There are two kinds of change, technical and adaptive, and you need to solve for the right one. Tamsen is working on a book about the Red Thread, and it’s been hard to get that change to happen. Michael Bungay Stanier’s advice was that she was probably solving for the wrong kind of change.

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Now that you have a great title, how do you write descriptions for your talk or presentation? Again, it’s about framing the ideas for the organizer to say yes, which means using the Red Thread. If we write descriptions so the organizer gets all their questions answered, it’ll answer their attendees’ questions, too.

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When we’re trying to title a TEDx talk, we need to make sure it fits a format the organizer expects. If you look at the top 20 titles of TED talks, you’ll notice that none of them use the “Name: Subtitle” format. Instead, they’re always phrases like, “Do schools kill creativity?” or, “Your body language may shape who you are.”

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In order to title your keynote or presentation, start by asking what the audience needs to hear. This isn’t necessarily what you yourself think is most interesting or compelling. Instead, it’s about what your audience needs to say yes to before they can engage with those ideas.

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Long sales cycles make it hard to structure your message and address the right questions. The key is to instead structure a series of messages that answer the right question at the right time. It’s common for ALL of your messaging to be focused on how: the features and benefits of your product or service. The problem is that How is only useful to address once the audience when your audience gets to What Now.

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The ABT method is just about the simplest storytelling structure, but we can make it more effective. ABT, developed by Randy Olson, stands for “And, But, Therefore.” Each of those words corresponds to an act of a story. But there’s one more thing we can do to make our stories even more powerful. Because in the second act of a good story, there’s a Moment of Truth that causes the third act to happen.

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This week we look at 3 books that will make you a better communicator by making the useful usable. Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, Peter C. Brown’s Make It Stick, and Magic Words by Tim David.

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Waffle House stays open no matter what, and the Waffle House Index represents their Red Thread. Even though this chain of southern restaurants is committed to keeping their doors open, there are times when a disaster or national emergency makes that impossible. But this is where the Waffle House Index comes into play.

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Presenting without slides or notes can happen by accident or on purpose, but how do you do it? It’s not about memorization, but internalization. With memorization, you’re thinking about which word comes next. Internalization, however, is about remembering which concept comes after which concept.

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We’re told to use storytelling in business, but why do stories how can you use that? What's crazy: the concept of storytelling in business is, at this point, at least 20 years old, but we don’t seem to be getting any better at it. Why not? It goes back to why the pieces of a story are there in the first place.

Find the Red Thread at TamsenWebster.com.