HOW TO GIVE A BETTER SPEECH THAN OBAMA and change your world - (A Lesson for Accountants) by Darren Kelly, Kellcomm, Blog - Day 26

Hi,

Some people say that facts and figures speak for themselves, but is that really true? Doesn’t the philosophy fail to take into account that we are emotional creatures who think mainly in pictures? Shouldn’t facts and figures be communicated with personal and relatable pictures to be effectively received and understood?

Obama is a legal man by trade, but he understands how complex numbers can ruin communication. Let us take a look at his ‘New Energy for America’ speech in 2008. He spoke about the cost of creating new energy when he said, “To do this, we will invest $150 billion over the next ten years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates five million new American jobs.”

Here Obama mentioned the sum of money required, but he made the figure relevant by describing the number of new jobs it would create. The average person cannot comprehend $150 billion, but they do understand 5 million jobs because that affects them. So when you take your facts and figures, you must show how they relate to the person you are talking to.

You could argue that he could have made the figure, 5 million people more relatable too. He could have said, that’s enough people to fill the Washington Redskins, FedEx stadium over 60 times. Or if he was a British leader, he could have said that five million people are enough to fill Wembley stadium 50 times over. (Wembley is Europe's second biggest football stadium and can accommodate just over 100,000 people).

Let us look at how you can make a statistic more relevant. If I said 85% of people love eating fatty foods that may mean nothing to you. However, what if I added that it leads to one in four illnesses and will most likely affect someone in your family or circle of friends? How does that make you feel about the statistic now? Is it more relevant?

The problem with accountancy is that there are too many numbers whizzing around for anybody to bother how to communicate those numbers. There is an art to this, and accountants must adopt the Steve Jobs philosophy of cross pollination. They must step outside their profession and learn new and more effective ways to communicate with their customers. Some people still think rapport and being interesting are tools of entertainment only. If they maintain this philosophy, they will find themselves lagging behind a new breed of accountants who understand that style facilitates substance.

Accountants must realise that as Obama knows, the facts and figures don’t speak for themselves.

On Sunday, I will reveal what Fundraisers can learn from Obama.

On Monday, I will reveal my conversation with Obama’s agent, one of the USA’s Top 100 Lawyers and what people in the legal profession can learn from him.

Take care,

Darren.

PS: 'HOW TO GIVE A BETTER SPEECH THAN OBAMA and change your world' - is available on iTunes and Amazon NOW!
Audio Version only.
Text version in January 2012.





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