Because we all need a win sometime.

I read the piece “Presentation Zen” by Garr Reynolds, a former Apple employee who is very deeply affected by Japanese culture.  It’s pretty cool, since I’ve also lived in Japan and studied their culture for several years, to see what the difference between him and I were.  Frankly, we’re pretty similar.  We both embrace something that’s pretty common in Japanese culture, but a lot more unseen in Americans.  The Japanese have two circles – an outer circle where they are formal and polite, and an inner circle where they are themselves.  It is considered an honor or privilege in Japan to have somebody let you call them by their first name – it’s usually reserved for intimate couples or extremely close friends.  But until you are in that circle, the Japanese are generally very reserved and very quiet about their thoughts and opinions.  Except for when one value is required – courage.  The Japanese are a culture that admires courage above almost all other things: the courage to speak up, the courage to fear nothing, the courage to move and act for one’s own desires despite knowing the consequences.  It’s one of the main appeals of samurais, ninjas, and the old styles of bushido.  Maybe these things are also just super-cool, but they all respect that one rule – that to live courageously, is to live well.

Presentation Zen’s relationship to the innovation course is a little tenuous.  It seems to be more of a ‘how to present’ and ‘how to have confidence’ instead of being about how to be innovative.  But the main points are clear: don’t compromise your message, have the courage to say it as you’ve described it, and know how to incorporate better ideas than the ones you have.  It’s a beautiful mix of pride and humility, of wisdom and recklessness.  Being able to say what you want isn’t always going to help your case – in fact, it could be very detrimental to what you’re trying to do.  However, one of the biggest benefits of just being frank is that people will know what you want.  And that clear communication may be more important than any other piece in your project or idea.  In order to back that up, you need to be able to have the courage to fight for it, and the wisdom to know when you’re outmatched.  Understanding these two things and being flexible in the face of adversity to your ideas is something that makes any presenter much more effective.  There’s the MBA saying that “an angry presenter is a dead one”, in the sense that as soon as you lose your cool in front of your audience, you’ve lost your reputation.  Staying centered, staying focused, those things are going to be much more effective in the long run.

Getting the ideas across and communicating strongly is definitely going to be something that leads to better innovation and better acceptance of new ideas.  There’s a point here that isn’t addressed in the first few posts, but I thought was worthwhile – the idea of being ‘naked’ in front of others.  This is that when you’re trying to pitch or introduce a change, it’s much simpler to not worry about all the trappings and finery that so many people think are the essence of things, but rather to just let them go and approach with a simple idea – not dressed up too much , and something that people can really get into.

It’s very zen.