I just finished a six week assignment with a major health corporation in town, helping them to cascade their 10 year vision into a repeatable resonant story for their 16,000 associates to understand. The experience was a familiar one — take two years worth of strategic planning work and find a way to get it […]
Yesterday morning I delivered a keynote address on influential storytelling to 80 executives at the company DSW, headquartered in Columbus. They sell shoes and lots of them. In attempting to find the perfect metaphor to begin my talk, I made them each take off their right shoes. To a group of shoe execs, the energy
It takes both sides. Read More »
Last week we re-launched our Influential Storytelling class. Like all good motors, it needed a tune up, and just in time too. These 15 participants came together from 7 different organizations to get down to the business of “story.” One of the attendees in his evaluation said: “It is rare that one experiences something
Our Influential Storytelling Class Read More »
On the TEDxColumbus stage over the last three years, we’ve had a variety of performance artists: musicians, poets and such. This post is not about them. It is about those individuals who have a medium other than their own voice, movement or acting to express their artistry (design, painting). I turned to wikipedia for a
Speaking when your medium isn’t language. Read More »
Rose Smith, during her highly provocative poetry performance at TEDxColumbus, challenged us all to betools. You know, as in a conduit for helping others, making change or doing good. While my tip this month isn’t as deep, her challenge made me think about the tools that the speakers used during TEDxColumbus in their variety of preparation pathways (and
Tools of the Trade Read More »
This week I’ll be speaking at the Cityworks (X)po in Roanoke, Virginia. I was invited to speak on behalf of the TEDx global community, which now equates to 3417 events in 117 countries. Humbled, yes. Nervous, no. Since this is my “TEDx” season, the content is omnipresent in the brain, especially thanks to a great hour-long talk show with our leading
It’s my turn for the stage Read More »
Let me thank the panelists from last week’s Women and Marketing event at TECHColumbus :Joan Manter,Nancy Bohman,Amy Marshall and Padma Sastry. I won’t repeat the content of the panel discussion since Nancy has a wonderful recap on her blog. LXLMS But what I do want to explore for a moment is the notion of the panel
The problem with the panel Read More »
A client engaged us recently to architect a brand-new signature presentation. So we got out our very sophisticated tools: some markers, flip charts and a whole bucket of post it notes. But we find the questions we ask at every step aren’t so simple: What insight can you reveal? So what? Why will your audience
The heavy lifting is yours Read More »
This group of junior and high school students took over a big, open, colorful studio space filled with German-designed, state-of-the-art, learning-inspired furniture created within the confines of the convention hall / trade show, and were broken down into six teams and given a challenge: design a solution to any problem you want to solve. You’ll
Fail Better, for sure! Read More »
From fairy tales to extreme makeovers, who doesn’t love a good before-and-after story? HGTV has built an empire around ’em (with good reason) and TLC offers a veritable pantheon of makeover shows about babies, weddings and beauty. So Ruth and I thought it would be fun and, more importantly, helpful and enlightening, to feature a before-and-after story of
A presentation transformation: part 1 Read More »
