Winchester Mystery House: The Perfect Metaphor for Presentations of Today
The Winchester Mystery House is a monstrosity, I mean a mansion, that resides in San Jose, California. To say that it was built by Sarah Winchester, the widow of firearm magnate William Winchester, would be incorrect.
Construction of the mansion continued to the day she died. When news of her death came in, on Sep 05, 1922, some of the workers quit midway — literally midway — leaving nails half-hammered in and jutting out from the walls.
Today, it bears the designation of a historical landmark and and serves as a tourist attraction with tickets selling for as much as $25
It is Very Odd Attraction
The sheer number of oddities in the building make it a topic of an intertesting conversation. It has rooms that open into walls and windows that overlook other rooms. It has staircases that terminate in celings.
Sarah Winchester seemed to have an odd affection for the number 13. The Mystery House has many windows with 13 panes, and even ceilings with 13-panels. It does not end there, there are a number of 13-step stairways too. The icing on the cake is the 13th bathroom of the house, which contains 13 windows of its own.
Why is it so? The answer is rather simple. Mrs Winchester did not employ the services of an architect. No wonder, the house is less of a home and more of a maze.
The lack of a plan is attributed by many in her belief that ghosts were out to get her. However environmental psychologists suggest that these oddities contribute to the feeling of the house being haunted.
This is my favourite — following her death, an attempt was made to count the rooms. The new owners kept coming up with different numbers. After five years of renovations, the final estimate suggested the number to be 160, which is the most often quoted number today.
The Resemblance with Presentations
I feel it is a perfect metaphor for the way most of us approach our presentations. So let us draw some similarities in Mrs Winchester’s mansion and decks of today.
- The Approach: Or should I say the utter lack of it. The resemblance of Mrs Winchester’s approach is perfectly mimicked by corporate presenters of today. She had no plan and our presenting friends have no plan either. Most presentations don’t start ground up, they start by recycling from their existing stock of decks and viola, we know the rest.
- Misplaced Obsessions: Mrs Winchester’s love for 13 is now legendary. Presenters are obsessed with an ending array of rows and columns fully populated with numbers. These giddying arrays often obscure meaning but discussion yeilds the same remark every time, “These numbers are very important.” What makes this obsession even more unhealthy is mindlessly copying tables from spreadsheets with virtually no formatting.
- Ghosts: Mrs Winchester’s belief in ghosts is errily similar to beliefs held by presenters in the corporate world. Our ghosts are misplaced beliefs about the way presentations should be delivered.
The one belief, I feel, that does the most damage is front-loading your presentations with the company profile. This rattling of facts neither adds any meaning to the discussion nor drives it forward. Contrary to the intended objective, it kills interest.
In certain contexts, especially a sales pitch, it is disrespectful to assume that your would-be customer does not know of your company and you need to address at the outset. This approach to sales pitches calls for a radical transformation.
How?
The obvious question is how do we correct all of this? The answer lies in another masterpiece — Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Get up one morning and abandon all old habits and beliefs, go the Ebenezer Scrooge way. Wake up to the realisation that the old habits are the cause of sorrow and to break away from all of those.
Changing your mind is a sign of intelligence, said Steve Jobs often. Research at Harvard Business School suggests exactly this — those who who change their minds are perceived to be more intelligent. So what are you waiting for?
