When developing a speech, even if a topic is provided, novice speakers often ask, “What should I talk about?” This is very common, especially when the topic is broad or little direction is given. In a previous post, I discussed selecting a topic. Today I want to talk about narrowing the focus of that topic in order to streamline the research process and enhance the end product. Let’s say the topic is “shoes.” There’s a ton to talk about, be it style, construction, history, function, and more. Faced with such breadth, many speakers freeze, uncertain how to proceed. The most common strategy is to start with general research and “drill down” to a topic, or what I refer to as “ad hoc research.” I’m making the case that the opposite approach is best. Start with a focus – a specific focus – up front, and broaden from there.
The broad approach seems to make sense on the surface. Start with the topic generally, see what there is to know about it, sort the research into different categories, figure out which one seems best, and build your presentation around it. I say seems because this is, hands down, the worst way to approach a speech. If you’re skeptical, you’re not alone. I’ve lost count of the students I’ve had to convince otherwise, but 100% of people who follow my advice find it the more effective approach. You may not be persuaded just from the article, but try it once, I bet you’ll be a convert.
Consider any education or job training you’ve ever received. Did the instructor cover every aspect of the material all at once, or did you start with one subject and build from there? “But what if I pick the wrong thing to focus on?” students ask. I understand the concern. Like life, public speaking doesn’t come with a manual. Humans crave certainty, so when facing open scenarios with seemingly endless options, we frequently descend into analysis paralysis, choosing none of the options for fear of choosing the “wrong” one. So, when researching for a speech, students throw everything at the wall to see what sticks.
Let’s challenge the idea of choosing “wrong” with of one of life’s most powerful tools: specificity. “Maybe it is the wrong topic,” I’ll say to a student. “But can you tell me – specifically – what makes it wrong?” If something is wrong, there must be criteria by which to judge it, and “I know it when I see it” is not an acceptable response. Absent any objective criteria, the notion of a right or wrong topic focus is entirely subjective. “But that’s just it!” the student says. “What if the audience hates it? What if they think it’s dumb? What if they think I’m dumb for talking about it?” It’s turtles all the way down, my friend, because I will simply reiterate, “What – specifically – would make the audience hate it? Why – specifically – would they think it’s dumb, or that you’re dumb for talking about it?”
In such circumstances, students are speaking out of fear or anxiety. They fixate on things that could go wrong, and they fall prey to the tyranny of deadlines. Through all that ad hoc research, the clock is still ticking, and as the hours or days go by, they weigh their options, going back and forth among a dozen possible angles, but some new article or piece of information will make them rethink their decision, and before they know it, they get to a point where they have to select a focus or they won’t finish the speech. Even with a good end product, there is always an element of regret. “If only I’d had more time, I probably would have talked about something else.”
This is a longer intro than usual, but that’s because I’m trying to drive home the point that there is no wrong focus for your speech. You can make a good or bad speech out of literally any topic and literally any aspect of that topic, and the key is focusing narrowly and early in the process. Let’s talk about why it works and how to do it.
Top Down vs Bottom Up
While it sounds counterintuitive, starting narrow and broadening out will help you cover more aspects of a topic better, and it will allow you to pivot more effectively if you change your mind during the writing process. That’s right – starting narrow gives you more flexibility, and starting broad gives you less. Let’s look at an example to explain why.
Say you are representing your department in a product development meeting. Your department designs the manuals and packaging, and you’re gearing up for a new product launch. At first, you’re told that the meeting will be with sales so they can develop pitches and sales strategies ahead of the product launch. Then, a day before the meeting, you find out you were misinformed – it’s not sales, it’s finance asking after production costs. Let’s look at each approach and explain why narrow is better.
Top Down
You make a list of everything about your packaging and manuals because not being in sales, you don’t want to miss anything they might want to know about. You figure sales might need to know about the copy, legal information, safety notices, instructions, and translations for the manuals – after all, they will be selling in multiple territories and countries. You get specifications for the packaging, including the box type, material, printing process, color, corporate branding, copy, positioning of the product picture and feature list, packing material – I mean, who knows what sales needs, right? Environmentally conscious customers might not buy a product packed in too much plastic or using wasteful printing. Come to think of it, research product material and sourcing as well. It’s not our lane, but it would be good to have. And the features and box copy – all of that ties in to how the customer sees everything, so sales needs to know how to pitch it. Finally you get information on material sourcing, packaging assembly, and ship times. Why not, right? Customers may want to know where their products come from, whether assembly is done domestically, and how long they have to wait.
Oh…shoot – what do you mean the meeting is with finance? So you’re telling me I can use, at best, like ten percent of all that? And I have to rework the presentation by tomorrow?
Bottom Up
You don’t know much about sales, but you think for a moment about what the customer actually encounters before buying the product. They’re not going to read the manual ahead of time – or possibly at all – so you don’t need to do anything with that. Product features themselves are up to the design and marketing teams – your job is just to make it look nice on the box. With that in mind, you think about the purpose of the meeting – building a sales strategy. Since you are representing the packaging team, you limit your information to box copy, product photos, listed features, and packaging sourcing and materials. That’s it. Not being in sales yourself, you don’t assume you know what information is needed or how it will be used.
Oh, the meeting is with finance instead? Okay, well, take everything we already have and get numbers for it, and add on the same info for manuals and packaging vendors.
Why it Works
You could spend hours getting all of the top down information, especially the bits outside your specific lane (i.e., calls to legal and the product team), and you will have to wrestle significantly with your structure and material to cram everything in with any kind of decent flow. There will be late nights, endless feedback from colleagues, and significant trepidation over whether you’ve covered enough – and in sufficient detail. Even then, say the meeting was still with sales. You might find that they only care about a fraction of what you researched. You would leave the meeting thinking “I looked at tons of stuff, and they hardly wanted any of it.” The switch to finance makes it even worse, because now you have to throw out most of your research anyway and completely refactor your approach.
With the bottom up approach, though, you research only what you need, and when you have to change horses in the middle of the stream, you build on your existing research, discarding very little. In other words, narrowing focus early on gives you a plan to deviate from. “But wait,” the sharp-eyed reader protests, “This post promised that bottom-up covers more aspects better. How can doing less research yield more information?” The key is remembering that researching is not memorizing. If you’re designing packaging, you’ll have to know a bit about the product as well – weight, dimensions, materials, tolerances, and the like. Those specifications will in turn inform how you design the box. If you’re working with vendors, you’ll encounter emails, invoices, and texts that talk about packaging specifics, and you can keep notes of all that correspondence to reference later if needed.
Think of research like a tree. Top down research starts with individual leaves and works toward the trunk. You will never get to every leaf before the deadline, and trying to make sense of the tree’s structure from the outside in is like trying to construct a novel’s narrative solely from book reviews. Bottom up research starts with the trunk, or at least a branch. As you climb higher, you can see where each trunk leads, and you know which leaves will be at each end. You don’t have to know the leaves specifically, but if needed, you can trace the branch as needed. With bottom up, you get cursory knowledge of the entire tree an in-depth knowledge of the trunk and branches.
But how do you climb the tree in the first place. If you’re the anxious type who got heart palpitations reading everything until now, you’re going to hate this next part.
How to Narrow
Narrowing focus can be hard, so when faced with anxious students, I usually ask, “What is the first thing that comes to mind about your topic?” Let’s say the topic is shoes. Usually the reply is something like, “I don’t know. Why are they so expensive?” I’ll give them a nod and say, “Alright, talk about that.” Of course I get a sour, skeptical look, because surely it’s not that easy, right? It really is. There are tips and tricks as covered in the other posts linked above, but the simplest, straightforward, and most effective strategy is to just start somewhere.
In my book, I teach a method called a “knowledge assessment.” In short, take a few moments to consider your topic and assess what you do and don’t know about it. The structure of the knowledge assessment is “In order to explain X, I have enough knowledge about A, B, and C, but I need to know more about D, E, and F.” Ask a question about your topic – any question – and start from there. Let’s take the question of shoe expense. I don’t know much about shoes specifically, but I know that they don’t grow wild in fields and plains. They have to get here somehow, and a lot of it is overseas, so using the template and applying my own life experience, my assessment might be, “In order to explain shoe cost, I have enough knowledge about trade and supply chain, but I need to know more about labor and materials.”
I cannot stress enough that this is an assessment, not a definitive declaration of expertise in a given area. It essentially sets up the priority of your research. In my case, I don’t know much about what shoes are made of or how they are made, so I will start there. Along the way, I’ll learn about synthetic versus natural materials, domestic versus foreign sourcing and labor, unions, outsourcing, and so much more. Each of those will also touch on aspects I’m more comfortable with – trade and supply chain. As I progress through my research, I’ll get an idea of what elements contribute most to cost, and eventually I’ll have enough data to reach a conclusion. Any of the individual research aspects could be a presentation in itself, but by narrowing to just a question of cost, all that research becomes focused and directed.
Next time you have to give a presentation at work, consider just how broad your research actually needs to be. Just like water leak eventually becomes a flood, figure out an entry point and broaden from there. You’ll be surprised at how much faster you get to a polished, finished product than going the other way around. For more information, check out my posts on selecting a topic and knowing your audience.