- The Presentation “Why work doesn’t happen at work” by Jason Fried incorporates many good argument techniques. The main purpose of his talk was to speak about how companies are hindering employee productivity by involuntarily creating a distracting workplace. He starts off by discussing a question that he has posed to many people over the years. The Question is “Where do you go when you need to get something done?” This is a powerful question as it forces the audience to think about their own answer. He then makes his point that almost nobody’s answer to the question is “the office”. Jason uses light humor to get the audience laughing through choosing examples that they can relate to. An example of this is his statement that true distractions are the M&M’s (Meetings and Managers) and not often social media. During one part of the presentation, he made the connection that work is like sleep as it happens in phases. He states that just like sleep, people need long hours of uninterrupted time to get meaningful work done. He then engages the audience directly by asking them to raise their hands if they have had 8 hours of uninterrupted time at the office (which of course they have not). The very last thing that Jason did in this 15 minute presentation was make three suggestions to remedy these productivity problems. He placed what he says in the final three minutes of the video. This is the last thing that his audience will remember, and his suggestions will be strong as the audience was very engaged in the discussion at this point.
- I noticed the presenter in the TED Talk “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world” used a few very strong techniques in persuading her audience. Margaret Hefferman initiates her speech by telling a story of a company that attempted to increase efficiency by automatically allocating tasks down to the minute. The point of her story was that this resulted in an inefficient process as the technology could not account for needy customers and other unexpected occurrences. Starting off with an example made it clear for her audience to understand the problem she is addressing. She then made some examples of important “inefficient” company processes such as a vaccine company who is developing many vaccines that could possibly be useful in case of a global pandemic. (Apparently there is not enough of these companies). Another example she provided was how banks are now holding more capital than they have in the past in case of market crashes. Though it is inefficient to hold too much cash, she explains that it is robust and a good safety net in case of economic emergencies. She then leads her audience by posing a question of how do we change our company models of efficiency? She uses examples of how this has been done such as in hospitals in Netherlands where nurses have more responsibility to tend to the needs of the individual patients. After a few more examples she adds in her point that we need to become less dependent on technology that is focusing on efficiency and become more interdependent with each-other. She also makes the powerful point that if we continue to let machines think for us, we will lose our ability to think for ourselves at all.
Writing and organizational cultures
I also liked Fried’s talk! I think that the way he spoke made it seem like he personally knew everyone in the audience. He knows what it is like to work in an office, so he uses his own experiences to inform others. Like you said, not one person said that they get the most work done at the office. Fried talks about why this is, and I think that his talk may help a lot of people who work in an office. I also talked about Heffernan’s story because I thought that it was interesting that she started her talk with that particular story to show that efficiency is not always the way to go. As a society, we are very dependent on technology even though it is not always correct.
I agree that Margaret Hefferman’s TED talk beginning with a real-life example helped the audience to understand the topic she is touching on throughout the entirety of the talk. I really liked that you included her posing a question of how we change our company models of efficiency because I think that addition helps make the audience think about the question themselves and how they would solve it getting them more involved in the problem.
Good overview of Fried’s talk, Dan
Notice how many of you latched onto the “M&Ms” piece of this talk (“Managers & Meetings” as the major distractions in workplaces)–that speaks to how effective a piece of rhetoric this is. And consider why it works–take something we think we know (mmm, M&Ms) and make us see it in a different way. That stuff sticks….