Have you ever seen the wonderful
animation movie Despicable Me? Steve Carrell voices Gru, a would-be international villain of the Blofeld
variety. He is large, bald, with heavy
brows, spindly legs and a menacing countenance.
His goal is to steal a piece of
tech so fiendish, his dreams of world domination will soon be……you know the
rest…
He speaks in a bizarre Eastern
Europe accent and when he has an idea,
booms out the words “Light Bulb”
very slowly in weird pseudo-Muscovite.
Now when running a pitch session or media training session, I think of Gru when my pupils argue with me with cries of ……
“You’re wrong, you’re dumbing it down!”
“You’ve missed the point!” (actually anywhere between 3 and 103 points
they think they need to put in one sentence)
“But we NEED to use the jargon!”
I take them on a gentle tour of
the concepts I am trying to get them to understand and embrace - Less is more,
Keep it simple, Don’t talk over
the investor’s head ….….. and then ….. on cue …. it happens …. light dawns,
pennies drop, scales fall from the eyes and clatter to the floor.
From now on it will be very
difficult for me not to roll my ‘L’s in my best Russian-Bond-Villain accent and
boom ……. “L-L-L-Light Bulb!”
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