Over the past 15 years in the Speaking business I have reviewed thousands of speakers on a variety of topics looking for the very best. A great speaker has to have both great content and the ability to deliver it by engaging and inspiring the audience.

Watching 1800 Executives mesmerized by Dr. Roch Parayre’s presentation on Decision Making I knew I was witnessing something special. It wasn’t just what he was saying, it was how he was delivering it:

With his right hand held in mid-air he began, “We process information through ‘rules of thumb.'”

He paused here for 3 or 4 seconds as the heads in the audience gradually began nodding.

“Overall ‘rules of thumb’ lead to pretty good quality decisions,” he went on.

Another pause and again the audience agreed.

“However” He continued, “the use of ‘rules of thumb’ also lead to systematic and predictable biases.” He paused. “We are predictably wrong in predictable ways,” he stated.

You could tell so many people in the audience just had an ‘aha’ moment.

Dr. Parayre is brilliant at making you rethink how you make decisions. We don’t realize that when we are faced with a problem our instincts automatically try and solve the issue based on our past experiences. Those past experiences formed over time can send you down the wrong road when we really need to re-frame the issue and look at it from another angle. When we don’t take the time to really investigate issues we often end up solving the wrong problem (and will continuously do so) because we aren’t looking at the big picture – what if this problem is a symptom of a larger issue? If we do not “zoom out” and look at the larger picture, and simply “deal with” the problem at hand, we will continue to treat the symptoms and not the cause – indeed as Dr. Parayre points out: we will become “predictably wrong in predicable ways.”

Derek Sweeney has been helping clients find the right speakers for their events for 15 Years. During that time, Derek and his team have researched and reviewed over 12,000 Speakers on a variety topics and have listed the top 500 on www.thesweeneyagency.com