But what do you actually do?
By: Adam Colthorpe
Tags: Communication, Work, Presenting, Mental Health, Charity

I’m always fascinated by great conferences: the opportunity to learn from the best minds in the industry and your peers; both are of utmost value.

I also used to work for a media company with a conference production division. The SportBusiness team I worked with put on an annual global b2b conference bringing together the top minds across broadcast, sponsorship, stadia design and operation, technology, and Major Events. I learned the trade of conference production from within and without.

So why are so many people so bad at it, and how can we help them improve?

The Power and Punishment Legacy of TED Talks

Ever watched a TED Talk? Ever been sent an incredibly humbling and powerful sub-18minute TEDx clip? When it’s good, it’s really bloody good.

But if you stray away from the top videos much more than the collated playlists then you soon realise that not everyone has been hit by the same magical presenter stick.

Some of them are not very engaging at all. Some of them — I’m not even sure what they were talking about.

A failure of communication is a failure of the communicator to adapt to their audience

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to insist on some elitist system whereby only the drama school grads are allowed to present — all I want is that when given the opportunity to present, the conference presenters think about both the delivery and the content.

Both are essential — I want to be wowed and know wtf they are talking about.

I don’t want to have to prop my eyes open so that I can extract the vitally important message from within a mumbling monotone mess.

Equally, I do not want to lose 18 minutes of my life only to reach the end and wonder ‘but what do you do?’. This is my main problem with a lot of conference speeches I’ve heard.

The Peculiarities of the Third-Sector

After 16 years working in the private sector, I moved into the third-sector; charity/non-profit. It was a shock.

I was fortunate enough to start working for two charities at the same time (as is the norm in the third sector, part-time work is a financial necessity for the organisations).

Working for a start-up charity and a 30-year established charity gave me the best of both worlds; a bed of earned experience and embedded knowledge that I could tap into, and a blank canvas onto which I could unleash blind, naive optimism.

But wtaf is signposting?

Signposting

It wasn’t a phrase I’d ever needed to employ in the private sector, but in charitable circles, it was the word du jour.

Oh yes, once we have processed the service user, we signpost them to the appropriate service.

Do you signpost? What does that mean? You direct them to somewhere else? To another organisation?

You take money/grants/donations, and you operate a receptionist service whereby you waste a service-user’s valuable time and then send them off to another organisation to actually help them?

I assume you help them first? Do something for them? Add value to their process with you?

No? Do you just signpost them?

What. Do. You. Actually. Do?

Productive and Unproductive Value

It’s typically just after someone has finished their elevator pitch, their conference speech, or their death-by-powerpoint presentation that I ask myself (and sometimes them) this critical question. “It all sounds terrific.”, I say, “but what do you actually do?”.

It’s also usually about now that Adam Smith comes to mind:

The labour of some of the most respectable orders in the society is, like that of menial servants, unproductive of any value, and does not fix or realise itself in any permanent subject, or vendible commodity, which endures after that labour is past

Is it possible that we have organisations or people who do not add any real value from the perspective of the service-user (or customer)?

Or maybe it’s just that we have a group of people who are bad at explaining what value they add?

An organisation is rarely in a position to globally dispense a unique service or product — which is to say that all organisations must have competitors or other organisations delivering the same service elsewhere or in a slightly different way.

But what do you actually mean?

Take a good look at your organisational slogan or elevator pitch, or whatever other summaries you have of what you do and who you are.

Then shorten it. Reduce it to its minimum possible size that conveys the productive value that you add.

For example, South Kent Mind is a Mental Health Charity (shortest). We provide relief, aid rehabilitation, and build resilience (‘strategic pillars’).

But what do we actually do?

We collaboratively produce mental health assessments, person-centred planning, and we provide active, creative, & social activities to provide relief, aid rehabilitation, and build resilience.

We also signpost to other organisations, but only if we can’t do something ourselves or if someone else does it better. Better for the client, that is, always.