Don’t tell me. Show me.

I’ve just spent the week at Curtin Ignition.

That’s an intense experience by any measure and the highlight of my work calendar each year.

After a week of listening to and watching entrepreneurs explain the need for their business ideas, I’m reminded of a quote I pull out regularly in my financial education work from James W. Frick:

“Don’t tell me where your priorities are. Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what they are.”

Overnight I’ve been thinking about how the ‘don't tell me, show me’ concept is important in more than just money.

My thoughts led to pitching a business, championing inclusion and demonstrating commitment:

Don’t tell me the problem. Show me.

Lots of business pitches start with a motherhood statement like ‘Teachers are time poor’ or ‘This can kill people’.

These do not persuade.

We’re either not moved by them (cue yawns, crossed arms and raised eyebrows) or we doubt their voracity.

Make the problem real for whoever you’re talking to.

Visual or verbal doesn’t matter – pick your preferred option – but bring that problem to life:

• Tell a story about someone it’s happened to, or even a hypothetical tale using an imaginary person.
• Show a robust statistic that demonstrates the problem, preferably in an easily digestible form.
• Play a video.
• Show a photo.
• Make a diagram using emojis.

...whatever flicks your switch.

Last night, the first of the Top 3 pitches by Daniel Goldstein for his Mining X-ray Vision did this brilliantly with a <15 second video of a mine sidewall collapse.

The audience got the picture, literally and figuratively, all at once.

Seeing thousands of tonnes of rock and dirt sliding down towards the bottom of the mine, imagining what would have happened if a vehicle or person was in the way, made it real.

How can you show the problem?

How can you make it come to life for someone, in <30 seconds if possible?

Master this and you’ll find getting people on board with your solution much easier.

Don’t tell me you value diversity and inclusion. Show me.

In some things, it’s OK to fail. This is not one of those things.

In my opinion, it is not OK to fail in representing women equally wherever it's a viable option. Full stop, the end.

This is just not a situation where ‘we tried’ cuts it for me.

Women are the majority gender in Australia. If you fail to get a decent number of women for your board, speaking spots, mentoring roles, or as job applicants, that’s on you.

Even if you asked a lot of women and they said no.

Failing to get women into those roles signals one or more of the following:

• You don’t walk the talk, so they’re voting with their feet.
• They don’t feel safe or included.
• You didn’t give them enough time for arranging logistics.
• You don’t pay them enough.

Take the role I’ve just performed as a mentor.

It requires huge amounts of mental energy and physical time to do that role. It’s more than a full-time work week. I left the uni at 10pm on Thursday. That’s normal and expected.

Most women taking on a role like that would have to arrange paid care to cover for the unpaid work they do as a wife, mother or daughter of a loved one needing their support. ?

That takes enormous amounts of time, so they need a lot of notice.

I could easily be a mentor because my husband is effectively the ‘housewife’ in our domestic arrangements right now. That's not common, and it won't always be that way.

It also needs to be fiscally worth it – don’t forget there’s a 22% vagina tax in WA.

If you truly value inclusion, you will start asking the women well in advance of the men, who are less likely to be doing unpaid caring work.

If you don’t truly value it, it won’t happen.

That infers that if it doesn't happen, you don't truly value it. No statement from you that you value it will carry any weight in that circumstance.

(Though good news: there are ways to deal with it gracefully if it happens to you!)

And I’m going to make one more thing crystal clear on this topic:

It’s not on the women on the team to ensure equal representation.

It’s on the men in charge.

Men, you are not ‘giving women a chance’.

If you don’t achieve representation and inclusion in the programs you lead, you are withholding that inclusion from women.

Women are not in enough positions of power to bring about this change. YOU need to do it.

If you disagree, I recommend learning from Lieutenant General?David Lindsay Morrison?AO, who states that he learned from Liz Broderick. Here's a 2min video of him explaining the advocacy work he did (he earlier noted that it had to be him doing that advocacy, not a woman) in the armed forces.

Don’t tell me you’re committed. Show me.

Telling someone you’re committed is meaningless. Show it with your actions.

That doesn't mean you have to have perfect attendance or performance. I saw an excellent example of this done well from one of my Ignition team members.

She was upfront about the sessions she couldn't attend due to board meetings, but she gave her absolute all every time she was present.

She engaged in discussions, helped her teammates with their issues and came to everything it was physically possible for her to attend outside of those board meetings.

She didn’t just say she was committed. She showed it.

Next time she says she's committed to something, I'll be inclined to believe it because she's demonstrated her integrity already.

…which is not to say every ‘show me you’re committed’ ask is a good idea.

I regularly pick on Derek Gerrard because he keeps suggesting founders mortgage their homes (i.e. access their equity) to finance their start-ups as a way to show their commitment.

Whenever I get the chance, I ask why he wants to make his founders dumber.

Seems counterintuitive when you want them to succeed, right?

(He’s not alone, by the way. Many investors think that people succeed because of having your home on the line if you fail. I put it to you that founders are more likely succeed in spite of that pressure than because of it. Wonder if that's a contributing factor to the high failure rate of start-ups?)

There are other ways to show your commitment to your start-up that don’t put you at risk of becoming homeless, such as:

• Using cash you've saved.
• Being relentless in your pursuit of revenue.
• Being relentless in eliminating waste.
• Working for free.

So give those a go instead of the mortgage, and send anyone who suggests taking equity our of your home the Princeton research and my phone number ;)

Your thoughts?

Love to hear your thoughts on where showing works better than telling, or whether you think there are places it's better the other way round, in the comments.

(Fair warning - if you're here to argue with me about any of the inclusion stuff, I love having screenshots of comments to share on stage and I don't remove/blur names or photos)