TWHS#071: Heathrow: Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste

Can you imagine taking an overnight flight to London, being told you couldn't land, and then finding out you were redirected to Frankfurt. Ouch!

There was chaos for 300,000 people, 1350 flights were disrupted and the UK Prime Minister was under attack.  Heathrow Airport losing power has been all over our newsfeeds for the last week.

It's hard to know the exact cause yet. People are still pointing their blamey fingers.  But it seems:

• A fire in a transformer at the local substation got out of control. 
• That took out some of the redundant systems in the substation and killed the power to the airport. 
• This coupled with only 1 live power feed to the airport meant that switching to other power feeds was a massive undertaking.

But you know the old quote - "Never Let A Good Crisis Go To Waste"

A great anecdote or story is brilliant when you’re trying to explain something, persuade someone or engage an audience.  It gets the brain lit up like a Christmas tree. Far more than with dry facts alone.

But where do you get all your stories from?  I put it to you, the news can be a great source.

Why Use A Current Event Story?

• Stories create an emotional response.  This makes the brain more active.  That helps with problem solving, cognitive processing and recall.  Basically, people can understand stuff better and remember that stuff better.
• Relevance.  Current events are at the top of everyone's mind.  They heard it on the news that morning.  That relevance makes it more interesting to them.  They perk up like a Meercat.
• Fresh Ideas.  Coming up with new ideas to keep your message alive is tough.  Use what you see and keep your message fresh.

Which Current Events Should You Use?

• One that's relevant.  Don't stretch it too much.  If you need to talk about disaster recovery or business continuity at the moment, Heathrow is your bad boy.
• Be careful with politics and controversial topics.  You could alienate half the room.  You could create a massive debate on the story, not your topic.  The story needs to amplify your message not detract.
• Something you can talk about authentically.  If you know a bit about energy grids you can pull the Heathrow story off.  If you have zero knowledge in the area, either do some good research or be careful.  It could seem a bit inauthentic.

How Do You Prepare It?

• Research some details from a few credible resources.  Get some data points and hard facts that give it some substance.
• Look for the human angle.  People relate to people.  Talk about the real impact on humans.
• Don't get caught in the weeds.  It's a story not a whitepaper.  Keep it fast paced and high level.

The Heathrow power outage.  The Crowd Strike world-wide meltdown.  The biggest Bitcoin theft in history.  Do a bit of research and use these news stories to supercharge your presentations.

Hope this helps.

Ben