I recently had the pleasure to speak about working remotely in general and with distributed agile teams, in particular.
I was delighted to do so, as it combined two of my top three professional passions:
- Organizational excellence and
- Agile Leadership
Like most people in such a situation, I was looking forward to giving that speech, but not so much to preparing for it.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity, and the brute by instinct.
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
I have done presentations and speeches before, but this time, I wanted to try a new approach I had read about a while ago.
Enter: the Cicero Framework
Cicero is universally accepted as the greatest orator of his time – and possibly of all time.
While I am not sure if he prepared for his speeches in as structured a way as the Cicero Framework provides, I can tell you that it is beneficial for anybody less brilliant than him – practically everybody, if we are honest.
The framework comprises
- 7 GROUNDWORK cards;
- 5 MAIN POINTS DEVELOPMENT cards;
- 14 STRUCTURE cards;
- a booklet with instructions.
This gives you a total of 26 cards, instructions, and examples of how to use them.
The cards in the Cicero Deck will help you with the structure, tone, and content of any speech.
With Cicero you can build every kind of speech. From the simplest wedding ones to the most complex political speeches.
Regarding content, they will help you to define and sharpen the main points that you want to get across. As far as structure is concerned, they provide they make sure you have one (or more) key sentences, facts, and a transition for each of these main points.
As proverbial bookends, they guide you through creating an introduction with a hook, credibility, and relevance as well as an ending with a recap, call to action, and benefits.
After having tried them for my speech, I can highly recommend them. They are a simple, yet powerful tool. And for a one-time fee of 29 Euro, they are an excellent investment.
Check them out for yourselves at https://www.cicerodeck.com/.