The greater the simplicity, the greater the understanding (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

 36. The greater the simplicity, the greater the understanding.

Each time you add a “step” you confuse an additional 10% of your audience*. If you have a class of 10, when the first person gets to Step 10, I guarantee there will still be someone on Step 1.

There are 3 easy steps you can take to overcome this:

• Design a graphic that serves as a map.
• Distribute recipe-type handouts for those who fall behind to follow.
• Never have more than 3 steps.

If you have more than 3 steps, divide the task into multiple tasks.

Look hard at what you are trying to teach and distill the important stuff from the “nice to know” stuff or “I know more than you do, ain’t I hot?” stuff. Teach the important stuff and let folks figure out the rest on their own.

* Remember that 86% of statistics are made up.

 37. Graphics rule!

There are more visual learners than meet the eye. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

A good, even simple, graphic can go a surprisingly long way in increasing understanding of a concept.

Dr. Gary Hartzell, author of Building Influence for the School Librarian, uses a simple graphic of a ribbon like you’d find on a prize-winning hog at the state fair on presentation slides that have key points. I see the ribbon; I write the point down. It works.

38. You can put all the pretty clothes on your dog you want, but he's still a dog. 

PowerPoint, GoogleSlides, and other multimedia presentation tools are dangerous devices. Users, especially students, have a tendency to spend way too much time on a presentation’s appearance rather than its content. Popular speaker and author Jamie McKenzie calls this “power-pointlessness.”

Good assessment tools for presentations describe three components:

• How good is the content?
• How effective is the speaker?
• Did the technology help  the message?

Lots more points should be given to the first two areas than the last.

There are many good sources about giving effective multimedia presentations. I am just picking a few things that really grind my gears. And these are things both high-priced speakers and third graders often do. Thanks for letting me vent.

39. First Law of Presentations: Show your audience pictures of happy, productive children and they will believe almost anything you tell them.

I hate clip art, especially clip art I’ve seen about a million times. 

Like this one for example:

Illustrate your slides with pictures of actual happy, smilin’, gettin’-educated children taken with a digital camera. If you’re worried about parental permission, run the picture through a photo-editing filter until the individual is unrecognizable. You’ll even look talented. 

Or find a student with a knack for cartooning and buy the work.

You must get the last person on board sooner or later (From Machines Are the Easy Part)

From Machines Are the Easy Part; People Are the Hard Part. 
Illustrations by Brady Johnson

 33. You must get the last person on board sooner or later.

Let’s call him Bob. When everyone else was reading the building’s bulletin sent as an e-mail, Bob was still insisting on a print copy.

You know the reasons. 

• Too much effort. 
• I don’t have time. 
• I was never taught how.
• It’s not what we’ve always done.

We continued to print a bulletin for Bob, but made him walk to the office to pick it up each morning. Bob started reading it on e-mail. 

The only way to deal with resistors is to make sure the new way of doing things is more convenient than the old way.

34. Work a little humor into every communication effort.

What did Ole say when the Kinsey Sex Survey called and asked him if he smoked after sex? “Don’t know. Never looked.”

All right, it’s an old joke, but it made you keep on reading. There is really no excuse whatsoever not to inject at least a little humor in to every communication effort you make. It’s a mistake to confuse dryness with professionalism.

If you want the head paying attention, you have to get the heart involved. Humor is probably the easiest way to evoke an emotional response. (A groan is an emotional response, right?) You can elicit anger, fear or sadness to get attention as well, but for my money smiles do the job better.

Oh. I wouldn’t make my jokes any racier than the one above.

 35. You can never have 

• too much white space
• too big a font, or 
• too many bullet points.

My Success Strategy:

• Veni
• Vidi
• Vici

from J. Caesar’s PowerPoint presentation

Written communications that look accessible are more likely to be read. I could condense this entire book into about ten densely packed pages of type. You going to read it? Didn’t think so.

My absolutely favorite book on layout and design is Robin Williams’s The Non-Designer’s Design Book (Peachpit Press, 1994). 

• Buy it. 
• Read it. 
• Follow its advice.

Still a thrill to see an eagle

 

In the Lower 48, bald eagles were at an all-time low 417 nesting pairs in 1963, the numbers ravaged by the use of the DDT. The pesticide poisoned eagles and also caused them to produce thinner eggshells that would break under their weight. DDT was banned in 1972. Already shielded by federal law, the eagle was one of the original species protected by the Endangered Species Act when it went into effect in 1973. EAGLE EPICENTER, Star Tribune, 4/2/21

I often see eagles both perched and on the wing while out walking and hiking. Whether along the Minnesota or Mississippi Rivers and even above the residential streets of suburban Burnsville (MN), sighting an eagle is fairly common. I know locations on trails where nests are easy to find and some locations in the winter where ice-free water draws in the birds. It's not unusual to spot deer, hawks, wild turkeys, or even coyotes in the parks and woodlands only a short drive from my home. While I always get a kick out seeing any critters in the wild, somehow seeing a soaring eagle gives me a thrill every time.

It was not until the mid-90s when I first spotted an eagle in the wild. A friend and I with our families were spending a Labor Day weekend on Lake Vermillion in northern Minnesota and rented a small boat to cruise around the choppy lake. It was during that bumpy ride that we caught sight of a lone eagle above us flying toward an island. It was so exciting, as I remember, we ran into a rock in the lake (I was not piloting.) Sightings grew more common after that.

As the opening quote suggests, I never saw an eagle or any other raptor growing up in Iowa. DDT pretty much wiped all these species out. 

Knowing I see eagles today because of political action our country took to protect the species by banning DDT is why these sightings do my heart good. We as a society do have the power to make laws that may upset special interest groups (farmers I am sure did not like the ban on DDT), but benefit the environment. I predict we will eventually see a ban on lead pellets in shotgun shells that Kill many birds which digest them. Stronger auto emission controls, pushes for electric vehicles, stringent environmental reviews of new mines and piplelines are all possible. 

A soaring eagle reminds me that we are capable of thinking long term despite short term complaints.

Image source