It's a fact. Our attention span is shortening. Look at an old movie from thirty or more years ago and tell me you don't squirm in your seat at times, waiting for something to happen, for the scene to change, for the actor to stop talking and just get going. We want things faster and in shorter doses.
Then why do we prepare verbose reports or ramble on repeating the same thing two or three times? It's as if our presentation IQ has fallen way behind what our audiences need. The best way to communicate with today's audience is to assume they have attention issues and create a message that is short, high impact and to-the-point.
Think of it as a communication burst. It's loud, fast and gone in a few minutes.
Barry LaBov
LaBov & Beyond
http://www.labov.com/
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
Once again Barry LaBov, you tell it like it is! The Internet age really has shortened the attention spans of many folks, and as you said, for some reason, the art of business presentations seem to still be stuck in the past. I can't think of a business meeting I've been to recently where it looked like even 50% of the people were paying attention. One of my friends hosts a very successful show on Youtube, and they recommend their popular users to keep their videos to 3-4 minutes, as their studies have shown people's attention levels start quickly falling after that. I love your idea to apply that same sort of mentality into the business world. I bet the meetings at LaBov & Beyond are much more interesting than mine!
ReplyDeleteLaBov & Beyond has a new training approach that addresses that topic and it so far has been a hit with dealers and distributors and their salespeople. The shorter the better. Thanks!
ReplyDelete