Why clearly linking reward to your change program is harder - and easier - than you thought

Or "The meaning of meaningless gifts"

Incentives are a clear way to motivate behaviour change, right? Maybe not.

You've worked on business transformations in the past. You might be working on one right now, and I bet you've heard the words - nay, maybe even uttered the words:



"We need to change managers'
compensation so it aligns with outcomes from this change programme."

After all - we all know alignment of reward with the the big project you're working on is a way to help achieve clarity around the kind of behaviours you're after, right?

Well, in practice it's not so simple. And it's not so simple for at least two reasons:

1. It's easy to get incentives wrong - because people are irrational, and


2. It's hard to get compensation packages changed meaningfully - because it's hard.

This doesn't sound like encouraging news. Conventional wisdom and intuition both scream that you have to link reward to good behaviour. You HAVE to.

So what do we do?
More on that later. First, I want to explore why it's not as simple as it feels like it should be, and to give you some real-world reasons to pause if a fresh-faced, wet-behind-the-ears "change manager" comes to you with the textbook platitude that they'll overcome resistance by linking outcomes to managers' pay. Let's look at the reasons in turn:

1 - It's easy to get incentives wrong because people are irrational.
If not properly understood, this notion - that people are irrational - can be one of the most frustrating obstacles you'll come across. It's hard to apply common sense if people's reactions aren't going to follow rational rules, and there are plenty of examples that we don't:

Do you know anyone who will drive around for ages, lurking in parking gridlock just to find a closer space to "save time"? Can you imagine the person who falls into the trap of spending $3000 to upgrade to leather seats on their new car, but would struggle to justify the same spend on a leather sofa at home? (even though they'll spend more time on the couch than driving?) How about this one: Would you be willing to take a pencil home from work and then chuck it in the pen-cup next to the fridge or give it to your kids? If you're like most people, probably. I expect you wouldn't give it a second thought. But would you be willing to raid company petty cash or submit an expense claim for the same thing? Probably not. These examples come from a book called Predictable Irrationality, The Hidden Forces that Shape our Decisions, by Dan Ariely.

In his book Dan makes the point that people's actions can seem irrational - but in a predictable way, because we haven't always noticed that there is a distinction between Economic Transactions and Social Transactions. And this difference is very relevant when we're looking to influence behaviour and get people to do things:

Consider some more examples that fly in the face of traditional, rational textbook economics:

In Haifa Israel, the day care workers were having trouble with parents picking up their kids late. This meant that the care workers had to stay with the kids, keep the centre open later, miss their own
appointments and generally inconvenience themselves. So they got together at a meeting and decided they should link the desired behaviour (not being late) to an economic incentive. Behaviour changed all right. When they imposed a late pick-up fine, what do you think happened? The number of tardy parents doubled. Why? They had confused the social exchange of consideration for the outside lives of the day care centre workers with a commercial exchange. In effect, they told the parents that lateness, or extra time was a commodity they could get by simply buying it. So the parents did. In droves.

So that's an example of a penalty for bad behaviour backfiring. Can the same sort of thing happen with positive incentive?

Decades ago Richard Titmus (who founded the Social Policy chair at the London School of Economics) claimed that paying people to be blood donors reduced the numbers of people donating blood. At the time, rational economists refused to believe him. But now, experiments on this very subject and others have shown that social exchange and issues of signalling identity often override commercial exchange in motivating behaviour. In fact, offering to pay women to donate blood decreases the number of willing donors nearly in half. It tells them (like the daycare parents) that the commercial exchange isn't worth shifting their behaviour. However, make it an identity-related question, or a
social exchange (I am an altruistic person), and you can go a long way. (Letting the women contribute their blood donor fee to charity nearly reverses the drop in numbers.)

My favourite example from Dan Ariely's book though is this: What would your Mother in Law's reaction be if she invited you and your family over to dinner at her place, pulled out all the stops and cooked three courses' worth of your favourite meal - (with the roast vegetables on the side, and the nice sauces, and a beautiful pudding for afterwards), and when it was all finished, and you'd wiped the last drip of unctuous gravy from your plate with a bit of her home made bread, you pushed your chair back, pulled out your wallet and said: "Well that was lovely, Jann. What do I owe you?" How would that go over? Not well? That's the danger of confusing social with economic exchanges.

Dan goes through some of these examples in his short video below:

So. When you think about incentives to motivate change, are your stories and incentives focused on economic or social / identity outcomes? In a previous post (How to get Employees to care 22% More about your Change Initiative), I mentioned people probably don't care about your change for the same reasons you do. McKinsey Quarterly suggest there are at least 5 stories you need to be telling, and if you review the article, you'll see that most of them are more easily related to identity and social exchange than they are to commercial exchange.

So it's easy to get incentives wrong, because people are predictably irrational.

Now. Let's look at the second reason it's difficult to align reward with behaviour to motivate your change:


2 - It's hard to get compensation packages changed meaningfully - because it's hard.

To be clear, I'm not for a second suggesting that it's a good idea to ignore linking compensation to the outcomes of your change programme. What I am saying though are two things:

One, the link is probably at best a hygiene factor: If you have it backwards (people will be directly compensated for the wrong behaviour) you're in trouble, and if you don't have at least the notion of a link, it will seem incongruous and send a signal that the programme is not a priority. On the other hand, (and this is the critical bit) the research we're examining here suggests that the flip side is not true: Having a compensation link doesn't necessarily mean you'll motivate a behaviour change.

Two, getting a sufficiently meaningful link between remuneration and your programme outcomes to get people motivated and in the 'commercial exchange' frame of mind is not ever easy. In looking at an executives' pay package plan, there are two ways to approach it: Financial and non-financial measures.

The challenge with financial measures is that even if you can work the change impacts into budget forecasts, and even if you can get those forecasts to impact operating plans for the various business units, there are so many variables that contribute to the end review calculation that the link to your programme becomes weak at best. It's good that it's there, since you're not sending mixed messages by leaving it out, but the difference in Jane-the-executive or Bill-the-unit-manager's pay packet not going to move any mountains.

The challenge with non-financial measures suffers the same dilution problem: You might be able to make the label for your reward link really explicit, and in this way a non-financial measure may be better for your story than a financial one, but when it comes to impact, the diluting effect of all the other non-financial compensation variables (corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity, safety, staff turnover, employee engagement, compliance etc...) makes the financial impact of your particular incentive pretty much meaningless.

For a big enough programme, you could appeal to the CEO and the HR Director to change the way compensation is structured, but there's so much risk of unintended consequences. You wouldn't want to blow up people's reward for carrying on the rest of their business-as-usual functions, and a big compensation restructure would be so much work for what might not be the best motivator of behaviour that it's probably not worth bothering.


3 - So what can you do?

Well, you can treat people like dogs. And I'm only half kidding about that (and I definitely don't mean it to sound disparaging). Any dog trainer will tell you that the best way to train a dog is to concentrate on rewarding good behaviour. In a way, the same think can apply to your change program, if you deliberately take your rewards out of the realm of 'economic exchange" and place them firmly in the realm of 'social exchange'.

How do you do that? Spend less. (Result! Finally something you'll be happy to hear)

Surprising and delighting people with small, unexpected gifts has been shown to have an unexpectedly significant effect on people's satisfaction with their lives.

In 1987 two researchers named Schwarz and Norbert published a study where they gave people a very (very) small unexpected gift and measured the effect it had on them. Specifically, they had people do some photocopying, and half the people in the study found ten cents - a dime - in the machine. Then, when they asked all the subjects to rate how satisfied they were with their lives, those with the dime rated their lives - THEIR LIVES, mind you - a 6.5 out of 7. No dime people only gave their lives a 5.6. Why such a difference?

In their article The Inconvenient Truth about Change Management, Scott Keller and Carolyn Aiken suggest that for humans (and maybe dogs?) it holds that "satisfaction equals perception minus expectation." For you, trying to use incentive to change people's behaviour and make them feel more satisfied with your big, disruptive change programme, it means that you can get a disproportionate lift by using small, unexpected gifts as rewards, and critically, make sure your actions register as social exchanges rather than commercial ones.

And you won't be alone: Here are a couple of examples taken directly from the same article of those principles being put in to practice:

• Gordon M. Bethune, while turning around Continental Airlines, sent an unexpected $65 cheque to every employee when Continental hit a milestone, and made it to the top 5 for on-time airlines.


• The CEO of a large multi-regional bank sent out personal thank-you notes to all employees working directly on the company's change programme to mark its 5-year anniversary.


• John McFarlane of ANZ Bank sent a bottle of Champagne to every employee for Christmas with a card thanking them for their work on the company's "Perform, Grow and Breakout" change programme. (And I bet your mother in law wouldn't object to a nice bottle of wine with a thank-you note for the dinner either, would she?)

Like the dime in the photocopier, the small, unexpected gifts worked. And the key is that instead of trying to go the hard yard of changing the formal employee compensation system to reward people by economic exchange, the small, unexpected gifts work because they're seen in the social realm.

A final example from Predictably Irrational has to do with people who are trained for years in rational, cause-and-effect reasoning: Lawyers. He writes:

The AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) asked some lawyers if they would offer less expensive services for needy retirees, at something like $30 an hour. The lawyers said no. Then the programme manager from AARP had the idea to ask the lawyers if they would offer services to needy retirees - for free. Overwhelmingly, the lawyers said yes. When compensation was mentioned, the lawyers applied market norms and found the offer lacking. When no compensation was mentioned they used social norms and were willing to volunteer their time.

Clarity Rule: Make room for unexpected little gifts in your budget. It's a much clearer way to link compensation to desired behaviour.
Greg Stewart

How to get employees to care 22% more about your change initiative

I could also call this post :"What to be clear about". That way it would be more brand-consistent. But I like the stat in the title. Below is where it comes from:

This is the interesting thing to consider if you're in charge of a change at your company: Odds are, your employees don't care about what you care about.



I'm just going to say that again:
Odds are, your employees don't care about what you care about.

So what does that mean to Henry?...

Henry's story:
Let's imagine Henry. You might recognise him. You might be him. Henry is in his early 40s, in reasonably good shape, and only wears a tie to the office when he's seeing clients. Henry has a high-powered executive role in his company (like you, maybe) and he is sponsoring a transformation. He has arguments so people can spend full-time on it despite their day jobs because he knows it's important. He attends steering group meetings for it, and he is a hands-on helper to the programme manager. He's no fresh-out MBA graduate with no experience; Henry is well-respected. Henry is seasoned. Henry has been around. Henry has the character behind his eyes that tell you he's been there, done it, got the T-shirt. That means Henry knows a few things:

Henry knows change
He knows most change programmes fail. That's old news to him. He's read his Kotter (Leading Change, 1996) telling him 30% of change programmes succeed. He's read more recent stuff, like McKinsey's survey of 3,199 executives that re-inforced the point, saying only 1 in 3 change programmes succeed. That means that over the course of his career, he's come to believe in the value of deliberate change management. He has worked with consultants in his past, and he has also hired people with change skills. (Again, this might be sounding familiar to you.)

He has seen the models. He knows the change needs strong executive sponsorship with visible role modelling of the new desired behaviour. (that's why he's so personally involved.) He knows that internal processes need to be altered so they re-inforce the new way of working. He knows the importance of a good communications and stakeholder management plan. He knows the importance of just-in-time training and he has even seeded 'change champions' throughout the organisation to help embed the change. He's big on benefits realisation and he knows how he's going to measure the value of the change once the 'new way' is in place. Crucially, he even knows that he needs to tell a compelling story, or have a strong 'case for change' so that all the employees who are going through the hassle can see the point of the change and agree with it. That puts him ahead of a lot of people running change programmes out there in business-land. Particularly because he knows the importance of communicating a compelling story, he is pretty confident that his change programme is going to be one of the 30% on the right side of the failure statistics. (If you have ever been Henry, so far you're thinking that everything sounds pretty well in hand. Read on...)

What's more, Henry has read (our clarity heroes) Chip and Dan Heath's book (Made to Stick) and his story about the change is going to follow their S.U.C.C.E.S.s formula: He will concoct his story so it will have a set of Simple messages. It may have some Unexpected elements, though this might be a bit harder. However, he will use Concrete examples and he will be believable and Credible. He will try to incorporate some Emotional elemts and of course since he's telling a Story, well, it will be a story. 5 out of 6 on the Made to Stick scale. Not bad going.

What Henry doesn't know though, is this: His story is going to be all wrong.

Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller, in their McKinsey Quarterly article "The irrational side of change management" suggest one critical, potentially success-enhancing or success-killing thing to consider when crafting our clear, sticky, well-communicated stories, and that thing is this:

What motivates you, the research suggests, doesn't motivate most of your employees.
Typical change story types
The story form that underpins most change management efforts, according to their research, tends to follow one of two types: The "Good to Great" story, or the "Turnaround" story. 'Good to Great' stories are the ones that go: ''We conquered the world with our amazing search engine and ad revenue model. However competition is nipping at our heels so we're going to pour our energies in to innovative new things for our next generation like cloud computing for business and government. That next wave will keep us in our rightful position on top!" 'Turnaround' stories are of the "We're in deep trouble now, and our competitors are getting ahead of us. (showing what happens if we do nothing.) Therefore, we're going to make this change to get our costs under control. This will free up the resources to do the new product innovation we've been planning, and with that we can become one of the top 10% industry leaders in the next two years." ilk.

Both sound good, both sound compelling and both sound like rational reasons to change. So our Henry will take his Turnaround story, communicate it to his employees, back it up with great visuals, carry it on with ongoing progress newsletters and keep people involved.

The pitfall:
But this, according to Aiken and Keller is where the pitfall can be:

Research by a number of leading thinkers in the social sciences such as Danah Zohar, (they tell us) has shown that when managers and employees are asked what motivates them the most in their work, they are equally split among five forms of impact:

• Impact on society (like building the community, stewarding resources etc...)
• Impact on the customer (providing superior customer service, for instance)
• Impact on the company and its shareholders
• Impact on the local working team (for example creating a caring environment), and
• Impact on 'me' (development, paycheque, bonus, hours, type of work etc...)

This finding, they say, has profound implications for leaders.

What the leader cares about (and typically bases at least 80% of his or her messages to others on) does not tap into roughly 80% of the workforce's primary motivators for putting extra energy into the change programme.

Change leaders need to be able to tell a change story that covers all five things that motivate employees. In doing so, they can unleash the tremendous amounts of energy that would otherwise remain latent in the organisation.

So here's how Henry can change his story to get his employees more motivated:

The 22% improvement story:
Aiken and Keller point to the following example:

Consider a cost reduction programme at a large US financial-services company. The programme started [like our Henry's] with a change story that ticked the conventional boxes related to the company's competitive position and future. [only one of the five dimensions from above.] Three months into the programme, management was frustrated with employee resistance. The change team worked together to recast the story to include customers (fewer errors, more competitive prices), the company (expenses are growing faster than revenues, which is not sustainable), working teams (less duplication, more delegation), and individuals (more attractive jobs).

This [and this is the good part:] this relatively simple shift in apporach lifted employee motivation measures from 34% to 57.1% in a month, and the programme went on to achieve 10% efficiency improvements in the first year - a run rate far above initial expectations.

Clarity rule: If your'e going to be clear, be clear about the right things.

Clear marketing ideas... from Canada

Yesterday was Canada Day, and I stumbed upon a blog post, from a Canuck who had some good, sensible marketing lessons we can learn from the good people of the True North Strong and Free.








He shows how Canadians can teach us:

• Why old-school marketing approaches are working less
• Persuasion over ramming messages down customers' throats
• The importance of trust
• What customers expect from us in terms of being 'nice' suppliers
• ...and my favourite - to eliminate fluffy jargon

Thanks to James Chartrand.
See the full text of his post here.

Happy Canada Day, Eh?

Presentation and writing lessons from the Very Hungry Caterpillar

Or, the REAL cause of Death By PowerPoint.

What can a childrens' book author teach us about what makes a good presentation?

Lots.

Don't think kids are an easy audience. Kids demand clarity. They have the same short attention span we have, but they don't have our learned tolerance to put up with being bored. While we might feel like it, read a boring presentation to a child and they actually will cry.

So what does the Very Hungry Caterpillar author Eric Carle teach us? Don't put too much on the page.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published 40 years ago this year, and has sold over 30 million copies. In an interview, Eric talks about an early experience in publishing that led him to his simple, engaging, uncluttered style:

Why did you start making children’s books?
Way back, when I was in advertising, someone asked me to illustrate what they called ‘educational material’, and I thought it was pretty awful. They put too much on the pages – I would say 32 good ideas on one page makes a terrible book. Then Bill Martin Jr asked if I’d illustrate his book Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? It turned me on – the simplicity of the text, the rhythm of that book. I learned from Bill: you take one idea and spread it over 32 pages.

How can we apply this to business? Same way. When in doubt, make another slide.

There's a rule of thumb that too many slides in a presentation is what causes death by powerpoint. That rule is wrong. What causes Death By Powerpoint is too many ideas per slide.

Normally, those too many ideas are crammed on the slide in the form of bullets, but pictures, illustrations and flow-diagrams can all accomplish the same thing: Idea clutter.

If you want to keep your audience engaged and if you want to keep your messages clear, reduce the number of ideas per slide. (see previous post, Clarity Rule - Only One Point), and then, like Eric, maybe your presentation will also reach 30 million people.

I read this book to my kid. Who knew it would invade my professional life too?
Munch munch.

200 words NOT to use when selling to the public sector

Hurrah! In a gorgeous move, I've just read here that UK councils have been instructed to ditch the ridiculous jargon-riddled 'business speak' in favour of plain English.

The Local Government Association has compiled a list of 200 ridiculous words in common use that councils are instructed to ditch when communicating to the public so that normal people can understand what they're talking about.

Anybody who wants to sell to them (I'm thinking consulting firms in particular) should pay attention.

Some of my favourite 'illegal words' include:

• Coterminous - all singing from the same hymn sheet
• Cross-fertilisation - spreading ideas
• Actioning - to do

... and my favourite:

• Predictors of beaconicity - ???

Marie Clair of the Plain English Campaign (praised be its name) says:

"We call them 'rubber words' because they can be stretched whichever way you want to and then they bounce back at you."

Here is the full list of 200 words.

Readers: Have you heard any better examples? You must have come across some great ones. Please post your best ones as comments!!

200 WORDS AND THEIR ALTERNATIVES
Across-the-piece – everyone working together

Actioned – do

Advocate - support

Agencies - groups

Ambassador - leader

Area based – in an area

Area focused – concentrating on the area

Autonomous - independent

Baseline – starting point

Beacon – leading light

Benchmarking - measuring

Best Practice – best way

Blue sky thinking – thinking up ideas

Bottom-Up – listening to people

CAAs - why use at all?

Can do culture - get the job done

Capabilities -

Capacity - ability

Capacity building - enough room in the system

Cascading - why use at all?

Cautiously welcome – devil in the detail

Challenge - problem

Champion – best

Citizen empowerment ­– people power

Client - person

Cohesive communities – why use at all?

Cohesiveness - together

Collaboration – working together

Commissioning - buy

Community engagement – getting people involved

Compact - why use at all?

Conditionality ­­- why use at all?

Consensual - everyone agrees

Contestability - Why use at all?

Contextual - background

Core developments – main things that are happening

Core Message ­– main point

Core principles - beliefs

Core Value – belief

Coterminosity – all singing from the same hymn sheet

Coterminous – all singing from the same hymn sheet

Cross-cutting – everyone working together

Cross-fertilisation – spreading ideas

Customer – people/person

Democratic legitimacy – voted in

Democratic mandate – elected to put people first

Dialogue – talk/discuss

Direction of travel – way forward

Distorts spending priorities – ignores people’s needs

Double devolution - Why use at all?

Downstream - Why use at all?

Early Win – success

Edge-fit - Why use at all?

Embedded – set in

Empowerment – people power

Enabler - helps

Engagement – working with people

Engaging users ­– getting people involved

Enhance – improve

Evidence Base – research shows

Exemplar – example

External challenge – outside pressures

Facilitate – help

Fast-Track – speed up

Flex - Why use at all?

Flexibilities and Freedoms - more power to do the right thing

Framework – guide

Fulcrum – pivot

Functionality - use

Funding Streams - money

Gateway review - Why use at all?

Going forward – in the future

Good Practice – best way

Governance - Why use at all?

Guidelines – guide

Holistic – taken in the round

Holistic governance - Why use at all?

Horizon scanning - Why use at all?

Improvement levers – using the tools to get the job done

Incentivising – incentive

Income Streams – money/cash

Indicators - measurements

Initiative – idea

Innovative capacity - Why use at all?

Inspectorates – monitoring bodies

Interdepartmental – working together

Interface – talking to each other

Iteration - version

Joined up – working together

Joint working – working together

LAAs - Why use at all?

Level playing field – everyone equal

Lever - Why use at all?

Leverage - influence

Localities ­– places/town/city/village

Lowlights – worst bits

MAAs - Why use at all?

Mainstreaming - Why use at all?

Management capacity - Why use at all?

Meaningful consultation– talking to people

Meaningful dialogue – talking to people

Mechanisms - methods

Menu of Options – choices

Multi-agency ­– many groups

Multidisciplinary – many

Municipalities – towns/cities/areas

Network model - Why use at all?

Normalising – make normal

Outcomes – results

Outcomes - focused

Output - results

Outsourced - privatised

Overarching - Why use at all?

Paradigm - Why use at all?

Parameter - limits

Participatory – joining in

Partnership working – working together

Partnerships – working together

Pathfinder – Why use at all?

Peer challenge - Why use at all?

Performance Network - Why use at all?

Place shaping – creating places where people can thrive

Pooled budgets - money

Pooled resources – time and money

Pooled risk - Why use at all?

Populace - people

Potentialities - chances

Practitioners - experts

Predictors of Beaconicity – Why use at all?

Preventative services – protecting the most vulnerable

Prioritization – most important

Priority – most important

Proactive - Why use at all?

Process driven – shouldn’t everything be people driven?

Procure - buy

Procurement - buying

Promulgate - spread

Proportionality - in proportion

Protocol - guidance

Provider vehicles - Why use at all?

Quantum - Why use at all?

Quick Hit – success

Quick Win – success

Rationalisation - cut

Rebaselining - Why use at all?

Reconfigured - reform

Resource allocation – money going to the right place

Revenue Streams - money

Risk based – safest way

Robust - tough

Scaled-back – cut/reduce

Scoping – work out

Sector wise - Why use at all?

Seedbed – idea

Self-aggrandizement - Why use at all?

Service users – people

Shared priority ­– all working together

Shell developments - Why use at all?

Signpost – point in the direction of

Single conversations – talking to

Single Point of Contact – everything under one roof

Situational - situation

Slippage – delay

Social contracts ­ - deal

Social exclusion – poverty

Spatial - Why use at all?

Stakeholder – other organisations

Step Change – improve

Strategic - planned

Strategic priorities - planned

Streamlined – efficient

Sub-regional – work between councils

Subsidiarity – Why use at all?

Sustainable – long term

Sustainable communities – environmentally friendly

Symposium ­­– meeting

Synergies – what use at all?

Systematics - Why use at all?

Taxonomy - Why use at all?

Tested for Soundness ­– what works

Thematic - theme

Thinking outside of the box - Why use at all?

Third sector – charities and voluntary organisations

Toolkit - guidance

Top-Down – ignores people

Trajectory - route

Tranche - slice

Transactional - Why use at all?

Transformational – change

Transparency - clear

Upstream - Why use at all?

Upward trend – getting better

Utilise - use

Value-added – extra

Vision ­– ideal/dream/belief

Visionary – ideal/dream/belief

Welcome – necessary and needed/step in the right direction

Wellbeing - healthy

Worklessness - unemployed

19 Offensive Presentation Techniques

I was just tweeted the link to the 19 offensive presentation techniques.

They're from a site called Paul's blog. He says:

We’ve all sat through some hideous presentations. I sat through one today – run by a partner of a top-tier Melbourne law firm. It almost put me in a coma. The amazing thing is, the presenter appeared to have been trained to provide the presentation in that way. It inspired me to publish a list of terrible presentation techniques which has been growing in my notebook. If you want to give an offensively boring presentation, just do the following:

1. Use your company’s branding and style guide on every slide of your powerpoint and make them look really neat and clean.
2. Put as much information as possible in your slides. Have a minimum of two sentences in each slide. Never less.
3. Don’t use real-life examples that the audience can relate to. Stick to the subject matter.

For the other 16, click through here.

Prezi: Coolest presentation tool of 2009

"Focus too much on the details and your audience might not get the big picture. But focus too much on the big picture and they might miss those devilish details."

I've seen the future.

After reading this, you will have too.

The future is Prezi.

Prezi describes itself as "A Zooming Editor for Stunning Presentations."

I watched a couple of presentations in their showcase, and they're right.

Do you know what? Just stop reading this and click through. Hit the logo and watch the video on the opening screen. That tells you why. Then scroll down and click on the one called "About Perspective". It tells you how.

Here it is again: Prezi

It will explain itself. If you aren't jumping out of your skin with interest, then in a year or two when this becomes more mainstream, you'll say to yourself

"Oh yeah. I remember reading about that on Clarity Rules. I see what he was on about now..."

Don't be that person. You'll feel foolish. Check it out.

We've come a long way in the last couple years. Vivid images and big type are supplanting bullet points. Succinct well thought out key messages are supplanting gratuitous 'thud factor'.

But big-picture, big-text, clean design style (a la Presentation Zen) and the 10-20-30 rule style (though still among my very favourite things) are great for pitches, they're great for keynotes, but you have to pick the medium to match the message, and as presentation techniques, they can sometimes fall short when it comes to presenting detailed information. Indeed, Nancy Duarte's top guess in her 'Five Predictions for Presentations in 2009" was that tools for complex presentations would have to evolve this year.

It's true. New techniques have to be added to the presenter's arsenal. Zooming interfaces like Prezi just might be one of those techniques.

It is just in Beta, and to my knowledge not yet commercially available, but it appears that Prezi allows you to design an entire presentation on a page, then using movement, magnification, orientation and position, lets you zoom in, out and around your presentation to tell a story. Indeed the 'zi' in Prezi stands for "Zoom Interface". They were originally going to call the product "Zui" for Zoom User Interface, but people found it too hard to pronounce. Prezi it is.

It kind of reminds me of the PowerPoint-style version of when Blaise Aguera y Arcas presented Photosynth and Seadragon at TED a couple years ago.

The user interface from Minority Report will also be a great way to explore detail and the big picture in a non-linear way...once it's ready. (Here it is again...just for fun)

But Prezi, however, is nearly here and I for one can't wait. I mentioned a few posts ago that the 12-year olds were winning. Let's beat 'em. Let's learn Prezi.