Just sat through a talk with a long and useless introduction concerning what the speaker had considered saying but decided against, how he stumbled upon his approach to the topic, and finally, the five elements of it he planned to discuss. I still didn’t know a thing about his point of view.
Ten minutes of wasted time. Ten minutes burning up our attention spans. Ten minutes that predisposed us to think him an idiot. Ten minutes of extraneous information that had us wondering when it would end before it actually began.
There is value in going slowly, and sometimes it’s necessary. For instance, a commencement address: “Madame President; distinguished members of the board of overseers; magnificently robed and plumed faculty members; generous alumni gloating on the dais; bankrupt parents roasting in the sun; and last but not least, pampered and hung-over graduating seniors dressed in polyester caps and gowns: it is indeed an honor and a privilege to be your commencement speaker.” (By this time, if you speak slowly, you only have to write a few more paragraphs and your job is done.)
But commencement is not a hard-nosed business occasion. It’s a ceremonial occasion, where this kind of verbosity earns you another stripe on your academic sleeve. In the boardroom, it will earn you impatient stares, a reputation for pomposity, and a seat on the back bench of the analytics office.
It is true that we get to know the speaker as he warms up, and ad hocs his way into his subject. But how much better for him to leap into the fray, and demonstrate who he is and how he thinks by taking a big bite out of the subject right up front.
Then, once he’s captured us, he can let up on the pedal and give us a little personal story so we don’t have to think for a while, before he takes us up another steep slope. Everyone listens better when something unexpected happens.
The guy I saw got to the end of his rambling ten minute opening, and then told us he was going to talk for 50 minutes. I looked at my watch. “Holy shit,” I thought, and looked at my watch. “The cafeteria’s gonna be closed.” I couldn’t do anything about it, since I was in the front row squeezed between VIPs. He went on for another 60 minutes. I listened intermittently, waiting for the sound of his voice to cease.
There is no such thing as a speech that is too short, unless you’re a comedian on a roll and in the zone. Our first job is to get attention, and our second job is to keep it ’til the end. Speaking is the opposite of life. In speaking, you want the end to come sooner rather than later.