Celebrate the death of speechwriting?

What was the most preposterous proposal you heard this year? Given all that has happened in the world, we would certainly haul up a great deal in our net if we did not narrow the scope.

So, let us focus the question on the public affairs lane. With that goal in mind, I would like to debunk a dubious idea.

There is a current of thought floating around that the time to deliver formal, written speeches is now behind us. The Harvard Business Review ?lent credence to this misguided notion earlier this year. It has attracted little critical scrutiny. But a proposal to overhaul the way leaders communicate deserves a fair hearing. David Murray, Editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, has done so and finds it wanting.

I concur with his appraisal and I am offering my own perspective on why it would be a risky and unsuccessful experiment to abandon proper speeches for performative bullet points. Why would we take such a step?

The article suggests that the same verbal facility that guides leaders through everyday workplace conversations, if fully unleashed, can empower leaders to speak powerfully from the heart on larger matters in all settings. “Use that understanding to confidently realize you never need a word-for-word script to make compelling points.”

While it is true that a speech will not roll off your tongue with the same fluidity as a stream-of-consciousness monologue, it will keep you from making a blunder. After all, the most renowned business communicator of the past 30 years, Steve Jobs, was powerful, memorable, and persuasive but he was anything but spontaneous. ?

Room for Improvement

We should stipulate several things. The status quo is far from perfect. There is ample room to criticize the present state of communications in business. Speeches are most appropriate when a powerful argument needs to raised or an important idea needs to be broadly shared. In contrast to the article’s assertion, savvy communicators deploy a wide variety of vehicles to suit the setting and occasion when a leader speaks. The formal speech is but one arrow in the quiver, albeit the most important one. Leaders could and should be doing far more to connect with their audiences. Leaders who prepare thoroughly connect far better than those who have not absorbed their messages. Yes, a leader’s involvement in the speechwriting process can be time intensive, but it yields intangible benefits.

The business Case for the Speechwriting Function

?The HBR article postulates that a primary motivation for leaders delivering speeches in the corporate sector is vanity – “to be perceived as a fantastic speaker or writer.” As successful people with egos, leaders with speechwriters, are not indifferent to perceptions, but the raison d'être for corporate and government speechwriting is utility not vanity. Corporate leaders and top government officials speak precisely in public to avoid jostling the share price, alienating key stakeholders, or complicating international relations. Let any USG official, apart from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, for example, talk about the dollar and watch what happens. So, one aspect is precision, another is prioritization in allocating responsibilities to protect the executive schedule.

Supported speakers in the Fortune 500 and the USG are leaders whose time is closely allocated for active problem solving within their organizations. They do not have the time budget to confront a blank page or undertake an extensive program of self-improvement to build the capacity to address all of their subjects off-the-cuff. For those at the top of government agencies or business units, time is the most critical commodity, and it is measured out with great economy. We all benefit from a growth mindset, and it is better to operate in a world of abundance, but for top officials, duty tends to crowd out the opportunity for self-actualization, especially if it would be a course of study administered by the communicators.

Checks and Balances

Organizations protect their interests by instituting a rigorous system of checks and balances through the speechwriting process. By involving the various corporate functions that have subject matter expertise or line authority over the subject matter contained within a speech, the input of Legal, Government Affairs, Investor Relations, business units and other stakeholders are weighed and incorporated. The institutional prerogatives are upheld by the system and snafus are avoided. A less structured message development process, as described in the article, introduces the possibility of misstatements and discrepancies that would need to be unwound, at the cost of internal and external capital. Obviously, this goes double within government.

Measuring Words

The HBR article suggests that the process of speechwriting itself creates mental distance, preventing the speaker from engaging and inspiring her audience. That is perfectly upside down. The whole point of giving a speech is to connect with an audience. The entire exercise is focused on selecting the arguments, examples, and phrasing that will engage your particular audience. Securing their active interest is the True North of the whole enterprise. It does not follow that selecting each word with great care for a given group would push them away. Speechwriting is the art and science of actively weighing ideas, phrases, and arguments to determine the most worthy and convincing elements to include. A thorough and inspired speechwriting process empowers a speaker with the most compelling case to take to her audience and the best chance to convince them.

A Formative Corollary

Finally, the article’s thesis – speakers should discard the outmoded conventions of the past to ascend to a higher plane of connection with their audience – smacked of the ersatz vibe I remember from the late 1970s.

Step back in time with me. The country was awash in movements offering self-discovery, enlightenment, and an oil change for your identity. One such program dominated this space: Erhard Seminar Training. Their self-description remains accurate: “The EST Training was as much a sign of the times as bell bottoms, peace rallies and space travel.” Swept up into this vortex of “getting it,” were Joe Namath, John Denver, Carly Simon, Yoko Ono, Cher, and me. John Lennon, after dabbling with other therapeutic fads, had apparently talked his way out of it. But, as a fourteen-year-old lad, I was not so lucky.

My late mother, a brilliant and accomplished woman, had paid the $300 entry fees, and we dutifully reported for the Training. Six fifteen-hour days, spread over two weekends, in a large ball room filled with wedding chairs, force-fed introspection, dubious mental exercises, and some elaborate histrionics. I dutifully tried to buy-in to the curriculum, but I could not shake the suspicion that we were all being taken for a ride by the flamboyant and self-invented patriarch of the movement, Werner Erhard. As the group describes its mission, “The Purpose of the EST Training was to transform one’s ability to experience living so that the situations one had been trying to change or had been putting up with, clear up just in the process of life itself.”

That remit was a hard fail. No transformation took place, but I did gain a grudging appreciation for the sway of marketing muscle and California-flavored, new age-y, self-promotion. Lesson: If you are looking to get rich, why not tap into the world’s largest and deepest market?

Start a religion. Can you imagine Erhard’s margins? Rent a Sheraton ball room in a nondescript suburb. Provide no creature comforts to the attendees. Pay your ‘trainers’ a modest amount. It was a movement that minted money. As late as 1986 the EST movement was bringing in $30 million a year. The whole experience felt pregnant with the suspicion that we were all the unwitting victims of an elaborate practical joke.

I left no more self-aware than when I walked in, but I did leave with one new skill and an indelible memory. I suddenly had the capacity to awaken precisely at a set time on my own. I could serve as my own alarm clock. Want to get up at 6:17 a.m.? Click – no iPhone needed.

And I learned how a fellow acolyte’s father had instilled toughness and an unflappable attitude in his large family of boys. They were all sitting down to breakfast when his brother, stood up, dropped his spoon and yelled out. He had discovered a bunch of mealworms in his Corn Flakes. Dad barked, “Gimme that! There’s nothing wrong with that!” and snatched up the bowl which he then ate with great relish, and no further comment, as an example of manly comportment.

So, I did gain a rich anecdote, but it had nothing to do with Erhard’s method and it certainly wasn’t worth $1300, in today’s dollars. The upshot is that initiatives that promise vague revelatory benefits in exchange for radical personal transformations often do not hold water. Speeches, on the other hand, are a venerable institution because, when they work, they work great – like marriage.

The Fork in the Road

The throw-out-the-speeches movement bears the same relationship to eloquence on the grand stage as EST does to Salvation. Speakers and those that support them would do well to think hard before jettisoning the tools of thousands of years to appeal to the tastes and inclinations of the past few decades more readily. The imperatives for relevance and connection with the audience, and rigor and a well-turned script, are not mutually exclusive. It is possible for a speaker to elevate her game within the traditional construct while still remaining within the good graces of her organization. Or she can try something new. She can venture out onto the thin ice of a more authentic, unstructured, improvisational style of delivery and see what happens.