About
I’ve spent most of my career trying to work out why some ideas travel and others don’t.
Not in a theoretical way. In rooms. In pitches that should have worked and didn’t. In strategies that were right and went nowhere. In talks where the slides were immaculate and the audience left with nothing.
My background is broad on purpose: technology, strategy, sales, leadership, enablement and large-scale change programmes. Along the way I’ve spoken to groups of eight and groups of thousands, done a TEDx talk, and spent evenings testing material in comedy clubs where the feedback is instant and unforgiving.
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The common thread was never the subject matter. It was communication.
The turn
The question changed.
How do I become a better presenter?
How do I cause another human being to see something?
The first is about you. The second is about them, and it turns out to be a design discipline with rules, patterns and failure modes you can learn.
Where it came from
Technology & strategy
Years inside complex organisations where the idea was rarely the hard part.
Sales & enablement
Pitches, proposals and the awkward gap between what was said and what was heard.
Leadership
Communicating change to people who have heard it all before.
Large-scale programmes
Messages that have to survive translation across thousands of people.
Stages
Leadership teams of eight, conference halls of thousands, and a TEDx stage.
Comedy clubs
The most honest feedback loop in communication.
Signal & Story
The principles, tools and ideas behind Ian’s approach to communication.