了一些视频,其中一个就像你说的,我正对镜头,甚至化了高清妆,有专业摄制团队,灯光打得很好,我看起来状态非常好——说实话确实很好看,非常精良。我讲得也很好。
然后我想,因为我在 LinkedIn 上发帖很多,那是我主要的内容渠道,我就想试试看,如果我随便发一个随手拍的视频会怎样?里面我可能色调偏橙了一点,看起来有点像特朗普那样偏橙。没有做色彩校正,但信息量很大,内容非常充实。结果那是我目前为止播放量最高的视频。我意识到,人们想要的是内容本身。作为一家做演示的公司,我们确实可能比其他公司更需要把内容做好,但并不意味着要完全经过视频精剪、信息图旋转翻飞、东西呼啸地飞来飞去。
那种形式上的花哨并不是传递信息所必需的。所以我们实际上正在推出一套完整的流程和计划,大家会看到我们发布更多视频。一部分原因是基于这个洞察,另一部分是因为我的团队——我有一支专家团队,他们有很多好东西要分享——所以我在努力让大家明白,Duarte 不等于 Nancy Duarte。我在努力让大家看到 Duarte 有这么多专家,你们看他们任何一个人的视频都值得信赖,这就是我们在 Duarte 正在推进的方向。他们都是天才级的人物,真正的专家。世界级的专家。这就是我们正在做的。
Lenny: 我觉得你和我面临一个类似的挑战——我把我的 newsletter 命名为 Lenny’s Newsletter。
Nancy Duarte: 对,一模一样。
Lenny: 没法换成别人来做。这是个挑战,不过嘛,也不知道,反正就这么走过来了。好,真正最后一个问题,然后我们进入非常精彩的闪电问答环节。你有没有见过产品经理讲好故事的案例?
产品开发中的故事
Nancy Duarte: 产品管理流程有多个阶段。从创意探索阶段一直到最终交付生产,我觉得故事可以在每个阶段都发挥作用。有一个例子,我是从文章中读到的,我本人并没有参与,就是 Airbnb 的 Brian Chesky。有一篇文章详细讲述了他们产品开发周期中的一个时刻:他们决定穿上客户的鞋子走一遍完整旅程,并且请了一位皮克斯的插画师来逐帧描绘每个场景。团队一边走一边说:好,她叫什么名字?好,接下来发生了什么?她的闹钟响了。好,然后呢?然后呢?好,现在她决定要预订住宿了。她怎么做?她想做什么?通过这种代入客户视角的体验——就是一天的生活,这是任何产品都适用的经典故事叙述方法——他们意识到自己的战略方向是错的,他们需要尽快转向移动优先(mobile first)策略。
就是因为他们在真正地一步步走完理想客户的一天——她起床、刷牙、做这个做那个——就是在这样逐帧走完客户旅程的过程中,他们才意识到自己之前的方向完全搞错了。而在其他阶段,在所有人投入大量精力去做产品、管理产品推进之后——我们有一个大客户,做鞋类和运动装备的。我很爱讲故事,但这件事我不能说具体是谁。很多时候我们被请进去,说:“能不能帮我们的产品人员做故事培训?“我们就问:“最大的问题是什么?“他们说:“他们会花一两年时间做一双鞋,然后’咚’一声放到桌上,大家问:‘你有什么要说的?‘他们就说:‘它是红色的。‘花了好几年的投入,好几年的心血,他们居然拆解不出任何故事,说不出任何理由,甚至无法表达他们为什么选择红色的那份热情。
就是——这是我的鞋,它是红色的。所以,这种通过赋予意义、讲清”为什么”、再用故事包装起来的能力,实际上可以决定一个产品是被选中还是被否决。在整个产品周期中有太多环节可以受益于一个讲得好的故事——从产品创新和路线图的阶段,一直到最终什么被采纳。然后是盛大发布,想想 Apple 所有那些大型发布会,本质上都是一次产品的盛大亮相——揭幕一个被隐藏了很久的东西,这也是讲述精彩故事的又一个重要时刻。所以这大概是产品方面如何运用故事的一点洞察。
Lenny: Airbnb 的例子太棒了,而且完全是真的。我加入 Airbnb 的时候,他们恰好就在做这件事。
Nancy Duarte: 太喜欢了。
Lenny: 他们最终画出了你说的那段旅程的关键帧,然后把它放在办公室正中央。这就是房东和房客的旅程,大约 12 个画面。这实际上成为了公司的战略——让我们选出其中 6 个画面,把它们做到极致。这就是我们要做的事。
Nancy Duarte: 太棒了。
Lenny: 让预订体验做到极致。让到达体验做到极致。所以那里面有很多真实的成分。
Nancy Duarte: 而且它被可视化了,对吧?愿景被可视化了——就像你说的,我们未来的方向被清晰地呈现出来。我非常喜欢那个故事。你居然亲身在场,太酷了。
Lenny: 对,非常酷。而且那些画确实是可以移动的,你可以拿起一张画带回自己的工位,想着这周我们怎么把这个瞬间做得更好?
Nancy Duarte: 太棒了。
Lenny: 确实是请了一位皮克斯的故事板艺术家,请了一整年。他的工作就是画这些关键帧。
Nancy Duarte: 哇,太厉害了。
Lenny: 这和你说的共情直接联系在了一起。那就是共情的极致体现——这是房客和房东正在经历的,这是我们能够做得更好的地方。
Nancy Duarte: 对,太厉害了。确实把这些都串联起来了。
闪电问答环节
Lenny: 顺便说一下,如果大家想了解更多,我们会在节目笔记中放上链接。只要在 Google 搜索 Snow White Airbnb,就能看到他们是怎么构思出来的视频。好了,我们进入非常令人兴奋的闪电问答环节。我准备了六个问题,准备好了吗?
Nancy Duarte: 好了,准备好了。
Lenny: 你最常推荐给别人两三本书是什么?
Nancy Duarte: 我觉得我一直以来的经典推荐是福音书,因为里面有太多的爱,还有许多开创性的思想。然后对于那些对故事产生兴趣的人,我觉得最好的书之一是 Chris Vogler 的《The Writer’s Journey》,他把 Joseph Campbell 的英雄之旅整理成了十二个步骤,他曾是迪士尼的故事分析师。这是一部非常经典的作品,真正帮助人们理解故事和原型。
Lenny: 最近最喜欢的电影或电视剧是什么?
Nancy Duarte: 这是我小小的心瘾。我迷上了韩剧。别问我怎么开始的,但我真的沉迷其中了。我几乎全看完了,已经看到底了。
Lenny: 有最喜欢的一部吗?
Nancy Duarte: 没有特定的最爱。不过我先生刚看了一部,叫《Business Proposal》,他陪我一起看,然后他说,完了,我也要上瘾了。韩剧很真实,可爱到极点。而且它们的叙事弧线更长,有一种史诗般的长度。它们以十二集为一个季的方式推出。总之,别让我开始聊这个。听起来可能有点傻,因为我喜欢史诗叙事和正剧,但它们真的很可爱。
Lenny: 我喜欢这个。
Nancy Duarte: 真的很可爱。
Lenny: 太好了,越来越真实了。你在面试时最喜欢问候选人什么问题?
Nancy Duarte: 哦,最喜欢的面试问题。我们会问很多关于他们是谁的问题。所以我们在这里大量使用心理测评,真正了解他们是什么样的人,而且我们实际上会请候选人讲一个故事。如果这让他们感到不舒服,或者那些心理测评让他们不舒服,那他们可能不太适合我们,因为我们是一个系统化的故事文化公司,我们将公司内部的共情定义为:认识自己,接纳自己,努力完善自己,然后适应他人。所以,如果有人不愿意真正了解自己在他人眼中的表现,不愿意在我们的引导下适应和改变,那我们就不会录用。
最近发现的好产品
Lenny: 你最近发现并喜爱的产品是什么?
Nancy Duarte: 我对一个上周刚付费的工具很兴奋,叫 writer.com。它基于多个语言模型构建,而且包括——它将会基于我们自己的所有内容进行训练,我所有的 IP,所有的书,每一篇博客文章,它会学习我们的语调,使用我们自己的语言模型来帮助我们写得更快。所以我们输入很好的提示词,就能得到很好的输出。我对这个非常兴奋。
Lenny: 其实我是那家公司的投资人,所以听到这个太好了。
Nancy Duarte: 哦,是吗?太棒了。
简报制作流程的改进
Lenny: Writer.com。你在制作演示文稿的方法中做了什么相对小的改变,却对你的执行力和产出效率产生了很大的影响?
Nancy Duarte: 嗯。我觉得长期以来最大的障碍、让一切变得痛苦的是编辑轮次。怎么和客户做一轮审阅?然后就会出现多个版本,然后就是版本控制的问题。所以我们开发了一套批注系统,让项目中的每个人都能清楚知道每一页幻灯片的确切状态,而且幻灯片真的没有办法做签入签出。于是我们想出了这套非常棒的、可视化的流程,每个人都清楚每页幻灯片的确切状态,非常简单。你可以切换到缩略图模式,一眼看过去就知道,嗯,我们完成了百分之八十,大家现在只需要集中关注这两件事。这个流程上的改进,特别是在企业级大规模项目中,二十甚至三十人共同参与一版幻灯片的情况下,客户对我们的这个流程非常喜欢。
最后的建议
Lenny: 最后给大家一个提升演讲能力的建议,会是什么?
Nancy Duarte: 要成为更好的演讲者,选一个你充满热情的话题,那种让你觉得”天哪,我一定要让这件事发生”的话题。选那个话题,投入你的热情。认真打磨那场演讲,或者在一个志愿活动中站起来,真正投入一件让你感到充满热情的事情。然后在将来,当你需要演讲一个你并不那么热爱的话题时,你所学到的所有技巧都同样适用于商务演讲,而且你会拥有那种感觉。你会知道从灵魂深处、从激情所在之处演讲是什么感觉。伟大的演讲者正是懂得触及那个激情点,从中汲取力量,这就是他们在其他可能不那么有热情的话题上依然能成为出色演讲者的原因。
Lenny: Nancy,非常感谢你抽出时间来做这期节目。这是我的荣幸。
Nancy Duarte: 你太棒了。
Lenny: 一切。你太棒了。
Nancy Duarte: 你太棒了。
Lenny: 你太棒了。最后两个问题。如果大家想联系你,在哪里可以找到你?听众怎样能帮到你?
Nancy Duarte: 哦,大家可以在 duarte.com 找到我。还有一个 duarte.com/nancy,上面有大量的免费资源,你可以找到我聊过的很多东西。我在 Twitter 上是 @NancyDuarte,而且我在 LinkedIn 上会接受所有与我建立联系的人,这挺有意思的。至于大家怎么能帮到我?我觉得如果每个人都能成为非常好的沟通者,就能解决太多问题了。所以你可以通过努力提升你的沟通技巧来帮助我,努力让你的表达更加清晰,让你周围的每个人都变得更快乐。
Lenny: 多好的结束语。Nancy,再次非常感谢你的到来。
Nancy Duarte: 哦,你太棒了。谢谢你的邀请。
Lenny: 我们都很棒。就到这里吧。
Nancy Duarte: 我们确实很棒。就这么说吧。
Lenny: 好了。大家再见。非常感谢收听。如果你觉得这期节目有价值,可以在 Apple Podcasts、Spotify 或你最喜欢的播客应用上订阅节目。也请考虑给我们评分或留下评论,这对其他听众发现这个播客很有帮助。你可以在 lennyspodcast.com 找到所有往期节目或了解更多关于这个节目的信息。下期再见。
术语表
| 原文 | 中文 |
|---|---|
| Abraham Lincoln | Abraham Lincoln(美国第十六任总统,保留原名) |
| Alfred Hitchcock | 希区柯克 |
| annotation system | 批注系统(团队协作中对幻灯片状态进行标记的流程) |
| archetype | 原型(文学与心理学中反复出现的角色类型与叙事模式) |
| audience journey | audience journey(听众旅程,Duarte 方法论术语) |
| B2B | B2B(企业对企业) |
| big idea | big idea(核心观点,Duarte 方法论术语) |
| Blackberry | 黑莓(早期智能手机品牌) |
| cavalier king spaniel | 骑士查理王小猎犬 |
| Duarte Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design | Duarte 桌面出版与平面设计 |
| fMRI | fMRI(功能性磁共振成像,functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) |
| Freehand | Freehand(矢量绘图软件,保留原名) |
| Frodo | 弗罗多(《指环王》主角,国际知名虚构角色) |
| Gettysburg Address | 葛底斯堡演说 |
| hero’s journey | 英雄之旅(Joseph Campbell 提出的叙事结构模型) |
| Linear | Linear(知名项目管理工具,保留原名) |
| Linotype | Linotype(传统排版铸造机系统,保留原名) |
| love language | 爱之语(人际沟通中表达与感受爱的方式) |
| Luke Skywalker | 卢克·天行者 |
| MacWorld | MacWorld(苹果相关专业杂志,保留原名) |
| Marshall Ganz | Marshall Ganz(哈佛大学社会运动研究学者,保留原名) |
| Martin Luther King Jr. | Martin Luther King Jr.(美国民权运动领袖,保留原名) |
| McKinsey | 麦肯锡(全球知名管理咨询公司) |
| mind’s eye | 心智之眼(内心的视觉想象能力) |
| Minto Pyramid principle | Minto 金字塔原理(Barbara Minto 提出的商务写作与沟通框架,先结论后论证) |
| MSA | MSA(Master Service Agreement,主服务协议) |
| new bliss | 新理想国(Duarte 演讲结构模型术语,指最终的美好未来状态) |
| newsletter | newsletter(定期通讯/邮件订阅刊物,保留原名) |
| Obi-Wan Kenobi | 欧比旺·肯诺比 |
| Patty Sanchez | Patty Sanchez(Duarte 的合著者,保留原名) |
| Photoshop | Photoshop(图像处理软件,保留原名) |
| Pixar | 皮克斯(知名动画电影工作室) |
| PM | PM(产品经理,Product Manager) |
| psychometrics | 心理测评(通过标准化工具测量个体心理特征的方法) |
| Sam | 山姆(《指环王》角色,国际知名虚构角色) |
| slide doc | slide doc(可独立分发阅读的幻灯片文档,Duarte 方法论术语) |
| star moment | star moment(Duarte 提出的演讲设计术语,指让听众永远难忘的关键瞬间) |
| State of the Union | 国情咨文(指美国总统年度演讲,此处也用作比喻) |
| Steve Jobs | Steve Jobs(苹果公司联合创始人,保留原名) |
| storyboard | 故事板(用草图规划叙事流程的视觉工具) |
| Superhost program | 超赞房东项目(Airbnb 的房东等级认证项目) |
| TED | TED(Technology, Entertainment, Design,保留原名) |
| TEDx | TEDx(TED 组织授权的本地独立演讲活动,保留原名) |
| Think Different | Think Different(Apple 经典广告活动,保留原名) |
| torch bearer | 火炬手(Duarte 著作 Illuminate 中的核心概念,指引领团队走向未知未来的领导者) |
| version control | 版本控制(管理文档多版本变更的机制) |
| Zoom | Zoom(视频会议平台) |
此文档由 AI 分片翻译(translate_long_document)