08 Sep WHAT IT’S ABOUT
Great thinkers and speakers operate in a similar way, no matter their area of study. Seven hundred years ago, Occam’s Razor, the Principle of Parsimony stated that the simplest explanation is often the best.
Richard Feynman, Nobel prize-winning physicist, invented Feynman Diagrams— visualizations of highly complex physics calculations. Both men distilled their messages to make their findings understandable to the lay public.
Francis Ford Coppola (director of The Godfather) recently premiered his new film Megalopolis which is huge in scope and budget. Coppola was interviewed about how he conceived his films. He said, “I always had one word that I could tell myself about a film: like The Conversation was about privacy. The Godfather was about succession. Apocalypse Now was about morality. And I thought that what the movie was about ought to determine what style it’d be in.”
Use Coppola’s method when conceiving your next presentation. Decide what it’s about in a word, phrase, or sentence. Your answer will affect the style, pacing, and tone which provides a frame for your audience. So, no matter how complex your subject matter is, heads will nod as they visualize your clear, direct delivery and ideas.
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