Remember that not every question has a clear answer

A couple days ago at LinkedIn Joel Schwartzberg, who was hyping his Get to the Point! book, claimed: 

“ ‘It depends’ is not an acceptable final answer from leaders or experts. Get the information you need – or pose it yourself – to make a strong and clear recommendation. Leaders take positions. Waffles are for breakfast.”

Wrong! Just because someone can ask a question doesn’t mean there is a clear, final answer right now. In the real world we often live in the meantime. When there is not enough evidence, then the answer simply is we just don’t know. Maybe we will know later, and maybe we won’t.

Look at fact sheets from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) for both an Infectious Disease Outbreak and a Hurricane Response. They say that to be credible:

“Acknowledge when you do not have enough information to answer a question and then work with (the) appropriate experts to get an answer.”

Joel replied:

"Fair enough, Richard. I was thinking more about when leaders choose to waffle rather than take a courageous strong point of view, but that's not clear from the post. I will rewrite or remove it for the false implication. Thank you."

A new Engaging Humor path in the Pathways educational program at Toastmasters International

On February 5, 2019 Toastmasters International launched a new eleventh Path on Engaging Humor in their Pathways educational program. It includes four brand-new required projects: Know Your Sense of Humor, Engage Your Audience with Humor, The Power of Humor in an Impromptu Speech, and Deliver Your Message with Humor.

Last year there were negative comments at LinkedIn from some long-time Toastmasters that the first ten Paths in the new Pathways program had omitted materials present in the program previously used. Some replies said to wait, since there were more paths on the way.

Back on July 8, 2011 I blogged about how The Competent Communication manual is just the beginning of learning about public speaking in Toastmasters International. In that post I discussed the 15 advanced communications manuals.

One advanced manual is Humorously Speaking (226O), which contains five projects titled Warm Up Your Audience, Leave Them with a Smile, Make Them Laugh, Keep Them Laughing, The Humorous Speech. You can find a pdf from the Philippines here.  

Another advanced manual is The Entertaining Speaker (226A), which contains five projects titled The Entertaining Speech, Resources for Entertainment, Make Them Laugh, A Dramatic Talk, Speaking After Dinner. You can find a pdf from the Philippines here.  

Another advanced manual, which I just finished, is Storytelling (226K). It contains five projects titled The Folk Tale, Let’s Get Personal, The Moral of the Story, The Touching Story, and Bringing History to Life. You can find a pdf from the Philippines here. What else might be next? Perhaps there will be a Path about storytelling.  

The cartoon was derived from six images at Wikimedia Commons. From left to right they are:

First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth.

Is flip-chart a racist term?

The potential problem is with the word flip. A 1998 Postcolonial Studies web article from Emory University by Reshmi Hebbar titled Filipino American Literature (referenced in the Wikipedia article on Anti-Filipino sentiment) says that:

“….American-born-Filipinos are referred to as ‘Flips,’ a term whose origins are unclear. The suggestion that this term comes from a World War II acronym for the phrase ‘f*cking little island people’ has caused some to shy away from the term. Others have reclaimed it and changed the acronym to mean ‘fine-looking island people.’ Others still find it more plausible that the term is just a shortening of ‘Filipino.’ ”

I think it’s just a shortening. An article by Edgar Snow in the March 16, 1946 Saturday Evening Post titled The Philippines Cry for Help stated that:

“Juan de la Cruz is what we used to call any Filipino before the American soldier came along and cut him down to the laconic ‘Flip’ – not a very nice name, but meaning no offense, we hope.”

Over in the Philippines there was a 2011 web page from their Red Cross which still used the word Flipcharts.   

It looks like political correctness complaints about flip-chart being derogatory first popped up 25 years ago, and have reappeared sporadically ever since. Sometimes the complainers suggest an alternative term, but other times they did not bother (and therefore should be ignored).

A 1994 book by Marlene Caroselli titled Continuous Learning in Organizations (which you can find at Google Books) says on page 109:

“As a trainer, for example, I have been advised not to call the flipchart a flipchart because the word ‘flip’ is a derogatory reference to citizens of the Philippines.”

A table in a 2001 web article by Lenora Billings-Harris titled Politically Correct Language

says that flip chart should be replaced by the vague term easel (since flip is a derogatory word referring to Filipinos).

A 2008 book by Paul J.J. Payack titled A Million Words and Counting: How Global English is Rewriting the World (which you can find at Google Books) says in a section on The Top 10 politically Incorrect Words of Recent Years:

“4. Flip chart: The term flip can be offensive to Filipinos, who consider it an ethnic insult. California has issued sensitivity guidelines to avoid using the term flip chart for easel pads or writing blocks.

A 2010 web article by John McCrarey titled Concerning Diversity Training had the following discussion:

 “Anyway, as an example of insensitivity the instructor solemnly informed us that the visual aid commonly referred to as a ‘flip chart’ was offensive.  Seriously.  You see, ‘flip’ is a derogatory term applied to Filipinos.   And so according to the trainer we should henceforth call the flip chart a rip chart.

To our credit, we didn’t let the trainer get away without asking some clarifying questions.  Like, it is wrong to ‘flip a coin’?  Is it permissible to ‘flip through the pages of a book’?  Or how about if someone cuts you off in traffic–can you ‘flip them the finger’?  Yeah, it’s true.  We were certainly being ‘flip’ about the subject.”

On May 18, 2018 in the New York Times there was an article by Nellie Bowles titled Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy which included the following anecdote:

“Why did he decide to engage in politics at all? He says a couple years ago he had three clients in his private practice ‘pushed out of a state of mental health by left-wing bullies in their workplace.’ I ask for an example, and he sighs.

He says one patient had to be part of a long email chain over whether the term ‘flip chart’ could be used in the workplace, since the word ‘flip’ is a pejorative for Filipino.

‘She had a radical-left boss who was really concerned with equality and equality of outcome and all these things and diversity and inclusivity and all these buzzwords and she was subjected to — she sent me the email chain, 30 emails about whether or not the word flip chart was acceptable,’ Mr. Peterson says.”

Which of those alternative terms are useful? Easel pad is, since a Google search on Images leads to catalog pictures of flip chart pads from office supply stores. Rip chart is not.

But please don’t call it a writing block! A Google search on that term leads to images about writer’s block (which even is a TV Trope), including an infamous Calvin and Hobbes cartoon whose gist is shown above by another image.

When I looked up scholarly articles about flip charts at JSTOR, I found one by Everett B. Lare titled Nonprojected Visual Aids in The Clearing House, Vol. 33, No. 4, December 1958, page 255 which refers to a turnover chart or flip chart. Regrettably turnover already has several other meanings, including the pastry shown above.

Am I going to stop using the word flipchart? In general, no. If I knew I was going to be speaking to a predominantly Filipino-American audience, then perhaps I might call it an easel pad.

A cartoon of a man pointing at a flip chart was modified from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

Reliable places to find information for your speeches

At Presentation Guru on January 22, 2019 there was a brief, useful article by Rakiah Oneeb titled The Most Reliable Places to Find Credible Data, which may be of interest to Toastmasters. It is good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. (For another viewpoint, look at Andrew Dlugan’s Six Minutes article from June 11, 2018 on How to Research Your Speech Topic).

Her first four sentences say:

“As a presenter, one of the worst things that can happen during your presentation is not you forgetting to mention an important stat/data, but someone from the audience disputing the authenticity of that data.

Not only will it embarrass you, it will blow your credibility out of the water. So, when it comes to presenting, there isn’t a greater faux pax (sic) you could commit.

Even if you are an expert in your field, your presentation will need to cite other credible information either to compound on your findings or convincingly compare them to the other.  

Rakiah discussed five (really six) places where she claimed you could find reliable information for any subject:

1] EBSCO

2] JSTOR

3] Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)

4] a) Google Scholar and b) Microsoft Academic Search

5] Expert Interviews

Unless you are already very experienced at searching (like I am), I would suggest you should start by interviewing a reference librarian at your friendly local public library. Ask her both about books and which of their databases you can best use for finding information to put in your presentation. 

Rakiah suggests that you access EBSCO databases from a public or university library that uses it. EBSCO currently is what the Idaho Commission for Libraries, via LiLI, supplies for our public libraries. Idaho taxpayers individually may be poor, but collectedly we are powerful. (Other states use other suppliers like Gale).

EBSCO is extremely useful, but their basic search is a blunt tool - like trying to cut a raw carrot with a butter knife. Their advanced search is way more powerful. I usually start looking for magazine articles in three EBSCO databases – MasterFILE Premier, Business Source Premier, and Academic Search Premier.

On February 24, 2015 I blogged about How to do a better job of speech research than the average Toastmaster (by using your friendly local public and state university libraries). I discussed EBSCO there. But I never use Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Google Scholar, or Microsoft Academic Search. I don’t often use JSTOR since I have to go to the library at Boise State University and use one of their public terminals in order to access it.

Under their under Articles and Databases tab a web page at the Boise State University Library lists these seven preferred places to look:

Academic Search Premier (from EBSCO)

ProQuest Central

JSTOR

Web of Science

Google Scholar

CQ Researcher

Gale Virtual Reference

Only three of them match Rakiah’s list. CQ Researcher provides in-depth reports on today’s issues. Similarly, on January 17, 2019 I blogged about Two library databases and a web site for exploring both sides of controversial issues. Web of Science is very useful for both engineering and science.

Rakiah did not mention WorldCat, which is the planetary card catalog of libraries from OCLC. Back on February 28, 2012 I blogged about 40.5 years of WorldCat – a great tool for digging up books, magazine articles, etc.

The U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM) has wonderful resources, like Medline Plus (trusted health information for you). A great source from them is PubMed Central which has a free full-text archive of over 5 million articles. They also have the PubMed database with 29 million citations of article titles and abstracts.

The Presentation Guru article ended with a section on evaluating your sources, and linked to an article about the CRAAP test. CRAAP is an acronym for Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. On August 7, 2017 I blogged about that topic in a post titled Spotting fake news and finding reliable information for speeches. My post discussed two examples of unreliable information.

 

The carrot and butter knife were adapted from images at the National Cancer Institute.  

Another confused ‘Top 50 List’ of public speaking blogs

On January 23, 2019 Feedspot had an article with their latest list of the Top 50 Public Speaking Blogs Every Speaker Must Follow. But the list is innumerate, since it really has 58 items. Back on December 22, 2016 I had blogged about How far should you trust a list of 50 Top Public Speaking Blogs that actually has 54 items? My answer then for a previous list was “not very far.”

  

Even worse is their other January 23, 2019 article claiming to list the Top 20 Presentation Blogs, Websites & Newsletters to Follow in 2019 that instead lists just 15 items.

Also, I hate being ordered to follow those public speaking blogs. Some of the listed blogs are excellent, like Public Words (#2), Manner of Speaking (#4), Speak up for Success (#8), and Speak Schmeak (#25).

Other blogs really are not worth following. One is David McGimpsey’s Presentation Blogger (#10). On February 1, 2017 I blogged about his providing Incomplete and useful advice about recordings of your speech rehearsals. (David has tried unsuccessfully to spam one of the LinkedIn groups on public speaking with his stuff, but they took them down almost as fast as he posted them). Another, Peter Knoury’s Magnetic Speaking (#58) had an atrocious post titled 7 Unbelievable “Fear of Public Speaking” Statistics that I blogged about on December 15, 2016 with a post titled Believable and unbelievable statistics about fears and phobias of public speaking.

  

Mediocre graphics about crisis management

At Agility PR Solutions on January 8, 2019 there was an article by Bulldog Reporter titled Brands are losing faith in their crisis management plans – here’s how to restore it. When I looked at the first two graphics in it, I instead lost faith in the author’s graphical competence.

Look at the 3-D donut chart (shown above) for answering Which crisis do you feel least prepared for? (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). It has 11 different items, which is way too many, and those items are not shown in rank order. Terrorism (27.1%) is the largest item, and shown going counterclockwise from the top. But Cyber Breach (19.5%), the second item, is shown as the fourth item going clockwise.

A 2-D horizontal bar chart, as shown above, does a better job of listing all those percentages.     

The second graphic is a vertical bar chart for answering Which potential issues does your crisis management plan address? It has 12 color-coded items, but confusingly repeats colors from the first four on the last four. Also, those colors do not match those used on the previous chart. There is no percent label on the vertical axis, and the labels for the horizontal axis are angled.

I call those 45-degree captions Bannister Captions, because they remind me of a small boy recklessly sliding downstairs. Adults should do something better.

Another 2-D horizontal bar chart (shown above) does a better job of showing those percentages without needing different colors.     

The cartoon showing a boy going downstairs was adapted from one at Openclipart.  

Given that the federal government owns more than 3/5ths of the land in Idaho, how much should our state budget rely on federal money?

On January 25, 2019 at the Idaho Freedom Foundation web site there was an article by Wayne Hoffman titled Shutdown is reminder for lawmakers to act on fed dependency. It was reprinted unchanged as an opinion column by the Idaho Press on January 28, 2019. Wayne began:

“During the latest federal government shutdown, there were more state legislatures in session than in any previous shutdown in the nation’s history. And yet, there’s been precious little discussion of how states remain highly dependent on aid from Washington, D.C. This is as good as any time for that to change. 

Louisiana is the state most reliant on money from the federal government: 42 percent of its budget comes from the feds, followed closely by Mississippi. The least D.C.-dependent state is North Dakota, where just 18.4 percent of its total budget comes from Congress, according to the latest data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.” 

Then he claimed that about a third of our budget came from the feds (32.5%). He is slightly wrong about those percentages – they really are not the very latest data, which are in an article by Katherine Loughead from January 9, 2019 titled Which states rely the most on federal aid? Mississippi was highest with 43.3%, and Virginia was lowest with 21.1%. Instead Wayne used last year’s article by Morgan Scarboro on January 18, 2018 and also titled Which states rely the most on federal aid?

The first two things we should ask are what the latest percentage is for Idaho, and how do we compare with our six neighboring states. (Back on October 5, 2015 I blogged about why this was an appropriate comparison in a post titled Using graphics to see an argument more clearly). We get 33.1% of our state budget from the federal government and rank at #27 – or almost exactly in the middle. We also rank right in the middle of our six neighbors: Montana (#6) 40.6%, Wyoming (#8) 36.1%, Oregon (#15) 35.6%, Nevada (#32), 31.3%, Washington (#38) 30,2%, and Utah (#46) 25.7%. The mean for those six neighbors is 33.2%, almost exactly equal to that 33.1% for Idaho. Wayne never says what he thinks would be an acceptable percentage. I suspect he has Utah Envy, so it might be their 25.7% - or roughly a quarter rather than a third.

But there is another factor, an ‘elephant in the room,’ that needs to be thought about before our lawmakers act rashly. Idaho is one of just five states (along with Nevada, Utah, Alaska, and Oregon) where over 50% of the land is owned by the federal government. That’s a geographical and economic fact unlikely to change. Until it does, we can only dream of really reducing our dependence on the federal government. There is a web page at Ballotopedia with data from 2013 listing Federal land ownership by state.

The bar chart shown above lists the top 25 states sorted based on percent of land owned by the federal government (brown), and compared with the percent of the state budget supplied by the feds (green). Click on it to see a larger, clearer view.

Idaho ranks third, with 61.6% of our land being owned by the feds. But we only get just a bit more than half that percentage (0.538 times) of our budget from them. 13 of those 25 states in this chart get a higher percentage of their budget from the feds than Idaho. Note also that both Mississippi with 43.3%, and Virginia with 21.1% also are on this chart.

A second bar chart shows the bottom 25 states sorted based on percent of land owned by the federal government, and compared with the percent of the state budget supplied by the feds. Again, 13 of those 25 get a higher percentage of their budget from the feds than Idaho.

And for those five states where over 50% of the land is owned by the federal government, the average budget percentage is 0.517 times the percent of land owned. Shouldn’t we and these other ‘occupied’ states get even more federal help to compensate for not having much state land left for earning money? 

Why don’t we and those other four western states with over 50% federal land get a bigger percent of our budgets from the feds? Our populations simply are too small for us to influence the U.S. House of Representatives. If state populations were evenly divided, you would expect us to have 43 representatives (~10%). Instead we just have 16 (~3.7%).   

Two other bar charts show the top and bottom 25 states sorted based on the percent of the state budget supplied by the feds (green) as compared with percent of land owned by the federal government (brown). As previously mentioned, we get 33.1% of our state budget from the federal government and rank #27 – so we are just below the middle. It is time for our lawmakers to think clearly before just acting foolishly.

Perhaps Mr. Hoffman should consider changing the organization name from the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) to the Idaho Foundation for Fuzzy Thinking (IFFT).