A Synopsis of The Case of Everything is Riding on This ... You've Only Got Minutes to Win Them Over ... Featuring Ted Talks by Chris Anderson.
Matt is a financial analyst at an advertising agency. In the last year, he has somehow gone from a reluctant speaker to the key speaker at an important sales pitch. Through a process of self-coaching, self-directing and self-leadership, he had transformed his presentations from boring snoring to interesting and engaging. This was no mean feat considering his subject matter is numbers and analysis, doubled with the fact that Matt had begun from a place where people’s eyes would glaze over, followed by the earliest possible exits as soon as he began his presentation. He had gone from being invisible to suddenly being in the spotlight - or rather about to be under the spotlight!
This had come about because of his requirement to deliver monthly presentations based on his research and analysis. This was a challenge for Matt and took him out of his comfort zone in different ways:
- Talking for the required thirty minutes was a very big challenge. He actually never spoke very much - Matt, you see, is a man of few words;
- While he loved numbers, analysis and research, he knew that when he did talk about them, he didn’t do it in an interesting way. He’d see people’s eyes quickly glaze over, followed by them making a hasty exit;
- The monthly presentations were preceded by a networking breakfast. Matt really hated small talk. He found the experience both contrived and banal.
Although Matt is a man of few words, he does actually have a love of words. He reads and listens to audio recordings extensively. It was Matt's love of reading that led him to discover Ted Talks by Chris Anderson, which in turn led him to discover Ted Talks for podcast lovers and The Ted Talks YouTube channel.
Because the book had helped Matt transform his presentations from boring snoring to interesting and engaging, he reached out for it once again, to help develop his keynote sales pitch.
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The Case of Everything is Riding on This ...You've Only Got Minutes to Win Them Over ... Featuring Ted Talks by Chris Anderson is part of the WorkLife Book Club Learning Through Reading series, by Carmel O' Reilly from School of WorkLife.
The Learning Through Reading series is a collection of stories inspired by real life WorkLife struggles and successes, presented as case studies for group discussion. The case and the accompanying recommended book will be required reading for each meeting, and will help to frame the subsequent discussion.
The premise behind the WorkLife Book Club Learning Through Reading series is that experiences we have in our WorkLife shape our understanding of the world. Stories help communicate truths about human behaviours and relationships, bringing an opportunity for change and development. Books help anchor WorkLife conversations through characters, plots and settings, enabling a range of issues to be worked through.
My stated mission is to guide learning through reading. I also have a secret mission, which is to draw attention to stories of change and active decision making – people standing up and saying they want to do something different with their WorkLife. I want to highlight stories, books and discussions that focus on in-depth portrayals of subjects inner feelings, thoughts and motivations. While readers will not encounter the exact scenarios they read about, they will be able to use an increasingly finely tuned ability to understand and respond to multiple competing viewpoints.
Carmel O’ Reilly, WorkLife learning practitioner, writer and founder of School of WorkLife. Author of WorkLife Book Club: Volume One: Shoreditch.