Three Reasons Keynotes Can Matter (Despite Evidence to the Contrary)

There’s a question I get all the time: “Hey, I really like your speeches and stuff, but do all these keynotes and business books really change organizations? Often they seem to be just a moment's entertainment, and the organization then goes back to business as usual?”

It’s a really annoying question, because it’s spot on.

Fancy books and fancy speeches rarely have the transformational impact one might hope for.

More often than not, they act as a kind of make-believe — “Hey, if we read a really forward-looking book or hire a really provocative speaker, maybe some of it will rub off!” Or it becomes something akin to a Potemkin village, a show that one hopes hides something far less appetizing behind it.

Then again, one might find a more positive perspective on this as well. I think there are at least three, and I call them “The Fitness Analogy”, “The Numbers Effect”, and “The Toolkit”.

The Fitness Analogy

If we use a fitness analogy, we might say that a keynote is a lot like telling people that they should think about their fitness, and give them the bare outline of a fitness program. This in and of itself won’t make anyone fit, and companies can of course decide to completely ignore the advice given, but that really isn’t the speakers fault (unless s/he’s been so bad that it scares people away from change!). Just as in fitness, people have to be reminded over and over again and gently cajoled to change their lifestyle.

Neither fitness nor organizations are built by a mad rush during the two weeks after New Year’s Eve, but by patient and long-term work.

So a keynote can be a little like a coach reminding you of the importance of speed-work to compliment building your strength, or someone who gently ribs you about your promise to change you diet, you know, like next week. So in this perspective, the keynote is only a very small part, and should be deployed with this in mind. If you just bring somebody up on stage to tell the audience about how fit they are, and do not follow this up in any meaningful way or with any intelligent action points, of course the organization isn’t going to change.

The Numbers Effect

Another perspective would be to say it’s a kind of numbers game. If I keynote in front of 500 people, all of them won’t be moved to change. Frankly, even if everyone likes you and your message, it’s really unlikely that more than 20% actually change their way of working in any measurable fashion. That said, 20% of 500 people is 100 people! Now, in reality, even that is too much to hope for. But let’s say that you can affect just two percent? That’s still ten people! In many organizations, that’s already enough to make an impact, at least somewhere. Maybe that means that a project is done in a smarter way, saving tens of thousands of euros. Not earth-shattering, but still worthwhile. Maybe one of the ten people is in sales, and changes her mindset just enough to nab a new, multi-million contract. Again, small fry if you compare against changing the culture of an entire corporation, but such baby steps can, in the best of cases, build up to something greater. And hey, one of the ten might be a CEO…

So keynoting isn’t always about getting everyone on board, but rather about affecting enough people to start change. And the good thing is that as long as there are enough people listening, change can happen!

Speakers tend to love this effect, by the way, as it also highlights the value of keynotes etc. Let’s assume you’re talking to a thousand salesmen (I have, and it was great fun). Now, let’s be really pessimistic and assume you can only affect them for 48 hours, and you’ll only have an impact on a single percent of the audience. That’s still two days of increased sales from ten salesmen. In the right industry, that can be worth many, many times the cost of the keynote — which explains why leading keynote speakers can charge many tens of thousands of dollars for a speech and still have more inquiries than they can deal with.

The Toolkit Perspective

The third perspective, which I’ve talked about as “toolkit thinking” has to do with what kind of effect you hope you can achieve. I often say that the most important thing I do is give people new words. Rather than thinking I could transport a new mindset into an organization (in 45 minutes, no less), I think about giving them a few new words and stories. I used to tell a story about a brewery, one where a brilliant new idea was almost killed due to the conservative professional identity of the brewers. It was a nice story about creativity and why we sometimes kill good ideas without understanding it, and I alway prefaced it by saying “well, this is not from your industry, but…” It wasn’t a theory, or a complete model for change, it was just a nice story. Still, I once got a mail from a person who’d heard this story. In this mail she told me I’d talked at their company some months ago, and she wanted to thank me. She said she actually didn’t remember much about the keynote (!), only that it had been funny, and the story about the brewers. Now, she said, she’d been trying to run a project in her organization for a long time, but always been shut down. The day before she mailed me, however, she’d gotten so angry, she’d shouted at her bosses that they were being “just like those brewers the professor talked about”. As luck would have it, they too remembered the story, got embarrassed (!) and gave her the go-ahead! I love that story, because it communicates how keynotes actually work.

She hadn’t remembered my dazzling theories or grand visions, she’d remembered a story. But in the end, that story had mattered.

So, these are the ways I hope e.g. keynoting can still matter, despite evidence to the contrary…