Short Speeches

Rob Bell:
The Art of Concise Communication Are we saying from the outset, then, that shorter speeches are better than longer speeches?

Tom Pellereau:
The sketch is amazing, because at first you look at it, you go, that doesn't make any sense.

And then you think about it more, and you go, oh, yeah, no, it does.

And to do my best work in a short amount of time takes a lot of preparation.

Jono Hey:
If you had a meeting with the president, you only had five minutes, and you had to get some points across.

You probably think very hard about what went in and what went out.

Rob Bell:
Beaches within movies, Al Pacino in any given Sunday.

The inches, the six inches in front of your face.

Tom Pellereau:
I've been lucky enough to be best man to Jono, in fact, and that took a lot of preparation.

And I was preparing right the way to the night before, and I think I even took a printer to the hotel so I could sort of print the final copy out in various different colors and all that sort of thing.

Rob Bell:
Hello, and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

Now then, have you ever fallen asleep in a lecture or a conference while someone was giving a speech or a talk?

Was it because you were tired slash hungover?

Was it because you lost interest?

Or was it down to the topic of this installment of the podcast, that the speaker was just going on for too darn long?

In this episode, we tackle Jono's sketch, Short Speeches, and the fact that a short speech takes more time and effort to prepare than a longer one.

I'm Rob Bell, Professional Talker.

Joining me on the podcast is the father of Sketchplanations and the king of pithy captions, Jono Hey.

And he for whom actions speak louder than words, it's Tom Pellereau.

Hello, chaps.

Hello.

Jono Hey:
Hello.

Rob Bell:
Well, listen, let's get straight into it.

Jono, do you want to describe your sketch on short speeches and tell us where you came across this concept?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, I think it will make more sense if I describe where I came across it first.

Rob Bell:
Oh, OK, go on.

Jono Hey:
As a quicker way to do it.

Rob Bell:
The old Flipperoonie.

Jono Hey:
I like to keep you on your toes.

Rob Bell:
Thank you.

Jono Hey:
I don't know if you had heard it before, come across it, but I remember reading a long time ago this nice quote or comedy line, which is like, Sorry for writing such a long letter.

As you can tell, I haven't had time to make it shorter.

And I remember thinking, you know, it gets credited to Mark Twain as normal, you know, standard stuff.

But it does actually have a lineage that one.

But I remember just not really thinking much of it, just it's quite a nice thing.

But then somebody told me there was a quotation by Woodrow Wilson, who was a president of the US and somebody had asked him how long it took him to prepare a speech.

And apparently his answer was that depends on the length of the speech.

If it's a 10 minute speech, it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it.

If it's a half hour speech, it takes me a week.

If I can talk as long as I want to, it requires no preparation at all.

I'm ready now.

Nice.

And so I never I'd never thought about that that way before.

And it's really not I think it's quite nice.

It's sort of the reverse to what you you would expect.

And so the I just tried to visualize that.

So the sketch is a descending bar chart of how short your speech is at the bottom and how long you've had to prepare it at the top and down to the person saying he's got as long as he wants and he doesn't have to have anything to prepare.

He's good to go chucking his cue cards away.

You know, it's not a scientific data backed sketch in that sense.

Rob Bell:
But it is a very clear observation.

Are we saying from the outset then that shorter speech is based on the fact that they take longer to prepare are better than longer speeches?

Is there an assumption there?

Tom Pellereau:
I think they should be and they can be if you prepare enough.

I think that the quote that Jono sketched here is from an incredibly good orator who understood that.

But I think sometimes we don't all realise that when we're asked to say a few words, we're like, oh, that's fine.

Don't just make a few words, but actually to make a five, ten minute speech is incredibly difficult.

And it's not till you're kind of invited to something very important, so that you kind of, where you've got to do a five, ten minute speech, that you kind of really realise how difficult and how long it takes to prepare a short speech versus just talking for as long as you want.

So the sketch is amazing because at first you look at it and you go, huh, that doesn't make any sense.

And then you think about it more and you go, oh, oh, yeah, no, it does like that really does make sense.

And to do my best work in a short amount of time takes a lot of preparation.

Rob Bell:
That's very interesting, Tommy, because the first time I heard this, I'm sorry, I didn't have time to write a shorter letter.

The first time I heard that it wasn't an obvious point that was being made.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
And it's the same with this graph.

You're right.

Jono Hey:
I think it means definitely not a hard and fast rule.

No, no, no, I think we can all think of exceptions.

But I do think there's something to the idea that if you are forced to take everything you know about a topic and really condense it down to what is the essence of this, what is the bits that I really need to get across and in the right order, and not waste anybody's time in doing so, that takes some thought and that takes a bit of effort.

I think, Tom, to your point, maybe that's about when it's important is when it really matters.

I was thinking if you had a meeting with the president, you only had five minutes or whatever, and you had to get some points across or whatever.

You probably think very hard about what went in and what went out for that five minutes.

Otherwise, you miss your slot.

Rob Bell:
It's about clarity and focus on what you want to prioritize on, isn't it?

There's an element of memorability about it as well.

If you're keeping it short, people might remember what you talked about, and that leads on to keeping your audience's attention for that short amount of time, because it is very difficult and probably increasingly so, I would say, to keep an audience's attention in the most public speaking or just speaking scenarios.

Tom Pellereau:
I've got a few instances I'd like to talk about.

Rob Bell:
Yes, come on, let's get into examples and instances.

Come on, Tommy, lead us off.

Tom Pellereau:
Best man speech.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, good.

Tom Pellereau:
I've been lucky enough to be best man to Jono, in fact, and that took a lot of preparation.

At the time, when I was 20 years ago, I was really not very well prepped at these sort of things.

So I was preparing right the way till the night before, and I think I even took a printer to the hotel, so I could print the final copy out in various different colors and all that sort of thing to give the impression that you're not reading it, that you're giving the speech.

Because when you've got friends and family around, you want to be looking around.

But at the same time, I knew that if I didn't have something written down very clearly, I'd make a mess and then I'd just be waffling on, and I'd lose my train of thought because of all those brilliant people around.

Rob Bell:
So how do you think your best man speech went at Jono's wedding, Tommy?

Were you conscious of keeping it short, keeping it memorable for the audience, keeping everyone's attention?

Tom Pellereau:
I was certainly trying to.

I was talking about a brilliant couple who I knew very well and had a lot of very good friends in the room.

So it was great.

Rob Bell:
It was good.

I confirm that it was superb.

Now, what about wedding speeches that haven't gone quite as well, that maybe were less, what were the words I used earlier?

Focused, clear, I was going to say memorable, definitely memorable, the one I'm thinking of.

Tom Pellereau:
There can be a lot of pressure.

I remember there was a lot of pressure at one wedding where my wife was a very, very close friend of the bride and she was on the bridal table.

So she was right with the person giving the speech.

I luckily was on a sort of back table with a lot of people having a really good time.

And the person, the best man giving the speech hadn't really picked the mood of the close family and was making a lot of very funny to us, a lot in the back of the room remarks, but really not going down very well at the front.

And he just carried on.

He just kept on digging and it was kind of just wanting someone to pull him down.

Jono Hey:
It's interesting that isn't it?

Because it's almost like the preparation was there, but not the flexibility.

Whereas if you would just sort of had the flexibility to like read the room and adjust it and go with it.

And I think that's what you say with like a great DJ or something at a club would be somebody who would read the energy right and change it as accordingly.

Rob Bell:
That is a lovely little simile Jono.

Yes.

Very, very nice.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Any other examples?

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Specifics from either you, whether you were giving the speech or whether you were a receiver of the speech.

Is that a word?

Tom Pellereau:
The listener.

Rob Bell:
Listener.

Thanks.

Tom Pellereau:
One that I find the most pressure on is I used to do kind of adverts for our products.

Like I would do like an introductory advert for a makeup brush cleaner or a nail file or something like that.

And trying to get those words because you've only got a few words that you're trying to put across in a very short amount of time.

Rob Bell:
On what media?

What format?

Tom Pellereau:
Instagram and these things are very different now.

But 10 years ago when you were kind of making social media videos, some of them you were trying to be quite kind of adverting kind of thing.

And you were trying to say exactly about the product in as short amount of words as possible.

And then for me, it was actually remembering those words, whilst also looking at the camera I found very difficult.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, so there's prep in that, isn't there?

You're writing a script, basically.

Tom Pellereau:
Do you write many of your scripts, Rob?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, sometimes.

Sometimes not at all.

Sometimes 50-50 between me and a director.

Tom Pellereau:
I'm always amazed at presenters who can just say something incredible to the camera without looking up to try and remember that word.

Rob Bell:
It's practice.

It's practice.

Jono Hey:
A similar thing is do all the prep and then it comes out looking really natural.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

I'll give you an example.

You know, before we graduated, we did our final year projects and we had, was it called a Viva?

Viva.

Viva.

Jono Hey:
Maybe it's Viva.

Tom Pellereau:
Viva.

Rob Bell:
You have to go and present your final year project to a panel of professors and lecturers and stuff.

Tom Pellereau:
I don't think it's Viva Las Vegas.

Rob Bell:
Mine certainly wasn't.

I didn't really prep that very well.

To be honest, I didn't really know what the point of my previous six months work was.

And so when it came to presenting it, it was very difficult.

And I kind of, I remember sat at my desk for that two days before that presentation, that Viva, that speech going, I don't know where I'm going with this.

And then I thought, do you know, and I just remember going, do you know what, I'll be all right.

I've done my blooming degree now.

This is just the final little bit.

And I just remember being in there at the time and going, oh, this is awful.

This is awful.

I am rambling now.

I'm just talking.

I don't know where I'm taking this.

I should definitely have prepared this better, but I should definitely have prepared this more.

It wasn't very nice.

You were thinking that as you were saying it, which is slightly different.

But I feel like if you did have a, if you had a very clear path that you wanted to take that talk on, you would be able to make it as short or as long as you'd like.

And in a in a viva, you want to keep it nice and punchy, pithy.

If they've got any questions, great, you can extend it.

But you're probably looking for about a five to ten minute talk in that, aren't you?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it did cross my mind to do doing like reports at university or something like that.

I did feel like maybe we love to waffle a bit.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Jono Hey:
And it sort of felt like, well, maybe I'll just get some credit for writing a lot.

Rob Bell:
Yes, that was a mindset.

Yes.

Jono Hey:
Whereas actually, probably the ideal thing is a super short, straight to the point.

Here's what you need to know.

Rob Bell:
Lovely.

Jono Hey:
And you didn't waste their time at the same time.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
So I think it probably it probably applies just the same there.

Like the better you know it, the clearer you've done it.

You've really condensed it to the essence.

Here it is.

Nice, short, sweet, perfect.

Rob Bell:
I'm so pleased you said that, because that's really interesting.

I'd say my mindset as a schoolboy was, the more I write, the more credit I'll get for it.

And what a poor teachers.

Exactly.

And I wish someone had told me otherwise.

They probably did.

Any other examples of you want to offer up?

Because these are fun.

Tom Pellereau:
I've got a couple more.

Rob Bell:
You don't have to name names, Tom.

Tom Pellereau:
The apprentice application process, which is now a long time ago.

Apparently, there were three or five thousand people applied.

And it was very clear in the e-mail they sent when you arrived and also when you arrived.

So a lot of us arrived and they said, you know, and really think about why you should be Law Sugar's next business partner.

I was like, OK, that's probably worth some thought.

So in this in this room, I was there and I had my little notebook out and I sort of started writing and rewriting and rewriting like what I thought I would say, because I did feel they'd kind of prompted us that probably this question is going to come up.

Right?

So writing and writing, and other people were in the room and we were held, it's TV, so we were held for quite a long time.

And then we went up into this room, 12 of us, we were all asked to stand behind a piece of paper.

And the guy at the front said, OK, so in a minute, I'm going to call out like number one, and number one, you will then talk and you've got 60 seconds, and there's a big clock on the wall there, to answer the question, why you should be Lord Sugar's next business partner.

And I was like, well, that's worked out, because I think all I've got to do now is try and remember it.

But it was like, OK, and go number one.

And the first person was like, yeah, well, I think I should be because I'm really organized and I always know what to say.

And you're like, oh my gosh.

And that was very unfair on number one, because they didn't get a chance.

Everyone else is like trying to think it through.

And over there, such a clever way, because 60 seconds is short, but it's also really quite long.

Rob Bell:
Can be, yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
When you've got to talk.

And then at the end, they said, OK, number two, number five, number six, you go through that door, number three, you go through that door.

And you're a bit like, is that good?

Am I going through the right door or the wrong door?

Jono Hey:
And what you found that later, crocodiles behind the other one.

Tom Pellereau:
Half the people have been sent home.

Good exercise.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, that's really good.

It's a bit like the elevator pitch for your business, right?

It really sharpens the mind to try and distill it to that.

Why would this person care when it gets to, we're doing a lot of work at this business, but why would they care about it right now?

And how am I going to get that across in a few minutes?

Rob Bell:
Jono, I had this the other day that reminds me of something.

You know on LinkedIn, I don't know how much you use LinkedIn, if you connect with somebody who you're not already connected with, you can send them, I think it's 200 characters you've got to send them a message.

So I was really forced to think about, I was sending someone relatively important, an invite to connect who I want to connect with and potentially do business with.

And I've really had to use those characters wisely, very, very wisely.

It becomes almost like a Morse code message.

We're making every work hard, stop.

Good at job.

Stop.

Jono Hey:
That's that what you said to clear and concise, stop, clear and concise.

Only use 50 characters.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, there we go.

Let's see where we get with that, which is what Twitter started out as, right?

Was it 128 characters, was it originally in a tweet?

I mean, it feels like that's gone.

It's just all over the shop now and text messages.

Yeah.

But I was, so keeping it tight.

I hosted an event a couple of years ago and the guest speaker had 10 minutes for their talk before we got into the awards.

Now, this was just before dinner and then after dinner, we'd get into the awards.

Now, this was quite a high profile guest speaker.

They're invited to do 10 minutes.

They did 40, did around 40 minutes.

And it was a bit of a ramble.

It didn't feel like it had too much structure.

It didn't feel like it had the preparation that we're talking about here.

And as the host compare, whatever you want to call it, of the event, I was, it was a bit of a quandary for me.

Like, God, I should, I feel like I should step in at some point.

And again, as you were saying, there was no reading of the room.

There was a lot of shifting in seats and fidgeting.

The staff were waiting to bring in dinner because they'd been told dinner at this time.

We're now half an hour over that.

I didn't step in because I said it was quite a high profile speaker.

I didn't step in, but it was it was uneasy for me watching this feeling like, ah, this this is not going well.

Jono Hey:
So they didn't they didn't do their their two weeks of preparation for their.

No, no, sadly, sadly.

It's a bit like I remember with presentations.

I don't know if you don't if you don't think too hard about presentations, you just throw everything you had in, you know, if you're doing slides and you go through presentations, somebody's there and they're like, oh, we'll just skip this one.

Oh, we'll just skip this one.

Oh, I don't have time for that.

Rob Bell:
Oh, yes.

Jono Hey:
No, it never reflects as well as a presentation that finishes a little bit early with all the points you need.

Rob Bell:
Agreed, Jono, yeah, yeah, agreed.

But can I ask you, what would you guys have done in that situation?

Would you feel like you would have stepped in to cut the speaker off?

Tom Pellereau:
I think you were in an incredibly difficult situation because everyone in the room would have liked someone to step in.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, they were hungry.

Tom Pellereau:
And they were hungry, they were bored, you know, and they would have loved you if you had stepped in.

But at the same time, you could have put yourself in a very bad situation with that individual and possibly an organizer or whoever.

So, I think it has to be someone incredibly senior to have stepped in, which is a tricky situation, so yeah.

Rob Bell:
And yes, the most senior person in the room at that time was on stage speaking.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Do a little joke, you know, drop your water bottle or trip over or something.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Oh, wow.

Jono Hey:
Oh, is that the time?

Tom Pellereau:
And almost cutting people off in a way that everyone is happy at the end of the cutting off is an incredible skill.

Rob Bell:
It is a really good skill, isn't it?

Tom Pellereau:
And I'm not very good at it.

Sometimes I get slightly stuck in a conversation with someone and I kind of, and I don't wish to be rude, but at the same time, like, we should all probably be mingling a bit more.

My dad is amazing at it.

He just works the room, he's around, he's chatting.

Rob Bell:
Because he's so charming.

Tom Pellereau:
And everyone feels really happy.

Oh, Matthew, how are you doing?

And then he's off to...

Rob Bell:
Exactly.

If he's coming off halfway through a story to go and speak to somebody over there.

He's so charming, I wouldn't be offended at all.

Tom Pellereau:
And some people are incredibly good at it.

Jono Hey:
Wow.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Whereas the danger is you come across as a complete arse.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Although everyone would have been thanking you.

Rob Bell:
Which is my go-to and not conscious go-to.

Yeah.

Any other examples before we before we move on?

Just to cut you guys off and me.

Tom Pellereau:
I got one more.

I'm occasionally asked, what is my one piece of advice for people going on The Apprentice?

And it is, say what you're going to say and then stop talking when you're in the boardroom.

Jono?

Jono Hey:
I don't know if you're gonna do this already, but I was gonna get a bit meta about the podcast.

Rob Bell:
Oh, go on.

Jono Hey:
Don't you think?

Because it's quite interesting, I think.

And obviously, you work in TV, you've both worked in TV.

And I was watching, we watched the Lego Batman film a little while ago.

And also some, like, making of bits.

And Michael Cira, whose voice is Robin or whatever, he was talking about it.

He was like, the jokes per minute ratio is very high in that film.

And I think it is.

It's a fun film to watch, but it's interesting, like in order to get that density of good content, you have to work really hard, which is almost like the opposite of the guy going on for 40 minutes and like waffling, right?

You don't have that density of stuff.

And I think TV, where the slots are like limited, or at least it was that way, right?

Like there were only a few channels and there's 24 hours a day, and everybody wants these hours.

Rob Bell:
Let's call it traditional TV now.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, exactly.

Like you had to cram it all in, and obviously you still do that with films and stuff.

Podcast is a bit different.

Like podcast is not time limited, right?

It's a bit like having the infinite bookstore.

You can have as many books as you like, but podcasts, it doesn't matter.

Nobody's competing for this extra thing.

And so you get some podcasts which are really long, like two and a half hours, conversations, which is great sometimes, but so different than a TV thing where somebody's worked really hard to go, what's going to be in this?

Perhaps you film loads of stuff and then you cut it all out and you just put the best bits.

And so, yeah, I was wondering, like podcasts, and the format is a conversation, right?

There's some prep, but there's also like, let's see what happens, I suppose.

But yeah, I don't know.

I was trying to contrast the two.

I wonder what your experience was.

Rob Bell:
My experience is in making television programs is that typically you will film more than ends up in the edit, quite a lot more.

There'll be whole sequences that you film that took half a day, that took producers a long time to set up for, to get the location, to get logistics, everybody there, to get maybe a contributor, an expert is going to come and talk to you about it.

And sometimes they just don't make the cut at all.

That said, you'd much rather be in that position when you get to the edit suite than the converse, which is right, we've we we kind of timed this all down to the last second to make sure that we're going to fill these 52 minutes that we've got in an hour long slot with advert breaks.

Oh, we're actually a bit short, we're going to have to pad this out with a bit of music and some long aerial shots or something like that.

You'd much rather be in the in the former position.

But yeah, it's interesting.

I was going to ask where else this applies.

You know, letters, books, articles, TV podcasts.

Yeah, it's it's different.

And I don't mind having the limit.

I try and keep these to 100 an hour because I feel that's neat.

And also, I feel it is it's testing our listeners or receivies of the podcast in terms of keeping their their attention.

And maybe what the other things I talked about being memorable, clarity and focus.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, it depends, isn't it?

In some ways, it's it's it's respecting listeners' time, isn't it?

Yeah.

But sometimes you only have a limited amount of time, so you're you're trying to do to do everything you can.

I know I know with writing, it's quite hard.

Like if you've written some stuff and I have it was it was kind of like the sunk cost fallacy.

Like I've I've written this good stuff, so I don't want to take it out.

Even if when you're taking it out makes it better, it's still quite hard to take it out.

Somebody go, oh, you don't need that bit.

I thought that bit was good.

Rob Bell:
Editing is hard.

Editing is hard, whether it's a speech, whether it's a podcast, whether it's telly, whether it's a piece of writing, it's really hard.

And you and it's much better not to be personally emotionally tied or involved in the original writing, which is that's what happens in telly.

You hand it all over to an editor and an edit producer.

And typically, not always, but a lot of the time, they haven't been out on shoot.

So they're not as emotionally attached to some footage that you might have taken, because it was really hard to get that, and it was raining and it was so cold.

They're quite happy just to chuck it and don't worry about it.

It'll make the program better.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
On the flip side of this, it's being suggested that one of the reasons Donald Trump did very well in this election is because he went on quite a few long form, like really long form podcasts, where the audience was able to hear him speak for much longer than they might normally get to speak from a news conference, which is very edited.

So he went on All In and Joe Rogan, all those sort of ones, which so he could talk for an hour, two hours, give his views on lots and lots of things and in depth, much more than you would normally get from the standard sort of news conference, those sort of things.

And apparently that's a real change in media landscape for the president, I was about to say the apprentice, for the presidential election this year.

Jono Hey:
Interesting.

I was thinking sometimes that it's quite nice to have something like a, I don't know, a speech or the opportunity to talk sprung on you.

Rob Bell:
Oh, go on.

Yeah.

Jono Hey:
Because...

Rob Bell:
Jono, can you just say a few words?

Jono Hey:
One, two, three.

Rob Bell:
No, no, no, no.

I meant that's...

Jono Hey:
Yeah, exactly.

Sorry.

Rob Bell:
In a particular event or a situation.

Jono, do you mind just saying a few words just to get things underway?

Jono Hey:
And there's like an immediate sort of panic.

But there's also like, if somebody said, you know, when the event was booked three weeks ago, and at the end of it, I'm going to ask you to say a few words.

You'd be thinking about it for weeks.

You'd be stressing about it.

Whereas if somebody just like says, okay, yeah, can you just say something?

You're like, well, okay, I guess I'm ready now.

I'll just say what comes to mind.

It probably won't be as good.

But on the other hand, you saved all that stress and prep, perhaps.

One thing, my dad was given an honorary degree, and I went to see it with my brother, which is amazing to go get him the award.

He got off gown and taking the photos, and he was asking what the schedule is.

They were saying, right, brilliant, well, we'll do some photos, we'll go in a bit, we'll present some of the things, then you'll have your 15 minutes to talk to everybody.

I just remember my dad saying, 15 minutes?

Okay.

It was in about half an hour's time.

Rob Bell:
This is with an audience, right?

There's a crowd out there.

Jono Hey:
It's like 800 people.

Yeah, you know, this culmination of a thing.

And he's fortunately very, very good at this and didn't believe bat an eyelid.

But I'm sure inside you, you're thinking, right, okay, 15 minutes, huh?

But at least he didn't have to stress about it for a week.

Tom Pellereau:
He only had 20 minutes to stress.

Rob Bell:
There you go.

Jono Hey:
So that was something.

Rob Bell:
I thought I would have a little look at some of the most famous short speeches that there were.

Did you boys think about that at all?

No, I didn't do any preparation at all.

Jono Hey:
He's never prepared and always ready.

Rob Bell:
So there's the Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln in 1863.

Apparently just 272 words.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
I didn't know that at all.

When I think of the Gettysburg Address, I think of it as a huge, great, big speech.

This is around the American Civil War.

The end of Abraham Lincoln, the American president at the time.

Jono Hey:
I'm pretty sure that I had to learn it when I was at school in the US.

Because it is learnable because it's not that long.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, especially if you learn it to a song.

Jono Hey:
To a song?

Rob Bell:
As a kid, if you've got something to learn, like the alphabet or how to spell something, if you learn it to the tune of a song, it can help you remember it.

Jono Hey:
Definitely true.

It would be a good song.

It would be like Bohemian Rhapsody.

Gettysburg Address to the Bohemian Rhapsody.

Rob Bell:
Winston Churchill also, especially during the Second World War, his speeches tended to be relatively short.

And within his speeches, there were soundbites.

Short, pithy, well thought out, well prepared, shall we say, in the context of this podcast and what we're talking about.

Well prepared soundbites, you know, you should fight them on the beaches.

Never was so much owed by so many, so few, you know, very, very powerful, galvanising words.

Jono Hey:
He's actually one of the people credited with an instance of, sorry, so long, but I didn't have time to make it shorter.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, okay.

Jono Hey:
And had been to his house in the country, and he basically spent half a day writing every day, sort of wake up in the morning and have a cigar and a bottle of whisky and write until lunchtime, or something like that.

Rob Bell:
That's national trust property, isn't it?

Jono Hey:
It is.

Rob Bell:
Where is it?

What's it called?

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Zinc and what's it called?

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Yeah, come back to that.

Rob Bell:
I like that.

Tom Pellereau:
Chartwell.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, Tom's just remembered.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Chartwell.

Tom Pellereau:
You begin with CH, but me remembering something definitely begins with the letter is usually massively wrong.

Well, I have just looked at Chartwell.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

I mean, but Churchill was big advocate of keeping things short, keeping things simple and getting his message across and writing and rewriting.

Yeah.

Rob Bell:
Interestingly, as well, apparently, I didn't know this.

Tom Pellereau:
John F.

Rob Bell:
Kennedy's inaugural presidential address in 1961 is remembered as a very powerful, impactful short speech.

14 minutes.

And when I read that, I thought, oh, 14 minutes, that is probably quite short for an inaugural address.

So I thought I'd look up what Donald Trump's inaugural address length was in 2017.

It was only 16 minutes, which I found surprising.

Jono Hey:
I mean, it is an occasion where you would probably spend a bit of time preparing or have some people help prepare for you.

Rob Bell:
Yes, yes, yes.

I'd say there's some speeches within movies that are quite memorable.

Al Pacino does a speech, I think it's called the Inches Speech in any given Sunday.

And it's kind of as the coach of a football team at halftime or at some pause in the game.

And it's all about the inches that you're going to take, kind of marginal gains type of thing.

That's quite a memorable speech.

It's not like the inches, the six inches in front of your face.

Tom Pellereau:
Tom Cruise's speech in A Few Good Men.

Remember that being very powerful at the time.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom Pellereau:
That sort of last bit that kind of technically wins the case for his guys.

I think Zelensky has probably done some pretty amazing speeches.

He's certainly at the beginning.

Rob Bell:
Are they short?

Tom Pellereau:
When everyone didn't think he had the charm.

Rob Bell:
I mean, I guess all we see is the news footage of it, right?

Jono Hey:
Worked in TV.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, he worked in TV.

Tom Pellereau:
Yeah, as you say, in the media, we don't really get to what you don't see the whole speech, right?

Like I imagine some of his early speeches add to the American Congress must have been amazingly powerful and probably pretty quick to get what to get how many hundreds of billions of dollars.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, this is really interesting.

The fact that we're coming down to communication skills here because there is your script and the preparation that's gone into that and keeping it short.

But there's also your delivery, right?

The tone, the style, your passion that comes through in your delivery.

Tom Pellereau:
Your reading of the room, as Jono said, is vital too.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

I've seen it down a couple of times and I try and emulate it where applicable.

If you're on stage, using the space you've got available on that stage to help communicate what it is you're talking about.

And so in an instance, it would be, this is not something I've done, but I've seen it done and it worked so well.

The speaker was talking about some stuff that had happened in the past, some stuff that's happening now and some stuff that he was projecting was going to happen in the future.

And he used three different parts of the stage.

He used his right, our left for the past, the middle, for the present, and he moved himself right over to the other side of the stage, his left, our right for the future.

He'd move between them and make connections.

I don't remember what I was saying here.

And it was really, really impactful.

Jono Hey:
Simple and clever.

Yeah, clever device to get a bit of structure using visuals for it.

Speaking of visuals, I mean, they're not speeches, but probably the best sketches that I do.

You make it just as simple as it needs to be.

And so the ones where I've probably been more successful are ones where I've managed to do it with fewer words, but it doesn't mean it didn't take me a long time to get to those words and that format for a sketch.

Rob Bell:
That's what Sketchplanations is all about.

Distilling it down to the real essence of whatever it is you're trying to explain.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

Occasionally it comes to you as a flash like this is what it has to be.

But often it's sort of rattling around in the mind for quite a long time.

And then you try a few things and then you test some stuff out.

And then eventually you get to something which looks really simple.

Rob Bell:
Yes, that's so interesting.

Like this graph, I'd say.

But this sketch, Short Speeches, is a very simple sketch.

It communicates very effectively the point you're making.

Jono Hey:
That's the idea.

But it's funny, isn't it?

When you see really simple visuals, you're like, oh, yeah, that looks dead easy.

And then when you try and do it, you're like, oh, why can't I?

Some of the things I think would be easy sometimes turn out to be really hard.

And you get yourself in a bit of a twist and you end up just going over and over.

I had a really nice quote from Paul Graham I liked, which was about writing, but he says, the easy conversational tone of good writing comes only on the eighth we write.

Which is, again, quite counterintuitive, isn't it?

It comes across like it's easy and conversational, like you haven't prepared at all, but you probably spent a lot of time preparing.

Rob Bell:
Yes, yes, yes.

I wonder if there's a similarity there with some modern art as well.

It's that you see something that's very, very simple but has a big impact.

Well, that's easy.

Anyone could do that.

It's just a line on a canvas or in your case, Jono, with the sketch.

It's just a few lines within the framework that you use.

But it could have taken a lot of iteration and a lot of thought and a lot of preparation to get to that point.

Jono Hey:
I don't know if it's an apocryphal story, but the one of Picasso where somebody saw him at a restaurant and say, can you do me a picture?

And he did a little sketch on the napkin and handed it to him.

Oh, thank you so much for that.

Can I buy it for this amount?

And he's like, no, no, no, it costs a fortune because she's like, well, hang on, but it only took you a second to do.

He's like, no, it took me a lifetime to do.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

Lovely.

Jono Hey:
Because it's all in there.

Obviously, if I'd have prepared that story, I'd have delivered it a bit shorter and sweeter.

Case in point.

And you do engineering communication.

I was thinking about science communication.

It was funny.

If you're writing a non-fiction book, and let's say you're a professor or something, you know all the content, right?

You know what's going to go into this book.

You know all the stuff, but you can't just sit down and it just flow out perfectly.

You could just sort of hang around with a professor, and eventually all the stuff from the book might come out.

And be like, oh yeah, and one more thing.

And that reminds me about this.

And eventually you'd learn it all.

But actually, it takes a huge amount of time to condense all that knowledge into the right order and sequence and just the right bits for like a nonfiction book.

And so it reminds me, it's sort of funny.

It's like the knowledge is in there, but to condense it down and communicate it clearly is a ton of work.

Rob Bell:
Yes.

And that reminds me of the process of sometimes writing your little pieces of camera that you might do for making television documentaries.

You've got to be comfortable with stuff that if you had lots of time, you might end up saying, but these have got to be pithy.

So you've got to be comfortable with the bit with the stuff that you're not saying.

You've got to be comfortable with the stuff that you've decided to leave out, because it can, it probably muddies the water a little bit.

Again, it's reading the room.

It's reading the room, even though there isn't a room.

And, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of glasses in the lens and on the TV screen between you and the room.

Jono Hey:
Putting yourself in their shoes.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, exactly that.

Rob, what about language used then in a speech or a talk, be it long or short?

Jono, I think you've got another sketch about using short words or plain words within a speech.

And we talked about this a little bit earlier on how when we were school kids and we had a piece of writing to do, you'd try and use all sorts of complicated words and very sophisticated language, should you say.

Jono Hey:
We talked about Churchill, but like there's a quote from him, which is short words are the best and short words, when old, are the best of all.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, the old short words.

Jono Hey:
Old short words.

It's a bit, I mean, it's the same with food.

I remember like food was like food that your grandmother will recognize, you know, is not the processed fancy stuff, right?

It's a bit similar with words, isn't it?

Just the stuff, the early words that you learn, kind of the most impactful and you're not trying to waffle.

You're not trying to impress anybody with fancy, fancy long stuff.

Rob Bell:
What you're trying to do is be impactful and get a message across.

And to do that, you need the most number of people to understand what you're saying with the least amount of thought.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, a link in the text for this sketch to it.

It's not words, but there's a concept I really like, which is more about products.

And this was from Edward de Bono, which is things, things get more complex before they get simple.

Tom Pellereau:
Yes, yeah, that's very true.

Jono Hey:
Yeah.

And I think that actually just reflects it so much the same way you have with a speech, you know, you try and solve a problem, you keep layering stuff on, you layer stuff on, you layer stuff on, eventually you sort of get there.

And then you think, oh, here's an easy way to do it.

But you couldn't necessarily go straight there.

You had to go through this complex path to get there.

Tom Pellereau:
And I tell you, it's really frustrating, the fact that you have to go through the really complicated path to get there.

And because you're like, I know this is going to end up simple eventually, but it's just getting more and more and more complicated.

And you're like, if we just keep on working, we will eventually start going down the other way.

Jono Hey:
The confidence.

Rob Bell:
Yeah, you do have to have confidence in that.

Is there any other business, anything else anyone wanted to raise?

Jono Hey:
Yeah, there's a few things where there's like a blend of preparation and real-time interaction.

Yeah, well, I was actually thinking, again, it's easy to think about a podcast, but I also think this applies to like a panel discussion or an interview on a TV program or something like that.

Yeah.

Is it if I think of the podcast in a way, I think a lot of the good parts stem from the fact that I've actually done some preparation.

Rob Bell:
Yeah.

Jono Hey:
And I've thought about it in advance.

And obviously I have done because I've done these sketches, but I actually thought about the podcast as well.

But I think probably the best parts happen when you've done your preparation and then you have the real-time interaction and something got made kind of in the moment.

And I was trying to think that it's slightly different between like a podcast and a speech because a speech does, speech is a one-way.

I thought of some stuff and I'm going to tell you it and you're going to sit and listen.

It's a one-way thing.

Whereas if in a podcast and discussion or a panel session, obviously, you come to a panel session, you're probably going to think about the topic of the panel if you're invited to be on that panel.

That's probably a good idea.

And maybe you might know a bit about what the questions are going to ask in advance.

And yet, some of the best bits are going to come because of the other participants in the panel said this and stuff that you realized on the spot.

And so I was trying to think that the sketch is about speeches, but I think there's a sort of magic where you have a blend of preparation and like real time interaction, where you get something that's unique.

And I don't know if that always comes up in podcasts or not.

It occurred to me, so I wanted to mention that.

Rob Bell:
A very valid point, I think, Jono.

Jono Hey:
It's sort of like, you know, fill your head before you go to sleep, and then your brain will sort of work on it.

I think you kind of have to fill your head with all the stuff and then let stuff come out as it does, and it would probably be better than if you hadn't done that in the first place.

Rob Bell:
But I think that definitely comes with practice, right?

And that comes with confidence to know that, right, I'm filled my head with this stuff.

I can't actually make head or tail of it at the moment, because there's so much in there.

To have the confidence to know that when it comes down to it, you will have clarity of thought, and you will be able to access those little nuggets of information and pull them across.

I'm thinking in very much that kind of panel scenario that you talked about.

Jono Hey:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.

The other thing I wanted to say was, it's a curious thing, isn't it?

Your knowledge is there.

You can say all the staff, but it's messy and it's unordered and it's not nicely communicated to people.

But one of the things that AI is really good at is summarizing and reorganizing information.

And so I wondered if this whole pattern might completely change, because in some ways, you could allow yourself to just like, right, this is my topic, here's everything I know about the topic.

So I'm just going to waffle away and then an AI can take all the best parts, can organize it to make the point.

And it's your stuff because you've been waffling along and set it in, but that hard work of like summarizing, reorganizing, AI is amazing at that.

And so maybe that will change.

It's a bit like the professor trying to write the book.

He's like, okay, well, I'll just say everything I know about this topic and write me a book on it.

Rob Bell:
You tied it up.

Jono Hey:
So maybe it'll all change.

And maybe if we start to make more of that.

Tom Pellereau:
And you can definitely ask the AI to be like, I'd like a 100 word version of that, a 500 word version of that, a 2000 word version of that, a presentation of that in five slides or 20 slides.

It's going to be, you're absolutely right, Jono, you've nailed it.

It's going to be so powerful for that.

And it's likely to really change the game and save a lot of time, which is wonderful.

Jono Hey:
Potentially you're thinking of you writing your 100-word invite on LinkedIn.

You can just say, just waffle for a minute.

These are all the things on my mind I want to say.

But can you just say it in 100 words politely, in a way that they're likely to get back to me?

Rob Bell:
Wow.

Jono Hey:
Well, we'll see.

Rob Bell:
With what's in my mind, I'm now eager to get into the three takeaways from this episode.

Jono Hey:
I think I'm going to take away three things in particular.

One is that it's probably quite hard to prepare too much for something, and probably the more important it is, the more you need to prepare.

And that is absolutely, I think, reflective of the sketch.

And maybe it's not just the big speeches, but maybe it's also the interactions with your kids or your family.

Think about those as well.

The second one is perhaps the AI is going to maybe change everything.

Yes, this may have been the pattern for hundreds of years, but maybe now you can just waffle on and ask the AI to summarize it for you.

That would be lovely.

Give it a try.

And the third one is, I think, for me, what came across in a lot of the examples was, yes, prepare, but also be aware of the magic of what's happening in the moment and an awareness of your listeners and what's going on in the room and being flexible, because you don't want to be there.

There's no point in preparing something that is not coming across properly.

So that being flexible to the moment is my number three.

Rob Bell:
Well, let's round off our episode on short speeches there, Jono.

Another brilliantly simple but brilliantly short and communicative sketch.

Thank you for that and thank you all for listening.

Until next time, stay well and go well.

Goodbye.

Jono Hey:
Bye, everyone.

Cool.

Tom Pellereau:
Sorry, are you waiting for me to say goodbye?

Rob Bell:
Yeah, I quite enjoy that you did it.

All music on this podcast series is provided by the very talented Franc Cinelli.

And you can find many more tracks at franccinelli.com.