The creative power of the parallel universe

How to craft a great presentation—or anything—by tapping a different dimension
 
If you’ve read enough of these blog posts, you’ll know that we generally alternate between those intended for our clients who consult, and those who need creative challenges solved. The former are usually straightforward; the latter can sometimes veer into the metaphysical (see our popular blog post on self-hypnosis and finding “the voice,” for example).
 
Every now and then, the line will blur. This is one of those occasions. We’ll be talking about stretching yourself creatively here, but who’s to say that consulting doesn’t require creativity? Not us.
 
Writing the pitch-perfect pitch
 
We were recently helping a client with a book proposal. It’s a business book, but it will have wide appeal.
 
So how do you work up this proposal—this pitch—to the publisher? Sure, you can check off the items on the publisher’s application template. That’s fine. But mandatories on that list include, for example, the table of contents/chapter outline. And there, you’re on your own.
 
Enter the parallel-universe approach. This tells you to look elsewhere for the same thing.
 
Damn, that would sound good in a Yoda voice, wouldn’t it? Look elsewhere for the same thing.
 
It actually makes a lot of sense. And we can cite two examples from this business-book proposal.
 
Think again about the advice: Look elsewhere for the same thing.
 
It’s easy to deconstruct it by first doing the opposite. That is, look in the exact same place for the same thing. In this case, if you’re trying to pitch this book and its author, you’d look at other business books and bios of other business-book authors. That will help… to an extent. A limited extent. It will keep you in the same realm, the same room, the same painted-in corner… the same universe. You won’t be able to conjure up much originality, or creativity, no matter how many of these things you look at. They’re all going to blur together. And therein lies the genius of the Yoda-like exhortation to “look elsewhere.”
 
The name’s Proposal. Business Proposal.
 
We’d said we had two examples of the parallel-universe approach from this single book pitch. And we do.
 
The first is that chapter outline for the book itself. When we were called in to help, it was pretty well drafted. It had good bones. But it still had room for improvement. And there was a tactical challenge here as well as a strategic one. The broader strategic challenge, of course, was to get the book sold and published. But the immediate tactical challenge was to entice a certain editor at the publisher so he’d be interested/be able to envision the thing/get excited about it/be armed to “sell it upstairs” to his superiors.
 
Enter James Bond.
 
This is the way we’d couched it to the author (a brilliant and world-leading consultant, and no slouch of a writer, by the way). We said, Think of a James Bond movie. This is the “elsewhere” in that “look elsewhere” advice. Most people, when thinking of the chapter outline for a business book, don’t start thinking about a spy-movie franchise.
 
But it can help. A lot. Think of it this way: When you go to see a new James Bond movie, you can expect an entirely new adventure that you’ve never seen before. You don’t know where it takes place, who the villain is, what his evil plan is, or how Bond will fight him. But there is a lot that you do know, without having seen one frame of the movie, or even its trailer.
 
The satisfaction of well-met expectations
 
Come to think about it, you know a ton about this movie before you see it. You know it will begin with an over-the-top chase scene. Then the artsy-graphic credits, accompanied by a song that aspires to the Top 40. Then the usual progression of plot points: Villain commits some heinous crime. James Bond is briefed and given his mission. Bond meets Q and gets his weapons for the outing. (And isn’t it an amazing coincidence how each ridiculously unique weapon is exactly what he’ll need later? [“Left-hand paralysis pen. You’ll need this on Page 82 of the script.”]) Then there’s the trip to Exotic Locale. There’s Girl Number One (usually the one who gets killed). The Next Chase Scene. And…. well, you know how these things go.
 
What's the point? The point is that there’s a definite level of expectation of how this adventure will unfold, but if it’s got enough new variations on the theme and it’s beautifully executed (great casting, locations, cinematography, music, action choreography, etc.), it’s well worth the price of admission.
 
Back to the business book. It’s really not too big of a stretch to view it through the lens of the James Bond Universe. A good book like this one—remember, it aspires to broad-market appeal—opens with a grabber story. One you can relate to. One that makes you sweat because it’s so uncomfortably familiar. And just when the solution feels uncomfortably, familiarly insurmountable, the author drops a bombshell on you: There is a new, and better way.
 
Standing there in the airport bookstore, you’re hooked. You’ll buy the thing and read the rest on the plane.
 
Sitting there in your New York office, you like that sample opening chapter, and decide that your senior editor would, too.
 
And the James Bond parallels keep coming. What is your level of expectation for the structure of a book like this? You could answer that right now. You know that the next chapter will give a teasing overview of this Exciting New Methodology. And the chapter after that will give you a quick yet cogent historical background of all the business developments that—inexorably, in hindsight—led up to this Exciting New Methodology. From there, it goes into the details of how it works… the use cases…. See? It’s James Bond. You’re learning something entirely new, yet you’re still in a nice comfort zone regarding how it will all unfold. Once you choose the right parallel universe—and that is the tricky part; no one told you to think of James Bond—it’s a useful and surprisingly productive way to develop a book proposal… creative concepts… consulting report… almost anything.
 
From metaphysics to physics
 
We said we had two examples from this book-proposal project. Here’s the other one:
 
This book is intended to reach a broad audience. Broader than just C-suite executives. It’s intended for middle managers, Millennial hires, even the general public who’s simply interested in learning how business ticks and what makes great companies great.
 
So we started looking at parallel universes for inspiration when it came to that author bio.
 
The first came in the form of a thought-leader named Thomas Sowell. He wrote a book called Basic Economics which is pretty revolutionary, because it ingeniously explains that difficult subject without math. That’s a good one. But Sowell isn’t a household name. And “Economics” is a little too close to “Business” to satisfy our “look elsewhere” advice.
 
Then it hit us. There was not one, but actually two good examples of people who brought difficult concepts to the general public. And they’re both astrophysicists. Carl Sagan, and Stephen Hawking. Indeed, Hawking intended for A Brief History of Time to be a big best-seller, despite its decidedly abstruse subject matter. And it was.
 
Will this new business book succeed as well? As of this writing, we don’t know. But we sure do know that dubbing its author “The Stephen Hawking of the business world” was a great way to pitch him to that editor.
 
Do you need help finding a new creative angle for that next pitch, proposal, or presentation? Seek elsewhere for the same thing. Or save time and let us help. We’d be delighted to. 

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