Page 264 - ConvinceThemFlip

convince them in 90 seconds or less
at every opportunity. Trouble was, nobody could put the
benefits of the new system into simple terms. Sure, given
ten minutes, each of them could describe how the system
worked and bombard you with jargon, but nobody—
not even the president of the company—could put it
into “evangelizable” language. To solve the problem, we
applied Muldoon’s I-KOLA technique to the system, and
by day’s end we had agreed on this description of the
software: “GX2 (not the real name) is kind of like traveling
with your clients in a glass-bottom boat. You both can see
what’s going on in the system at the same time.”
Another client, a large architecture firm, was grappling
with a disconnect between the architects and the company
administrators. They were having trouble collaborating
because many architects
viewed the administra-
tors as a nuisance and the
administrators, in turn,
saw the architects as
uncooperative.
We applied the I-KOLA
technique to their dilemma and came up with the follow-
ing analogy: “ArchiTech (not their real name) is kind of like
an art gallery. The administration makes sure the gallery
opens on time, runs smoothly, and pays its bills. The archi-
tects are the great artists that everyone comes to see.”
I-KOLAs give people
a simple, evocative
entry point to a compli-
cated concept.
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