Stefan
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‘Containerization‘ is a real term. I was giving a presentation to our wider team the other day, and I was looking for a good industry analogy. You know, the one where no one at first knows what you are talking about, and then it all makes sense in the end. And when you bump into someone who was there just 2 weeks later they have no clue what the actual business content was, but they remember the story you told about that ‘cool guy’, or ‘that unusual event’. That type of presentation.
So, the goal of the presentation was to give a roadmap update on one of the products I am working on, and to show the road ahead. These things can get SO boring you almost fall asleep while presenting. While pepping up the slide with some cool product maturity charts, that rarely buys you more than 5 minutes of attention span before your fellow colleagues doze off wondering what it is for lunch Today, or why they are here are all. Actually, that is not true. I found the best thing about these presentations the fact that 80-90% of the audience is actually paying close attention to what you are saying. For the duration of your presentation. You are in a whole other class: you don’t just bore them, they take personal offense if your presentation sucks!
So the goal is to entertain, as much as it is to inspire, as much as it is to communicate some critical content. So the hunt is on, which story will fit? Well, let’s look at the audience first: 90% Engineers of all levels, mainly operational, the guys who are curious and excited by the technical specifics and statistics, can digest numbers real well, and really appreciate that technology is at the center of what your are trying to say. 10% Product Managers, the ‘glue’ between engineering and other stakeholders. That’s it. So I chose to look for a fairly technical topic. Next step: the key takeaways. What is it that I want to come across at the climatic moment of my presentation? Answer: That our product ultimately connects people – manufacturers and end users – and makes their life better.
“Born of the need to reduce labor, time and handling, containerization links the manufacturer or producer with the ultimate consumer or customer.”
(Containerisation International, 1970, p. 19)
It seems like an easy thing to say now, and it took me a couple of days of thinking, but I came across the amazing story of Containerization. Yes, that is a technical term, and you are about to find out why. Malcolm McLean was the person who is credited to have invented the modern shipping container. And here is why the story made such a good candidate:
- Before Containerization came around the world of good shipping was a freaking mess. Break Bulk Cargo was the process which basically hasn’t changed since the Phoenicians sailed the Mediterranean in 1200BC. The tools used in the process of getting cargo on and off the ship have not changed – by and large – either. Nets, wooden cranes, barrels, manpower. Raw labor, sweat, tears. It makes for an impressive point for a ‘free food and perks’ silicon valley engineering force.
- Shipping is a concept everyone knows. This means everyone has a concept of it, has seen a ship before, is ultimately familiar with harbors, and the purpose of shipping goods across the globe. If they are not, they are not human, they might be a robot.
- Containerization is a concept everyone can agree to makes sense, but it took a while to figure it out. As stated earlier, the cargo process was bulky for a while. The formalization and standardization of the container did not happen overnight. It took 20+ years after the first containers were introduced to settle on a global standard. There is technical depth to the topic that helps relate to other day-to-day challenges.
- There were INSANE benefits from Containerization. It is incredible what effect the introduction of the container had on the world economy, the productivity of port workers by 17x, the wealth of people in the world in general. In this way, it shows how something that focuses on a subset of components of a critical path can have an enormous payout on the total gain of the process.
Besides bragging out how Containerization works I also related it to our own project, and tied together the gains we can achieve by really focusing hard on the ‘critical path’ and optimize that. Now I need to make sure we measure the success and achieve a similar earth-shattering impact :).
If you want to find out more about good presentation & storytelling, Nancy Duarte has a great TED talk which formalizes the architecture of great talks. Not that my presentation was so great, but listening to Nancy before I research always puts my head in the right frame of mind. Check it out!
Sources:
[1] http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/7637/trade/containerisation/
[2] http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-14
[3] http://economics.fiu.edu/events/2013/seminar-daniel-bernhofen/bek_container_feb-3-2013.pdf
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Break_bulk_cargohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Containerization
