I have a friend called Ed. He is smart, alert and doesn’t try too hard to be funny. Separate to this, he is a Reinsurance Analyst. No-one knows what a Reinsurance Analyst is, few care to find out. This creates a quandary because he likes his job, it’s interesting and he wants to talk about it. But it’s hard, because there are few ways to sell Reinsurance analysis without trying too hard to be funny. Few listen.
eLearning struggles with the same problem as Ed.
Ed wants to deliver content to people, Ed wants to see them react positively to it and yet Ed is limited because his content does not inspire enthusiasm. Ed is aware there are ways to force this enthusiasm but they are at odds with what he wants to present.
So how can he get around this? He has a patter now. It’s good, I’ll tell you why.
He takes something boring:
“I do data analysis on my company’s risk position so the institution can purchase the best reinsurance package”
And makes it relatable:
He relates it to events people understand:
“Say we insure a lot of businesses that work in Miami. If a typhoon hits, then we’d have to pay out a lot of money. It would mess up my company…
He relates it to how it will affect a person’s own life:
…I don’t want that to happen and you don’t want that to happen because your car insurance might have to go up to cover our losses…
He keeps the words simple:
…To stop this we buy insurance on our insurance. If nothing happens we pay another insurance company a decent amount of money to cover ourselves and if something major does happen then that other company has to pay us a lot of money that’ll help us through the disaster…
And the tone conversational:
My job is to go through all the data that other guys have made about the risks of typhoons in Miami and political change in Myanmar and a particularly cold winter in France and work out how much reinsurance we need and how much we should pay for it.
And he offers juicy insights:
It’s pretty cool. Don’t go on holiday to Myanmar”
Ed has learnt what good teachers, instructional designers and parents all know- that good content delivery is similar to a good conversation. But, it is good conversations that inspire behaviour change.
