START WITH WHY – that’s the title of Simon Sinek’s ‘global best seller’ and his much downloaded TED talk. The premise is that companies tend to talk about WHAT they do, HOW they do it but fail to extol WHY they do it.

‘By WHY I don’t mean to make money, that’s a result. Buy WHY I mean what is your purpose, cause or belief. WHY does your company exist? WHY do you get out of bed in the morning? And WHY should anyone care?

Sinek draws considerably on Apple’s success. In fact, the book is largely a eulogy to Apple which he contrasts to the utilitarian perspectives of companies like Microsoft and Dell for whom the WHAT and HOW far outweigh the WHY. Apple pointed up this distinction with their ‘I am an Mac /I am a PC’ campaign which contrasted the cool Apple guy with the Microsoft geek.

‘Their products, unto themselves, are not the reason Apple is perceived as superior; their products, WHAT Apple makes, serve as tangible proof of what they believe. It is the clear correlation between WHAT they do and WHY the do it that makes Apple stand out.

This focus on the WHY stems from the company’s culture, it’s not something you can contrive. And it automatically extends into the way they communicate. As we know, Apple has revolutionised the music industry with iTunes although it was Creative Technologies that created the SoundBlaster technology that allows us to play music on our PCs. Contrast Creative’s ‘5mb mp3 player’ with Apple’s ‘A 1000 tunes in your pocket.’ Creative Technologies told us WHAT their product did; Apple told us WHY we needed it.

Sinek supports his thesis with several industry examples and there are a number of useful quotes. One I particularly like was from Henry Ford which counters the notion that companies should always aim to do what customers want. “If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”

Where I diverge from Sinek’s is the link he makes to neuroscience where he suggest that the WHAT and HOW reside in the cortex, the seat of language, while the WHY lurks deep in the limbic system, the seat of our emotions and desires. The WHAT, HOW and WHY are all communicated through language, the question may be how sincerely, how poetically and how convincingly.

Start with Why – by Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek on TED

The revolution in classical music in the beginning of the 20th century mirrored the violent political and economic revolutions that were taking place across Europe in the lead up to the WW1. It centred on two cities, Paris and Vienna and marked the end of the period of German romanticism of Wagner and Brahms. The traditional (tonal) harmonic system had been stretched to its limits and composers were looking for new forms of expression. The turning point came on December 22nd 1894 with the first performance of Debussy’s symphonic poem ‘Prelude to the afternoon of a faun‘. Only ten minutes long, it broke every rule in the book and freed composers to experiment with more fluid structures. It did for classical music what the impressionists had done for painting, heralded by Turner.  To download the track, click here. To find out more about the piece click here.

The revolution that took place in Vienna, heralded by Mahler, was more violent. Schoenberg and his pupils Berg and Webern broke down the concept of key in the so called ‘atonal’ works. This idea was taken up by Boulez, Stockhausen and Messiaen. Vienna was melting pot of ideas and wider artistic and cultural developments in painting, architecture, literature and the work of Sigmund Freud were having a powerful influence. Later, other musical styles such as Jazz influenced composers such as Gershwin, Milhaud, Ravel and Stravinsky. The music represents a freeing from formality and authoritarianism, the exploration of a subconscious world where things are never cut and dried.

Over the years I have collected pictures of my favourite composers and, out of curiosity, arranged them in birthday order. I then wondered what other great figures shared their year of birth. You can see the result here.

I met a nice lady at a networking event recently whose company delivers face to face training.  She wasn’t too impressed by the presentation we were given on e-learning, which evidently lacked the human touch. When I suggested that a course on self publishing might make an attractive addition to her catalogue her withering look said it all – she only offers courses that help people make money. Well, there are people out there making serious money self publishing via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, to name but three.

Established authors, J.K. Rowling included, are eschewing large publishing deals because they can make more money by going it alone. But money is not the only reason. Authors are not well served by the publishing industry these days which is suffering the same digital decimation that befell the music business. Only about 2o% of printed books make money for their publishers and few authors’ earnings exceed their average $5000 advance. Moreover, readers increasingly prefer to download than wander down the bookshop. In February 2011, e-books represented 29.5% of the market – outperforming hardback books, trade and mass-market paperbacks.

I just sucked up an e-book called Let’s get Digital by author and self publishing expert David Gaughran. David found me on Twitter, this at time when my first tranche of approaches to literary agents with my children’s novel Jasper in the Shadow of the Dinosaurs have come back negative. He endured 18 months of rejections then decided to self publish, achieving considerable sales success. This book is the product of his learning curve and lucidly spells out why traditional publishing is so inefficient and wasteful and why self publishing should be the first resort for many authors, not the last. He also deals with issues such as piracy (don’t worry about it) and investing in professional editing and cover design (ignore them at your peril). I am seriously considering a change of plan (or Plan B) though I still need to do more research on what self publishing entails. Only a fool writes a book with a view to making money though, done correctly, self publishing can deliver reasonable returns. All that assumes you have a good story to tell.

David allowed me to quote his figures about what authors can expect to earn from the various publishing deals. For a traditional $25 hardback sale in a book store, the retailer gets 50%, the publisher 37.5% and the author 12.5% ($3.12) less the agent’s fee of 15%, leaving a royalty of $2.66 per copy. With an $8 mass market paperback, the author is left with $0.68. For a $9.99 trade published e-book, the retailer (say Amazon) takes 30% ($2.99) , the publisher 52.5% ($5.25) and the author is left with $1.49 after the agent’s cut. Meanwhile, a self published e-book retailing on Amazon might sell for say $2.99. The retailer gets 30% and the author (now publisher) picks up the remaining 70% ($2.09) with no agent’s fee to deduct.

Now here’s the really interesting bit. If the author of the trade published e-book sells 5000 copies she/he will earn $7450. The self published author will only have to sell 3565 e-books to make the same amount of money. The production and storage cost per copy is zero. After the initial investment is paid off, circa $2000 for editing and cover design, the rest is profit. Moreover, your book will never be off the shelves or out of print. Using Print on Demand (POD) you can sell in paperback format too or print short runs, say to distribute to reviewers or as give aways. There is a catch of course, you have to do all the marketing yourself, but even authors with book deals are now required do a lot of the leg work. Anyway, it’s fun and the best thing is you remain firmly in control.

In the unlikely event the lady at the networking event is reading this blog, she might consider reading David Gaughran’s book, as should anyone who wants to get to grips with the possibilities of self publishing.  There’s a large community of self publishing enthusiasts out there who can help through every stage of the publishing and marketing process. One such is Joanna Penn whose website The Creative Penn features podcast interviews with successful self publishers and advice on how to build your Author Platform. So if you have a novel but can’t get it published by the traditional route, don’t despair. It may be the best thing that never happened to you.

You can download Let’s get Digital free from David Gaughran’s blog.

For a detailed analysis of Amazon’s pricing model, this blog by Alasdair White makes interesting reading. We should never forget who holds the purse strings.

‘You are cured,’ is not something doctors often say to patients, least of all in an operating theatre. In this instance, not only was the patient wide awake, he had undergone a pioneering operation that would transform him from a cardiac cripple to normality in the space of a couple of hours. I went over to France to film it and experienced a little bit of history in the making.

It was, by any measure, a difficult case. The Frenchman was in his early 80s, in very poor health, and it was touch and go whether the Heart Team would actually proceed. He suffered from severe aortic stenosis (AS), the most common form of heart valve disease. It’s caused by a hardening and calcification of the flaps of the valve at the base of the aorta, which becomes narrowed and leaky. Patients are severely debilitated, often reduced to a wheel chair and might drop dead at any moment.

The traditional treatment for AS is to replace the diseased valve with a tiny miracle of engineering, an artificial heart valve. These have been perfected to the point where they can restore patients to health and mobility for 20 years or more. However, valve replacement requires open heart surgery, a highly stressful operation and is not, to excuse the pun, for the faint hearted. This leaves hundreds of thousands of AS sufferers across the world who are either too frail or too poorly to have a valve replacement. In the absence of any viable medical treatment, they are simply left to die.

The patient on the operating table was firmly in the high risk category for whom surgery was not an option. Fortunately for him and other AS sufferers, there is hope in the form of a new procedure that requires no surgery, not even a general anaesthetic. The patient was wide awake during the procedure and reminded us of the fact by yawning loudly from time to time. At one point, he even gave a thumbs up to the cameraman, so was clearly in no distress. What made the experience doubly exciting was that the procedure we were filming was carried out by the cardiologist who invented it, Professor Alain Cribier of  the University of Rouen.

The procedure is called a Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation,  TAVI for short. Instead of opening the heart, the valve is inserted via a catheter that is fed into the aorta from a main artery in the groin. It’s based on the procedure used for inserting stents, the tubular wire cages used to keep open narrowed arteries and veins.

To get an idea of how difficult this is, imagine trying to fix a car engine using a probe inserted into the exhaust pipe. The procedure is carried out under X-ray and everyone in the room, including the film crew, had to wear heavy lead aprons.

The effect on the patient’s health can be dramatic. Patients once confined to a wheelchair are able lead an active life. Professor Cribier told a story of one patient who, the day after the operation, was drinking champagne and entertaining journalists in a day long series of press conferences. It’s as close to raising someone from the dead that medicine can achieve. A TAVI can take as much as ten years off a person’s life.

He faced a barrage of scepticism

The success of TAVI is a tribute to Professor Cribier’s persistence in the face of a barrage of scepticism; it’s a battle that has lasted the best part of 20 years. The world’s leading cardiologists told him a valve in a stent would never work; that it was too risky; that the American Federal Drugs Administration (the dreaded FDA) would never approve, and so on. No wonder he felt ostracised. Added to that, the biomedical companies he approached to develop the valve all turned him down. I was filming on behalf of the one company that said yes; Edwards Life Sciences, who took his concept and engineered it into a viable treatment for these high risk patents. Cribier’s persistence has finally paid off and his critics muted.  To date, TAVI has been shown to reduce patient mortality from AS by 20% in the first year, a significant result by any standard. TAVI is now awaiting FDA approval. Fingers crossed for Professor Cribier and the thousands of patients who will benefit from his procedure.

With thanks to Professor Alain Cribier and the Heart Team at the Hôpital Charles Nicolle in Rouen, and to Edwards Life Sciences for their permission to use the image of the TAVI.

A debate organised by the London Communicators and Engagement Group and sponsored by EventExtra Limited

• Euan Semple, Social media expert
• Dr Dannie Jost, Resident Philosopher, World Trade Institute
• Matt O’Neil, Founder of LCEG

There is a classic scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Butch (Paul Newman) is challenged to a knife fight and asks, ‘What are the rules?’ to which he gets the astonished reply, ‘There’ aren’t any rules in a knife fight.’ Butch promptly kicks the guy in the crotch and knocks him out. You can see it here

There was something slightly quaint about the internal comms community trying to conduct a rational debate about the correctness of releasing confidential information and the motives of  WikiLeaks. Fair play doesn’t come into it. The real question is about whose crotch is being kicked.

Opinions were divided between a minority in the command and control camp who thought WikiLeaks was wrong, that they were not playing by the rules, and a majority who thought they were working in the public interest, whatever that may be. Whether you regard Julian Assange as a  journalist, terrorist, campaigner, brand or bête noire, he has become a heroic figure of our modern times.

Dannie Jost emphasised the value of transparency. “We don’t want to know the private faults of every politician but be in a position to follow the rationale behind their decisions and achieve some form of justice in government and an equal distribution of rights.”

Euan Semple reminded us that in the industrial era we had the notion of knowledge being power where big business kept knowledge within its boundaries and distributed it as it saw fit. WikiLeaks can also be seen as a power play by people who are disaffected by the system.

Several thought there would be some kind of backlash to the WikiLeaks exposures and that information would become much less free. Rather than simply inducing greater secrecy, it would be nice to think it might encourage greater responsibility, though the risk of exposure seems the least worthy of motives.

Until now, WikiLeaks has focused mainly on big government and in the process, has severely undermined the US’s image as the land of the free. Many US commentators have even suggested Assange be tried for treason, overlooking the fact that he’s an Australian citizen. It is generally acknowledged that most of the information released to date was already available and that scare mongering about threats to national security and endangering lives has been not been substantiated. Even the US intelligence services will admit to that.

Matt O’Neil suggested people say they want 100% honesty in business and public life, but perhaps only about the things that don’t directly affect them. We may be less keen on honesty when leaks affect our competitiveness our share price or the well being of our clients. Leaks about WikiLeaks made Bank of America’s share price tumble by 3%.

There is a shift towards democratisation through technology as anyone can release information onto the internet. To counter this, many large organisations have programmes in place to manage insider threats. Meanwhile, the same organisations are still happy to play fast and loose with the information they hold about their own customers. For example, Euan had concerns about the use of credit card records to identify WikiLeaks’ supporters. He fully expects his own credentials to be challenged when he next goes through JFK to work for the UN. Meanwhile, the Swiss bank PostFinance froze Julian Assange’s bank account. PayPal cut off payments to WikiLeaks and were joined by MasterCard and Visa, all citing violation of their policies, not pressure from the US Government. Yeah!

Leaks come in different flavours, each with their different motivations and moral connotations. As Nick Saalfeld pointed out, leaking is not the same and whistle blowing or hacking for that matter, even though the press tend to put them in the same naughty box.

WikiLeaks is not taking place in a moral vacuum. We have had the breakdown of the banking system, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, politicians’ expenses scandals as well as corporate and political corruption at the highest level. These were areas of public and business life that used to be notable for their integrity. Now they are being  revealed to be corrupt and self serving. Maybe the system needs a kick in the crotch to remind it that if you live by the sword of corruption, you are very likely to die by it.

Staging a business event is an important undertaking and a significant investment and naturally you want to be sure it delivers real business benefits to your organisation. If you have a great idea and want to turn it into a great event, here are three aspects of event production you might want to consider.

Have you got a theme?

Every event needs a theme. It’s the creative glue that holds all the elements of the event together and sets a clear agenda. The theme would be reflected in the invitations, the staging and the presentations. To help develop the right theme, you need to establish your objectives, be they gaining more customers, building your reputation or obtaining backing for a particular project. Once the theme has been agreed, everyone knows where they are going. As an example, “Turning great ideas into great events” is a possible theme for a conference for an events management company.

Insisting on an early deadline for presentations may not earn you popularity with your speakers but…

Do the presentations stack up?

Events can often appear to be random collections of presentations which may duplicate, conflict or even contradict each other. This is usually because the presenters lacked a clear brief or were allowed to do their own thing. If you don’t discover this until the on-site rehearsals, it’s usually too late to do anything other than damage limitation. Insisting on an early deadline for presentations may not earn you popularity with your speakers, but your audience will love you for making sure that all the presentations were seamless and complemented each other perfectly.

Are you using the best technology?

As the number of delegates grows, the logistic, communication and technical challenges increase exponentially. In fact, anything over 25 people in a room can present significant challenges. Can everyone see the speakers and their presentations, and especially can they hear them?

When the presenters start tapping the microphones, you know it’s going to be hard work

Every room has a different acoustic and you need a sound system that is up to the task. Providing speakers with microphone headsets allows them to escape the confines of the podium and deliver more dynamic presentations. And have you thought about audience interaction?

Then there’s the screens to think about. In some cases, large plasma screens will be best, but then a number of additional smaller monitors dotted around the room may be required to ensure that everyone has visibility. Lighting and set designers can transform a drab room into an exciting environment while a great video or live opening performance can help to get everyone in the mood.

Delivering the right message, in the right environment using the best available technology not only shows respect for your audience, it will ensure that your event will be memorable for all the right reasons. If you would like some professional help with developing the theme and content for your forthcoming event, then please get in touch.

With help from veteran events producer David Austin