Get a Crystal Clear Picture of What You Want to Communicate

"London Bridge is falling down!" Remember that old nursery rhyme about London Bridge? Well, it hasn’t fallen down—and neither will you “fall down” in your next speech when you use the lesson of the London Bridge.

It all began in 1831 when the bridge was completed over the river Thames in London. After 131 years of daily use it was starting to decay. In comes Robert McCulloch, Chairman of McCulloch Oil Corp, and he buys the old bridge for $2,460,000 in 1962.

OK, you say, “So what and who cares?” Good question. You should care because what Robert McCulloch did with that bridge is just what you can do in your next speech.

When you’re speaking, you have a message in your head and heart—and that message needs to be communicated to the heads and hearts of your audience. How do you do it so that your audience gets the same message? That’s where the London Bridge comes in.

After six years of planning, government red tape, and ground preparation, the job was started in 1968 and it took until October 10, 1971 to complete. Robert McCulloch’s plan was amazing! Bring the London Bridge to Arizona, construct a city around it and sell land to homeowners and businesses. It worked! It’s called Lake Havasu City in northwest Arizona.

The "what's in it for you" portion is how they did it. Oh, shipping thousands of giant stone blocks 10,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean through the Panama Canal and into the Pacific to Long Beach, California was a big job. Then trucking those thousands of bridge stones to Lake Havasu City was long, slow work. But the actual building of the bridge was pretty simple!

Engineers in London made a drawing of the bridge and then numbered each block as they took the bridge apart. That one there was #4,763. This one was 4,764 and so on. Then the engineers in Arizona took those drawings and said in effect, “Who’s got #1?”  By putting each block in its correct position, three years later, the bridge appeared in Arizona exactly as it did in London.

And that’s how your next speech should go—block by block your audience gets the message you've delivered.

Here’s what you can do…

1.    Get a crystal clear picture of what you want to communicate.

2.    Prepare and outline the key points.

3.    Organize your ideas so they fit together just like the blocks on the London Bridge did.

4.    Prepare your foundation. (That’s practicing the delivery of your ideas.)

5.   Deliver your message in a clear, organized and prepared way, and you’ll find that your listeners…get it!

Check out the London Bridge and Lake Havasu on the web—some great pictures and stories. You’ll see it hasn’t fallen down!

Contact me for one-on-one Speech Coaching or information on my "Speak With Impact" Boot Camp