Book Spotlight: Words That Mean Success

The latest book in our spotlight is Words That Mean Success by veteran speechwriter Jeff Porro. Building on his extensive experience writing for Fortune 250 CEOs, government leaders, and the like, Porro packs a lot of wisdom into this short book.

Words That Mean Success underscores the importance of the spoken word in business and gives sage advice on how to improve public speaking and better engage audiences. And by gathering lessons from top CEO communicators like Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs, Porro shows the real-world benefits of being a great speaker. 

GG: What made you decide to write this book?
JP: I’d been thinking for a long time about updating and expanding some of my earlier writing on helping executives get the most out of the spoken word. But I have to admit that until recently, the thought of sitting down and doing a 200- or 300-page book was too daunting for me to even contemplate. Then I spoke with a friend who had just published a very successful business book, and he opened my eyes to an idea that now seems rather obvious: a lot of businesspeople are extremely busy and prefer books you can read in one sitting. I knew that was something I could write.

GG: Can you reveal a tip or two from the book?
JP: One is that the speechwriting process should start long before you put fingers on a keyboard. A good speechwriter begins by researching the venue, the audience, the speaker, and more. The other tip that may surprise people is that conflict is a good thing—at least in a speech. Lee Iacocca put it best when he wrote, “A good speech, like a good novel, is constructed around conflict.”

GG: How did you get started as a speechwriter?
JP: I became a freelance writer back in the 1990s, when the magazine where I was working let nearly the entire staff go at once. At first I did all kinds of writing and editing, then I narrowed my focus to what I call “promotional writing,” helping people and organizations get their messages out. I began to get bored with that, though, so I worked with an executive coach, Mitchell Groter, who helped me realize that speechwriting was really my strength.

GG: What attracts you to speechwriting? 
JP: I think it’s the fact that a great speech is an artful combination of a diverse set of elements. You have to capture the personality of the speaker, convey a specific messages, target a particular audience, and so on. Plus you can use humor, history, quotes, current events—it’s an exciting challenge to bring it all together and make it work.

GG: Do you have a favorite speech you’ve written?
JP: There is one in particular where all the elements came together exactly the way they should. It was the commencement speech Anne Goddard, the head of ChildFund International, gave at her alma mater, Assumption College, in 2009. She is a terrific woman with a great sense of humor, and she was very willing to share wonderful stories. I’m very proud of that speech, but Anne made my job pretty easy.

GG: If you had to sum up what you do in one word, á la Dan Pink, what would it be? 
JP: “Engage.” I help executives use speeches, talks, and presentation to engage their audiences.

Why a CEO Should Never Deliver a TED-Style Talk

By David Murray 

CEOs don’t want to look too polished, because they think they’ll be branded as shallow.

A speechwriter friend of mine at a Fortune 100 company complained that CEOs all recognize that the TED Talk is The Way to Communicate. But then they refuse to do TED-style delivery. He recognized that part of the reason is because TED Talks take a ton of time and energy to prepare for.

“Practice when you feel like it,” advises recent TED Talker Nilofer Merchant.

And, even when you don’t feel like it. At least two weeks out from a big talk, start to deliver the talk with notes and ultimately without them. Memorize where possible. I say it to myself 15 minutes every day. And once right before bed. Then I get a full night of restful sleep so that some part of my brain commits it to memory. At one week out, I’ve moved to keywords on Post-it notes. By five days out, I am no longer looking at any notes. I usually wake up the full week before a talk with it playing in my mind. You want it in there, even though it won’t actually be the talk that’ll come out that day. There is the talk you plan on giving and the talk that you give. If you are great at performance and memorization, it’s quite possible for those to be one and the same. But the more important thing to happen is for you to know what you came to say and know it well.

Now, what CEO is going to sweat a speech like that?

But a more fundamental problem is: What CEO wants to be thought of—by investors, employees and maybe most importantly, by CEO peers—as someone so focused on public performance? And thus not focused on analysis, deal-making and decision-making that we expect CEOs to be thoroughly absorbed in at all times?

And that self-conscious CEO has a point. Aside from Steve Jobs, whose performances we saw as the spearhead of the company’s new product sales, wouldn’t you harbor some suspicion about the vanity and greater ambition of a CEO who delivered a perfect TED Talk?

Not that there isn’t a mile of middle ground between TED perfection and the typical CEO speech. And not that TED Talks don’t model many of the tools—economy, focus, storytelling, personalization—that we urge our clients to use. But if TED is actually not the ideal in executive communication, then let’s not punish ourselves and our clients by pretending it is.

David Murray, who has covered speechwriting and executive communication for nearly two decades, is editor of Vital Speeches of the Day. This post originally appeared on the VSOTD blog.