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KATIE: Today I'm pleased to welcome
John Butman here today.
As you know, he is the author of "Breaking Out." How to bu--
I'm sorry.
The full title is "Breaking Out, How to Build Influence in
a World of Competing Ideas." He's also the founder and
principal of Idea Platforms, which happens to be just down
the street here in Kendall.
So he works at Idea Platforms and he works with other
content experts on [INAUDIBLE], helping them
develop and go public with their ideas in a variety of
different expressions and forms, from social media, to
apps, to print, to print books, and videos.
He's worked with leaders, and universities, and
philanthropies, consultancies, and businesses, as well as
independent professionals.
His work is actually taking him to 30 different
countries--
I wish mine would do that.
[INAUDIBLE]
And their ideas have been featured in dozens of
publications.
They have been featured in speaking venues worldwide,
including the World Economic Forum at Davos,
PopTech, and TEDx.
He's also been included in The Thinkers50 list.
Their books have appeared on "The New York Times," "Boston
Globe," "Businessweek," and "Toronto Globe and Mail"
bestseller list.
"Breaking Out" in particular has been featured in "The
Financial Times," "Forbes," inc.com, "Huffington Post,"
"Harvard Business Review," "Bloomberg" and plenty more
that I'll leave off.
But personally, I read the book.
I really enjoyed reading it.
In fact, I shared the book with my brother who was at
Google here, too, and also an author, and he
really enjoyed it.
And hopefully he's going to share it with others, because
that's a part of how ideas are spread.
But I don't want to give too much or anything away because
this is why we brought John here today.
So I'll hand it over to John.
JOHN BUTMAN: Great, thank you very much, Katie.
Thanks you.
Thanks to everybody for coming.
Happy pre-lunch to you.
I am indeed the principal of Idea Platforms.
Anna Weiss is my colleague and associate.
She was very involved in the writing and creation of the
book, too, so I want to acknowledge her.
And the title of my talk today is--
if we can make this go-- how do people gain influence for
an abstract idea?
So it's a very simple question I'm addressing.
And the question is, if you have an idea for how you would
like to make a difference in the world, how you want to
make some kind of change in the world--
there is the world out there, there are people whose minds
you want to influence, whose thinking you want to
influence, and whose behavior you want to change.
And in between is this thing that I call the ideaplex,
which is all the stuff, all the channels, and all the ways
you can get to people.
So how do you go from the idea in your head to the idea in
other people's heads?
Very difficult to do.
That's what I've been studying, that's what we'll be
talking about today.
So two important things about this.
I'm talking about people, not about companies.
So it's about how do individuals do this?
And I'm talking about abstract ideas.
So I'm not talking about ideas for companies or for products.
So when I say abstract idea, let me just give you a few
examples so you know what I'm talking about.
So for example, abstract idea.
You know civil disobedience.
Abstract idea.
I can never spell while I'm doing this.
I like to both do the pen thing and the click thing.
I feel that you need two ways to apprehend.
Leaning in.
This is probably familiar to you.
Everyone know--
recognize that one, right?
Creative destruction.
Alright, I told Anna this one yesterday and she said, I
never heard of it before.
Continuous improvements.
Interestingly enough, I mean, here's one that's been around
and it's become so embedded we don't even think of it as an
idea anymore.
But when it first started, some 50 years ago,
this was a big idea.
It was an abstract idea that people didn't really get.
They thought you just kept on going.
Anybody want to volunteer abstract idea?
Well, that.
Oh, yeah.
Quantified self.
It's--
I like this one.
Quantified self is kind of a new one.
So, this is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
How do these ideas get out there?
So my goal with this talk is twofold.
First of all, I would like to help you.
If you want to go public with an idea.
If you have an idea that you would like to plant in some
minds, whether it's just within your community, or
within your discipline, or within your unit, or
the world at large.
And second, there are so many ideas out there coming at us
that I would like to give you some thoughts about how to
evaluate these ideas that are constantly flooding around us.
So, let me first just talk a little bit about the ideaplex,
because this is one of the reasons that we have
this glut of ideas.
So by the ideaplex I mean all the activities by which we
generate, distribute, and consume ideas.
And what's interesting is the countries that Anna and I
visited as part of the research for the book, the
ideaplex in the US is really different, and much bigger,
and much more complex than anywhere else.
So the idea entrepreneur I'm going to talk about in just a
moment is really a product of the ideaplex.
And I'm talking about from the entire educational system to
social media, traditional media in between, think tanks,
research and development--
I mean, there are so many places that
ideas are coming from.
So the ideaplex makes it easier to go public because
you can just post a YouTube video, you could just tweet,
and you're public.
But it makes it harder to gain influence because everybody's
tweeting, and everybody's going public.
So it's interesting that it's easier and
harder at the same time.
But it has given rise to this new player that I call the
idea entrepreneur.
So this is an individual.
These are some of the characteristics.
It's an idea driven person.
They tend to be outsiders to a status quo of some kind.
They can be within an organization but still be
outside the status quo thinking.
They tend to model the ideas themselves.
The ideas are always life-affirming in some way.
They are very personally motivated.
And they always seek some kind of change.
So they're looking to make some kind of change in
something--
can be a mindset, can be an organization, it can be quite
small, it can be quite large.
So, who am I talking about?
Let me just give you a few examples.
Sheryl Sandberg.
So, she wrote the book "Lean In." What's
she trying to change?
She's trying to change attitudes about women in the
workplace and in society.
Daniel Kahneman.
Anybody read his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow"?
So he's a behavioral psychologist.
He's trying to change how people go
about making decisions.
And he gets into business decision making.
Mireille Giuliano.
Anybody read her book?
"French Women Don't Get Fat." So she's trying to change how
people think about eating and lifestyle.
And her basic thing is, you should do it the way the
French do it.
Atul Gawande.
Everyone know him?
So he's trying to change how surgeons think about the ways
they behave in the operating room.
He wrote "The Checklist Manifesto."
Very interesting fellow.
Anna's seen him speak.
Tim Ferriss.
Anybody a Tim Ferriss adherent?
Is anybody--
you are?
AUDIENCE: My email is.
JOHN BUTMAN: For the work week, the body, or the, what
are all three?
The work week, OK.
So Tim Ferriss is trying to change how you think about,
sort of, everything, right?
But he's saying you should do everything faster and you
should optimize yourself.
And he's a self quantification guy.
You probably haven't heard of this guy, Bindeshwar Pathak.
We met him in India, fascinating guy.
He is trying to change how Indians think about
sanitation.
He believes that sanitation is the way for success for the
nation of India.
These are-- actually, this is a group of these, the
untouchables, right?
Former scavengers who we had a chance to meet in India.
Eckhart Tolle.
Anybody read Eckhart Tolle?
"The Power of Now." Hugely successful author and speaker.
He's trying to change how people think about being in
the moment and about spirituality.
Bryant Terry.
He's a chef and he's into nutrition.
He's trying to change how you think about social justice.
He says nutrition is the way to social justice.
Now I just want to--
those people are all quite famous and quite well-known.
So I want to show you a couple who are not.
This is Maria Madison, who actually lives in my town of
Concord, Mass.
And she's trying to change how people
think about their community.
So she's doing it in a very small way.
She runs this little group called The
Drinking Gourd Project.
And this is a young woman named Samantha Joseph who is a
friend of Anna's.
She works for Iron Mountain and she's trying to change how
people within the company think about sustainability.
So, all the ideas I'm going to present to you, although we
basically focused on well-known people who have
bestselling books, these apply within communities.
The ideas apply within communities and within
organizations.
So, finally, Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer.
Does everybody know the dog whisperer?
You've seen him, seen his shows.
So, they are all very different, obviously, but they
all follow a basic method.
It's not really a set of steps, but there are three
parts to this method.
Fascination, expression, and respiration.
I'm going to very briefly take you
through those three things.
So, the first one.
Fascination.
If we look at Cesar Millan, he's got a great story.
He was born in Mexico, he was raised on a farm, spent time
on a farm as a kid.
Everybody discovered that he was really good with dogs.
He seemed to be able to communicate with dogs unlike
anybody else.
And when he was in his early teens, his family got a TV set
for the first time.
And he came across American shows.
And, believe it or not, his favorite show was "Rin Tin
Tin."
And then he came across "Lassie." And he said, wow,
this is really very different.
The way these dogs behave is not the way the dog's behave
on the farm here in Mexico.
I must go to America and discover what the training
techniques are for these dogs because these dogs understand
English, they respond to commands, they seem to have
relationships, they live in houses, they wear clothing.
I don't get what's going on.
So this was a moment of revelation for him.
Now, so, his fascination with dogs has remained a part of
his presentation for his entire life, so
for the last 30 years.
And this particular story he tells over and over again.
I went to see him do a live-- he does this live talk, this
hour-long kind of stage show.
I went to Lynn, Massachusetts and saw him do this.
And he told this story about seeing "Rin Tin Tin." He tells
it every time he talks--
virtually.
And every time he talks about it, he says it as if it
happened yesterday.
So these are-- so fascination is about these iconic moments.
And all of these idea entrepreneurs have these
iconic moments that reveal the idea.
So they are able to tell you, here's when I came to
understand this idea.
Mireille Giuliano, for example-- "French Women Don't
Get Fat." She talks about how she came to America when she
was a kid and she was a perfectly slim, fit, young
Frenchwoman.
She came here.
She lived in five different homes.
When she was a high school student, everybody plied her
with lemon meringue pie, and brownies, and frappes, and
stuff like that.
And she gained 20 pounds.
And it really did not make her happy.
She went home, her father said to her, oh my god, you look
like a sack of potatoes.
So that moment is one that she talks about all the time.
So these iconic moments are very much a part of
fascination.
Then there is--
all these idea entrepreneurs have huge quantity of
accumulation.
So they accumulate lots, and lots, and lots of material.
And we find this--
as Katie said, we work with people who come to us, who are
content experts, who want to go public, and often they want
to write a book.
And they say to us, do we have enough material?
And very often they do not have enough material.
And you really need a great deal of material behind your
idea to convince people in lots and lots
of different ways.
So you need data, you need stories, you need references,
you need analysis, you need all this stuff.
And a friend of mine, George Stalk, who's a strategy expert
said, well, he has a test for how much material you need
because he's always asked how much do you need before you
write a book?
He said, well, if you can stand up in front of an
audience for a full day and talk nonstop, and have the
audience stay reasonably awake, you probably have
enough for a book.
So you can use that test if you want to write a book.
They also, they always have practices.
So all these idea entrepreneurs are very
practical people.
This is what really distinguishes them from the
abstract thinkers, the academics, those who are
interested in writing books but don't make it practical.
So what we found is that they really have to find a way to
allow people, making people understand how do you put this
idea into everyday use?
So obviously, Cesar Millan gives you ways to
deal with your dog.
But Daniel Kahneman gives you a series of questions to ask
if we make a decision.
All of these guys, all these people, give you practices.
It's very, very important.
So, they take all this stuff and they build a personal
narrative around their idea.
And what's really great is the personal narrative is the
story of the idea.
It's a story of how the idea developed.
It's the abstraction of the idea, but it's the life story.
So the person essentially becomes the idea.
This is very difficult to do.
All the people I showed you pretty much to that.
But you can do it in a smaller way.
So you can say that person is the one who knows more than
anybody else in the organization about whatever it
is, and that is the person who is really espousing this idea
and has put themselves into it.
So their personal narrative is really entwined with the idea.
So the second part of the method is expression.
Now obviously, the fas-- these three overlap and they're
simultaneous.
But the expression comes next.
So by expression I simply mean that your idea is pretty much
nothing until you have expressed it in some way.
And I've done many talks and people come up to me
afterwards and say, I have this really fantastic idea but
nobody is doing it.
And I'll say, well, have you told anybody
about it, for example?
Well, say, yeah.
Well, I told somebody about it.
But the idea entrepreneurs express their ideas in
multiple ways, all the time.
So the first thing to do is to figure out what is their best
form of expression.
And this is not so easy to do, because if you don't spend
your life in communications you may not know what your
best form is.
So we found people come to us who want to write books are
not actually writers, and it's very difficult to write.
And so we help them try to find what their best
expression is.
So, very often, people are much better talkers than they
are writers, and that's where idea
entrepreneurs should start.
So, Cesar Millan, for example, is a great talker.
He's great in person, but as a writer--
I mean, he's fine.
His books are fine, but you really want to see the guy.
Mireille Giuliano is actually a very good writer.
You want to read her books.
They are fun to read.
They're interesting to read.
And she likes to talk, but it's kind of secondary to her.
So this writing speaking tension is very intriguing
because you really need to do both.
And they do very different things.
We found that all idea entrepreneurs do
both of these things.
But whatever the best form is, and even if they do both, they
always create what we call a sacred expression.
So this is the one expression that everybody comes to
recognize and say, that is the one.
That is the book this person wrote.
That's the one you should read.
And if you don't have that, it's very hard to go up a
level when you go public.
So people who really want to take it up a level, and go
public, and get a lot of attention, they really have to
put a lot of work into the expression.
And it's not enough just to write a book, just to do a
video, just to do a talk.
You have to put a lot into it.
But all the accumulation, all the iconic moments, all the
practices--
they all have to be there in the sacred expression.
Then you have to put a lot of work into making it both
quality, but also get out there so people see it.
Finally, they do, as I said, multiple expressions.
And what they really want to do is create a video, a talk,
tweet, blog, write, write articles, appear in
conferences, appear at TED Talks if they possibly can.
But every piece of--
each expression does something a little bit different.
So when I first saw Malcolm Gladwell speak, it was really
interesting.
He did his talk about "The Tipping Point." And I don't
know if you've seen him talk about that, and I'm not sure
if it changes or not.
But when I saw him, it was just after it came out.
And he got up and he told the first story from the book.
And basically, in the same words that he'd
written it in the book.
And I thought, well, I've already read the book.
I don't need you to read the book aloud,
there's audio to do that.
So I'd rather have you tell me other stuff and explain to me
things in the book, or tell me other stories.
So the great idea entrepreneurs make their talk
different from the book.
I found this very difficult when we started off with this
book because you've spent three, four years working on
all the stuff in your book and then suddenly nobody
wants to hear that.
They want to hear new stuff.
So well, I don't have any new stuff right now.
But you have to come up with new stuff.
So the talk has to be different from the book.
The video has to be different from the talk and the book.
So all these multiple expressions start to build
this self-reinforcing platform that's really fantastic.
And we've seen this with our books-- it's been really,
really fun to watch.
Because we've been blogging on the "HBR" blog
network, which has--
I think it goes out to a million people.
So I don't know if anybody looks at
that, the blog network.
But they have five or six blogs per day.
And they're always running their analytics on them so you
can see where you fall in the ranking.
It is very dangerous for an author to do this because you
can waste your entire day checking your analytics of
your Amazon ranking and where you
fall in the blog hierarchy.
But you want to build this self-reinforcing platform.
And that's what all the idea entrepreneurs do.
Then we come to the third piece, which is really the
most important and fun one.
Am I going to write on the wall if I do this?
I was told not to write on the wall.
I would be kicked out immediately.
KATIE: The building's too new for you to write on
the wall just yet.
JOHN BUTMAN: All right.
So I'll squeeze it in down here while you do that.
So respiration.
This is the most important one.
This is where influence really starts to happen.
So you can have a fascination.
You can accumulate a ton of material.
You can create a lot of expressions.
And you can have absolutely no influence at all.
And it happens all the time.
And this happened to a couple of our clients and it's a very
unpleasant experience.
You put all this work into it.
Usually we find that putting all the work into it will pay
off eventually, but it may not pay off with
this particular effort.
So what is respiration?
This is when the idea comes to life, when the
idea starts to breathe.
When people pick it up, when they tell each other about it,
and they start to put into practice.
All these things happen.
So this is what we really want to have happen to your idea to
make some kind of change.
Now, you cannot force this to happen, but you
can encourage it.
So there are a lot of things you can do.
So the first one, first thing you can do is you have some
kind of direct engagement.
The number of authors we've worked with who feel that once
the book is done, or once the video is done, or once the
talk is done--
it's done.
I have presented my idea unto the world.
The world will now completely understand it.
They will take it on board.
They will act accordingly.
My work is finished.
I can ride off into the sunset.
Right?
So this never happens.
Never ever happens.
Even if they do go give a talk--
just like I'm giving now--
they don't actually ask for questions, or don't listen to
what people say.
And so there's no direct engagement.
All the successful idea entrepreneurs have some kind
of direct engagement.
Eckhart Tolle, is, I think he's sort of
my model for this.
He has so many ways of engaging
directly with audiences.
He tried to do sort of big tent shows,
where he would go into--
I don't think he went to Madison Square Garden-- but he
want to very big venues and he didn't like it, because he's
kind of a shy guy.
What he likes to do is be in a video studio with an audience
about the size of this group.
And people would get up and ask him really deep, probing,
personal questions.
Like, I'm about to commit suicide, what do you
think I should do?
Oh my god.
And he will say, oh, well.
And you can see him kind of stumbling.
And he's not polished.
He's really trying to help this person.
He's directly engaging.
And when he does it, something magical happens in the
audience because you see this guy's putting his ideas to
work, right here, with somebody
who has a real problem.
And you see the person is helped in some way.
Cesar Millan does the same thing on stage.
He brings on dogs who he's not met before who have problems.
Presenting problems.
Right.
So when I saw him, the dog was a barker.
Yeah, he barked at every dog that went by.
And Cesar, really, within three minutes this dog was
totally changed.
It was just by his presence, by the way he
behaved with the dog.
But Cesar had the new dog.
The dog had come out, and he walked his own dog
named Junior by.
And the guest dog had barked like crazy at Junior and tried
to pull at his leash.
And at the end of it, after three minutes, Cesar walked by
with Junior and the dog just, sat there like, no problem,
there's another dog here.
So direct engagement is absolutely essential.
The second one is--
we're still in respiration-- our current presence.
Now, I don't know if you've witnessed this, but very often
if you hear an author or somebody with a set of ideas
interviewed on the radio or on TV, they will often say those
killing words, "as I said in my book." " No one cares what
you said in your book.
They want to know what you think about what's
happening right now.
So every idea entrepreneur has to find a way to develop a
framework of ideas that is stable, that they believe in,
and they don't change all the time, but they can interpret
and apply to what's going on right now.
So all the good ones will be able to take their ideas and
apply them to whatever is happening.
And then people have--
they get the, what I call, this current presence.
So Deepak Chopra.
You know Deepak Chopra?
He's quite brilliant at this.
He's so brilliant at it that he's
kind of lost the framework.
He's so much a personality of the ideaplex and he's so able
to respond to everything.
Remember he was all over the place when
Michael Jackson died?
So he was somehow--
Deepak Chopra was the expert on Michael Jackson.
I'm not quite sure why, but it's sort of like, if you need
somebody to talk about anything, call Deepak.
He will apply his ideas, he'll fix them somehow so they fit.
So, from my point, he's kind of lost the idea thing, he's
become a personality of the ideaplex.
Contrast him to Jim Collins, for example, who has done four
books, basically, four major books in a pretty--
Deepak Chopra, by the way, has done 65 books in his 30 years.
So there's quite a difference there.
But he very, very much sticks with his ideas.
He evolves them over time.
He looked at--
he said, well, how do my ideas apply to social sectors and
did this whole monograph.
So there's a way to have a current presence which doesn't
threaten your ideas, but it also keeps you current.
Very important--
OK, I'm continuing respiration here-- is they personally
model the practices.
So once they go public and they've talked about these
practices, but they model them as things continue.
So two examples.
Martha Stewart, who I think of as an idea entrepreneur.
She kind of got a little bit focused on the money for quite
some time, but she started out as an idea entrepreneur.
And the great thing about her is she
has practices, obviously.
I mean, she's got more practices than you could shake
a stick at.
She's got nothing but practices, really.
And what happened when she went to prison?
Does anybody know?
I mean, the reports vary.
It's a little hard to get the exact story.
But, as far as we can tell, she taught
people how to do yoga.
She cooked.
She did knitting or crocheting.
And she advocated for better food in prisons from prison.
So she didn't become angry, she didn't shut down, she kept
doing her practices.
I thought, this is pretty good.
And, to me, OK, she had her problems with the whole
financial thing--
I don't know what happened there, really--
but she kept going with her practices.
Contrast that with Al Gore.
Remember Al Gore and his whole thing
with the carbon footprint?
So he came out with "An Inconvenient Truth." He's the
only guy who has a PowerPoint presentation that led to a
Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award.
That's not bad.
I think that's, you know--
well, anyway.
But while he was out there, going public with his ideas,
he got a lot of backlash because of his enormous house,
his enormous jet-- he was flying around all the time.
His carbon footprint was just way off.
So he was not modeling the practices.
Now, as far as I can tell, Al has changed his ways--
got a smaller house, and he's reduced his carbon footprint.
So he heard that message.
But you've got to model the practices.
That's very, very important.
Two other things in respiration.
One is, you're always going to have backlash if you have an
idea of any intensity.
You're going to have to expect you're going to get backlash
of some kind.
So, you hope you get very intense positive reactions,
but you're probably going to get very
intense negative reactions.
So, my favorite example of this is Amy Chua.
Remember her?
She wrote a book called The Tiger--
"Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." Yeah.
So this -- what?
Two or three years ago?
Oh my god.
Do you remember there was huge, huge hyperventilation.
It wasn't respiration, it was beyond respiration to
hyperventilation in the ideaplex.
Everybody went nuts.
There was an excerpt from "The Wall Street Journal" from her
book, and I forget how many comments.
I think it had 9,000 comments.
It got more comments than any other article had ever
received for "The Wall Street Journal," before or since.
So, she was really not prepared for this.
I mean, she went out thinking, I am presenting what I think
are some good ideas about parenting.
And, wow.
She did not expect this to happen.
And part of it was, she ran into some pretty heavy trends
in the Zeitgeist.
You know, that was a time when we were all worried about
China, and said, oh my god, China is going to completely
eat our lunch.
And every parent was worried about their kids, saying, oh
my god, none of our kids are going to get into college.
And so Amy Chua was saying, you know, really, all the
parenting techniques here in America, they're fine and
everything, but we could use a little more of the hard and
metric-driven parenting.
So parents went insane.
So you have to expect this backlash.
And you have to find a way to not try to rebut it, but
encompass it.
So Cesar Millan, for example, he's taken a
great deal of backlash.
He does not have a degree in veterinary science.
He didn't go to--
he does not have a college degree at all.
And so the establishment doesn't like him.
And they say he's set back dog training 20 years.
And he just deals with that.
He says, this is, you know, people feel this way.
This is how I operate.
It's just part of the thing.
And the final part of respiration is meta story.
And this is one-- this is really part of the ideaplex.
This is the part I find really fascinating.
People have come to be as interested in the story of
getting your story out there as they are in the idea that
you're actually getting out.
So for a while they say, oh, that's really interesting.
And with our book, for example, for a month or so,
they said, you know, I've read the book, interesting ideas,
really interesting.
But after about two months, it was like, so how's it going?
How many books have you sold?
Oh, you were on, whatever, Big Think.
So people really want to know the story of getting
the story out there.
And so idea entrepreneurs have started to always include meta
story in story.
And that, to me, is really fascinating.
So people, they want the idea, but they also want
to know how it went.
And they want this validation of the fact that you're
actually having success out there in the ideaplex.
So those two things go together.
So that's the method.
Now, just a couple thoughts about some other issues,
because this one is really critical to
getting an idea out there.
Now, you'd sort of think that you would know who your key
audience is, but it's surprising how often people do
not know who they're talking to.
And they're kind of talking to themselves.
So they think I have a really, really great idea.
I really love talking to myself about this idea.
I'm sure that other people really will love it, too.
So I think I'll write a book, or I'll go public.
And they find that it's really not always the case.
But, more often, there is an audience you
think you want to influence.
So Atul Gawande, "The Checklist" doctor, he really
wanted to influence surgeons and medical staff.
And clearly that's his audience.
But he had to go to an adjacent audience to really
get to them.
So you have your direct audience, but you may not be
able to talk to them directly.
You may have to go to an adjacent audience.
So this is very intriguing.
Now, Atul Gawande got picked up by the business community,
I think more so than it got picked up
by the medical community.
And then it sort of went back to the direct audience.
They said, oh, well I guess we better pay attention to this.
So, often you want to go to an adjacent audience to get back
to your direct audience.
So you got to think about what are the adjacent audiences?
You often don't know.
So Mireille Giuliano, the "French Women Don't Get Fat"
lady, she said, well, my direct audience is probably
sort of middle-aged women, well-educated, who have
weight, they're struggling with their weight or with
their health and lifestyle.
So I want to talk to them directly.
And they did read the book.
But she found she got more response from young mothers
who were worried about the kids.
So she had this whole young mother audience.
Then she discovered that grandmothers were reading the
book because they said, oh, this reminds me of how things
were back in my day when we climbed the stairs all the
time, didn't watch TV, and only ate whatever.
So she kind of surrounded her direct audience.
And then she discovered that the spouses
were reading the book.
Or the wife was saying to the husband, you know, this is a
really great book.
So all these guys were reading it.
And then--
I'm not sure if this is adjacent or not--
but then she discovered that she had a gay audience.
So she was--
and she only discovered that because she did all this
direct engagement.
She would go out to book shows and do talks.
And all these gay guys were there.
So she developed this gay audience.
So she built these separate audiences into
a very large audience.
Then there's a third one that I call the secret audience.
And this is my favorite one because everybody I've worked
with, including myself, usually has somebody--
usually it's often the individual--
that they are speaking to.
They may not even know who it is, but it's often an issue of
revenge, of unfulfilled promise.
So I'm writing to my third grade teacher who said I'd
never amount to anything.
Or, my father who-- it's often to my father who died when I
was 10 and I couldn't show him whatever.
So there's a secret audience.
And you may not know who it is, but you may
eventually get to it.
And the reason this is important is it really helps
you focus what you're trying to do.
Because you often think you have an audience, and it feels
right, but then you really discover you're trying to say
something a little different, and you're talking to
different people.
So usually that secret audience person represents the
audience you really want to get to.
So, for example, one of my secret audience members is my
brother-in-law.
And we have a perfectly fine relation and everything.
But I wrote a book several years ago and after he'd read
it-- which I appreciated--
he said, I don't know why you wrote that book.
I don't know why you wrote that book.
Why did you waste three years of your life on that book?
And he kind of had a point because my audience was not
clear on that book.
So I always have him in mind when I write.
I say, is he going to say, why did you write
that book, or not?
I'm really pleased to say when he read this book he said, I
really enjoyed that book, it was really good.
I said, oh my god, Glen, I spent 10 years
thinking about you.
You didn't know that.
So then we get to--
we need another one?
Oh, we got two, we got two.
There are two.
OK.
There are two there.
Yeah.
So, now comes the question, so how do you measure this?
You know, everybody said , well, how
do you measure influence?
Is it possible to do?
Because it's not about finance, it's not about money.
How do you measure the influence
you're having on people?
How many people, et cetera?
So you can't directly measure influence, of course, because
it's not financial.
But there are a number of things you can measure.
So you can measure all the expressions.
So you can look at your books, your talks, and there are an
amazing number of things you can measure.
Book sales are just the most obvious thing.
But, you know, how many talks am I invited to?
For academics, in particular, how often are my ideas
referenced in other works?
That's a huge one.
Daniel Kahneman says his first article about "Thinking, Fast
and Slow" is the most referenced
article of all time.
I don't-- that's what he says.
But anyway, it is referenced a lot.
So are you referenced lot?
Are you invited to lots and lots of talks?
How many people show up?
How many Twitter followers do you have?
There's just, I mean, there's just endless metrics that you
can look at.
These are useful, however, I have also had clients who have
great metrics that way and have no influence.
So there's no direct correlation between any of
those analytics and the influence that you have.
So it's all a little bit mysterious and upsetting.
I can tell you when clients come to us, that answer does
not make them very happy.
They want to believe that it's about sales.
And, in fact, I had a chat with my doctor recently.
We were just chatting and he said, so how's the book going?
How many books have you sold?
I said, well, actually, I don't know.
I haven't checked.
He was like, you what?
You haven't checked your sales?
I said, well, no.
That's really not the point.
He said, well, how else do you know anything about anything
if you don't check the sales of your book?
I said, doc, let's just get on with the exam, OK?
However, you can usually come up with some kind of metric
that may or may not be measuring exactly what you do,
but that helps people gauge what you're doing.
So Cesar Millan, for example, uses euthanization of dogs.
He says every year 3 to 4 million dogs are euthanized in
the United States.
And largely that's because people do not know how to
behave with their dogs.
He says that 6 to 10--
6 out of 10 dogs that are taken home from shelters are
returned to the shelters.
There's some--
I don't know if that metric is exactly right, but
that's what he says.
So those are two metrics that you can use.
And you could say, well, euthanizations are coming
down, or fewer dogs are being returned to their shelters.
Now you can't directly say, I caused that to happen, but he
can look at those numbers.
So you need some kind of metric you can look at.
But, interestingly enough, the most affecting and most
rewarding, and probably most important one, is this one to
one, people saying to you, you know what?
I saw you talk, I read your book, it was really
meaningful to me.
It changed the way I think.
It changed the way I behave.
I do things differently now.
I tell other people about it.
And all the idea entrepreneurs we spoke with said that is the
one that they found the most meaningful and the most really
telling, because you know that if you've directly affected
somebody, they're going to be talking to other people in a
way that's not just, oh, I read this cool book.
It's like this really meant something to me.
So Tim Ferriss has this sort of gang of followers, right,
who really, really believe him.
So that one to one thing leads to a one to many.
Finally, you start to think about, so what is my very,
very long lasting effect beyond the book, or beyond the
two or three years when I go public?
And we get to what I call the thinking journey.
And this is where you connect the idea that you want to go
public with to other ideas, and think about how does it
fit in a much bigger way.
So, you want to think about how do you take the idea
beyond yourself when you're no longer active, or you're on to
something else?
And there are ways to think about that.
One is, are you linking to some kind of
fundamental human concern?
And this is something that a lot of people who want to
write books, in particular, are not doing.
They're focused on a very narrow or technical area.
But if you can link to a very deep, fundamental human
concern, you got a pretty good chance of gaining
some lasting influence.
So, to use Cesar Millan again for an example, you know he
talks about dog training.
People think of him-- oh, he's a dog trainer.
But he strongly believes that he's about dog-human
relationships.
And that he is actually about the state of American society
and our relationship with nature.
So he's linking into a much, much deeper idea.
If you take anyone of these idea entrepreneurs, they're
always finding some fundamental idea that they are
talking about.
They don't always say it.
They don't say it directly, but it comes out.
Many people have this idea of ownership.
I want to own that idea.
Consultants in particular want to do this.
I want to be the owner of that idea.
And I found that this is a really good way to not own an
idea, is to say, I own this idea.
No one else owns this idea.
I thought it up, nobody else did.
So, the good idea entrepreneurs say, you know, I
didn't think it up.
I am expressing it for lots of other people.
I, of course, I added my own thing to it and expressed it
in different ways, but I don't own this.
I don't want to own it.
I want other people to own it.
I want other people to add to it.
So don't try to own the idea.
And you've got to recognize the relationship of your idea
to other ideas out there.
And no idea is wholly original, or even
particularly original.
But they're originally stated and they come out at certain
times that are important.
So link to those.
And then finally, if you can, you want to trace to a very,
very long thinking journey.
So you want to trace back, and you want to trace forward.
So when I asked Cesar Millan, for example, I interviewed him
and I said, is there anybody that you--
whose footsteps you would like to follow?
Or you think of as somebody who is kind
of a mentor, a leader?
He said, oh yeah, Gandhi.
I said, Gandhi.
Really?
He said, well--
I said, why?
He says, well, Ghandi has this quote which is, the quality of
a society is judged by the way it treats its animals.
I thought, oh, this is pretty interesting.
So if you take Cesar Millan, if you take Gandhi, his whole
thing was what he called satyagraha, which is truth
firmness, which is sort of civil disobedience.
And Cesar's method of working with dogs is calm
assertiveness, which is sort of the same thing for dogs
that Gandhi had for humans.
And you can trace this thinking journey
really back to Buddha.
You can say Buddha, Gandhi, Tolstoy, Martin Luther King,
Cesar Millan.
Perfect.
Perfect line.
All right, so, I want to leave you with--
well I guess I can, I forgot to take you through metrics.
So if you're thinking about going public with an idea--
and maybe just within your organization, or whatever--
these are questions we ask our clients to answer.
And they're really obvious questions that when I start to
show them to people they start laughing.
Like, ha, absurd questions.
But they're very, very difficult to answer.
And you can--
I'm sure you've heard people flounder with these questions
trying to answer them in many, many situations.
So for the idea entrepreneur, I can give you the correct
answer for each one of these.
So the first one is, why am I doing this?
And I cannot tell you the number of times I've seen
people who say that, I want to public with an idea, but they
can't say why.
What is driving them?
What is their purpose in doing this?
And usually that means that their purpose is that they
would like to become famous in the ideaplex.
They would love to have great blog analytics, and have
people say, wow, I read your cool book.
That's really great.
It was on the front shelf at Barnes Noble, or whatever.
That is the wrong answer.
And the right answer is you want to do something for other
people, and that is what's driving you.
I'm not saying that these idea entrepreneurs are totally
selfless, that they don't have healthy egos, but they really
want to do something that changes the world for the
better as they see it.
I found this for myself.
We start working on a book and you're so focused on, I got to
get this book done.
Can I get it done?
What am I trying to say?
But at some point there's a flip.
And you say, oh, I'm actually trying to help people out with
this thing.
Number two, what do I want to achieve?
This goes back to the metric.
So very often you kind of throw something out there and
say here's my idea.
I'm doing it because of whatever.
But there's no specific achievement that you're after.
And whether or not that's the one you actually achieve, or
that's the one you keep focusing on, you want to keep
saying, what specifically do I want to have happen?
And that usually goes to the practices also.
So do I want to see people referring to me?
Do I want to see people referring to my ideas?
Do I want to see them put them into practice?
This third one, what is my personal connection?
This is really tough.
And most of our clients really struggle with this.
They don't-- you know, we're taught in organizations not to
get personal, to keep it all in the argument, keep it on
the data, but you have to bring in these personal
connections.
Very tough to do.
Who am I talking to?
We talked about the audiences, but very often somebody will
go out with an idea and they will talk to the people who do
not need to be convinced, people
who are already convinced.
So you've got to find a way to that direct audience.
And the final one is what is my idea in a single sentence?
And this is really hard to do.
I try to do it myself every day and
sometimes I can't do it.
But you keep trying to refine it because the world will do
that for you.
They will say, oh, he's the guy who talks about the
ideaplex thing.
And that's all you're going to get.
All right.
That's all you're going to get.
So if your idea-- if your sentence isn't really good and
if you haven't shaped if for yourself, they're going to do
it for you and you're not going to be happy
with it half the time.
So keep working on that.
AUDIENCE: Because that's a form of expression.
JOHN BUTMAN: Sorry?
AUDIENCE: That's a form of expression.
JOHN BUTMAN: Oh yeah, I've missed that one.
We talked about that.
Think about that, your best form of expression.
So if after looking at these questions and thinking about
your idea and who you're trying to reach, if you decide
not to go public with your idea, I applaud
you for that decision.
It's a really, really good decision.
And more people should decide, I don't think I'm ready, or I
don't think the idea is strong enough, or I don't think I
could get to the audience.
Or I don't want to really deal with the ideaplex.
I think part of the reason we have this glut is everybody
thinks, oh, I'll just take it out, and I'll
take my idea out.
I'll change the world, it will be great, and don't do all
this stuff.
And so we have to sort of weed through all this stuff.
So please, if you say no to yourself, that's really good.
But if you think about these questions, you think, well,
maybe I will.
The sort of the one question you can ask that is absolutely
definitive is, can I not not go public with this idea?
If you are so driven that you don't care about everything I
said, you say, I cannot not help myself.
I cannot not go public.
Then I say to you, godspeed and good luck.
Now thank you very much.
So we got a few minutes for questions, or
thoughts, or comments.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: I'm fascinated with the backlash.
And I would like to hear you expound a little bit more on--
just say what you want to say about [INAUDIBLE] your
observations.
JOHN BUTMAN: Well, especially with social media, it's so
easy for people to backlash at you.
It's a fundamental part of it.
I think it's actually a healthy part of it, because if
you don't hear people's objections to your ideas,
either they're being polite or your idea isn't really
different enough and it's probably not worth
considering.
So you really actually want backlash and you want
intelligent backlash.
You want considerate backlash where you can actually engage
in discussion with people.
And then you need to decide, so what's the cut off point?
We've had people make comments on our blogs, or on Twitter,
and you just say, well, sort of look into the person and
say, this is not coming from anywhere that's useful and
just kind of ignore it.
But it's very hard to do because idea entrepreneurs
think, I am good.
I'm trying to change the world for the better and these
people are thinking I'm bad.
And it's hurtful.
So you just have to accept that and say it's actually a
good, healthy part of the process.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: You referenced some clients.
I'm curious as to what sorts of clients you had?
Businesses?
Or individuals?
JOHN BUTMAN: Yeah, so, I don't--
I think I can't tell you exactly,
specifically who they are.
But I can tell you sort of generically who they are.
So working, for example, with the president of a large
philanthropic organization.
And she has--
they have one basic theme that they want to
get out to the world.
And say this is where we're putting all of our money and
all of our effort.
So she's doing a whole campaign, she's doing a book,
she's doing a bunch of other activities.
So, she authors the book, we're helping her think about
the ideas and create the book.
We're working with a serial entrepreneur was is also a
lecturer at the Media Lab.
He's talking about the future of technology.
So he wants to become sort of the guru of the next wave of
technology.
We are working with a guy who has been in
investment for a long time.
And he believes that the history of--
the whole story of investment has never been told.
And the reason that we are in such a mess financially is
that people don't understand what they did with their money
at all, and all they do is get tips from people who have self
interest at heart.
So he wants to write this book and get it out there.
So these people have the means to support this.
And they're going out-- these are the ones sort of at the--
well, not the entrepreneur, but the other two are sort of
at the end of their careers.
We worked with a number of consultants.
We're working with a French consultant right now.
And his whole-- he's an organizational guy.
So he believes that organizations are dealing with
complexity in all the wrong ways.
That instead of dealing with complexity through human
intelligence, we're trying to make our organizations so
rule-bound and complicated to try to cover every possible
contingency, which is impossible.
So those are some of the kinds of people we're dealing with.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: To just go back a little bit to the to backlash.
There's--
do you have ideas that generate a lot of backlash,
they get a lot of air time, because
everyone loves the debate.
Do you find that in the long run, that ideas that are the
stickiest, that sort of permeate and change the
thinking of everyone, do those tend to be, or generate less
backlash up front or more backlash up front?
Do you have a sense of that?
JOHN BUTMAN: That's a really good question.
I haven't really thought that one through.
But my feeling is that people respond much better over the
long run to people who are really genuine, are not
deliberately trying to create controversy, and really want
to help you.
And the ideas may be difficult, but they're not
deliberately controversial.
So my hunch is--
I think this is probably your hunch--
is that those ones that really spike and get a lot of
attention tend to disappear.
And the ones that really, really last are the ones that
are deeper and stronger, and they generate conversation,
but not so much backlash.
It's interesting, if you look at on the Harvard blog site,
there's a real difference between blogs that get a lot
of comments and the ones that get a lot of readership.
So very often the ones that get a ton of comments, they
don't last very long.
So it's just like sticking your finger in people's eye,
and they want to talk about it.
It doesn't mean that it's lasting.
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: Back to the respiration, a lot of what you
talked about had to do around credibility, like when you
mentioned that Cesar Millan really establishes tangible
credibility, immediately and another example.
And in both cases, they are-- that their credibility, they
are pretty immediately recognized, and so that's part
of the influence, that there's immediate connection.
How do you factor in some of these ideas take time for the
recognition of impact and how does that become
a variable in influence?
JOHN BUTMAN: So, how long does it take to--
AUDIENCE: Does that matter?
JOHN BUTMAN: It does matter.
I think there's usually a very long accumulation period.
And people are, they're doing all this, they're doing
respiration, they're doing expression, but it hasn't
become really well known yet.
So Cesar Millan did a lot of stuff, but then
he got this TV show.
He was actually approached to do a TV show and that's, he
just, spiked him.
But, Mireille Guiliano spent four decades gathering stuff.
People kept saying to her, you have to write this book, you
have to write this book.
She said I don't want to write this book.
My mother told me you should never write books because
that's too self-aggrandizing.
And her friend finally said, forget about your mother, it's
about helping other people because I've seen you do it.
And she said, OK, now I understand that
that's what it's for.
So when people come to us and say, I want to be the thought
leader in this thing by the end of 2014.
Sorry, no can guarantee that.
You have to have accumulated the stuff, you have to go out
there and create respiration, which you cannot be sure is
going to happen.
And it can take a long time.
Yeah.
Somebody else, yeah.
AUDIENCE: If we want to be good at speaking, presenting,
and connecting with audiences, what are
good ways to get practice?
JOHN BUTMAN: Ha.
That's a great question.
You know, take any invitation you could think of.
And if you can't get any invitations, then call
somebody you know and say, can I come over to your company at
lunch and talk?
Almost--
AUDIENCE: Well, we have a post-masters
group right in Google.
JOHN BUTMAN: Oh yeah?
I mean, you can speak-- there's always
somewhere to speak.
You know we, at the very beginning-- we've done a whole
bunch of talks-- but at the very beginning we just called
some of our friends and we said, we've got this book
coming out, could we come at lunch and just do
an hour long thing?
They said, yeah, why not?
So you can always just brow beat people to let you talk.
And at the very worst.
You do what I call the cocktail party test.
No matter where you are, with anybody at anytime, as tedious
as it might be, you just start telling them your idea.
And if-- you say my new idea is blah, blah, blah.
And if their response is, oh, that's really interesting
because I was thinking the same thing, you know you're
onto something.
If their response is, so, where'd
you spend your vacation?
Then you probably have not hit it yet.
But you can always find a place to talk.
That's a really good question.
Anybody else?
Yeah.
AUDIENCE: This is a question about if you recall the
iconical form, like the--
JOHN BUTMAN: The iconic moments, you mean?
AUDIENCE: Well, the sort of idealized form of the idea
that you put out there.
AUDIENCE: Sacred expression.
AUDIENCE: I'm sorry?
Sacred expression.
There are, I've seen a pattern, a very few data
points, of books like "The Long Tail," "Blue Ocean
Strategies," you know, some of these sort of
big business books.
JOHN BUTMAN: Yeah, big idea business books.
AUDIENCE: Big idea business books.
That started with or mapped to a article in "Wired" or in--
JOHN BUTMAN: "HBR."
AUDIENCE: "HBR," something like that.
And, I've always found my path through has been, someone
points me to the article, I read the article, get really
excited about it.
Read the book, they're like, why did that take 200 more
pages to say the same thing as in the article?
Are those authors doing the right thing by
writing their books?
Or are they, or should they just--
JOHN BUTMAN: Well, I think there are two answers to that.
One is, many of those articles are written
after the book is written.
And they couldn't write the article until
they write the book.
Because they had to go through the process of writing the
book to get all those ideas.
Then it's so wonderful because you can just squish them down
into an article.
That's why the article is so good.
And so often you'll find that the articles that are less
good do not come from a book.
If you-- a lot of the stuff you read in the "The New
Yorker," for example, is excerpted from books.
So you get the benefit from all that extra
work in this article.
But, yeah.
I mean, very often you don't need the rest of it.
But you do need the book.
And what we've come to the conclusion is that all idea
entrepreneurs need a book.
It may not be their sacred expression,
but they need a book.
And I can't tell you-- people come to me and say, you know,
I'm talking.
I just did my TED Talk, I've been blogging like crazy.
I've got to have the book.
Everybody wants the book.
And if you think about, the book does a lot of things for
you that nothing else does.
So, I mean, people still think of it as sort of the ultimate
emblem of learning.
I can write a book.
We've been told forever that book is the ultimate
expression.
It's this very handy device you can just hand to people.
It's an entry to the ideaplex because that's how
you get into it.
You say, his new book, as opposed to he just
posted a cat video.
That's not getting you on Charlie Rose.
You got to have--
the book does a lot of things for you.
But, you know, your criticism is very well taken.
Many people feel the same way.
Do I need to read this entire book?
And often, you don't.
AUDIENCE: Have you written an article form of this?
JOHN BUTMAN: We did--
we have not written an article in "HBR," but we've done
articles in various different places, yeah.
Other questions?
Yes.
AUDIENCE: So what is it the metric that you are measuring
yourself against?
Is it tweets?
Followers?
JOHN BUTMAN: The number of--
the number, fewer clients that come to knock on our door.
What is the metric?
That's a really good one.
The one on one metric really means the most to me.
And that's one I'm paying most attention to.
So that's kind of what I'm focusing on now.
And we're still in the early days here.
But if we could hear people say--
if we could get this model out there and get some sense that
people are kind of evaluating ideas through this model, that
would be great.
Great.
Thank you very much.