Besides writing speeches and other professional communications, I direct music in a church. My goal used to be to "get the people to sing." Many years, many songs later, I understand my role is to create the environment that will invite people to participate -- whether that participation translates to personal reflection, spirited toe tapping, or full-throated, can't-find-a-tune-in-a-bucket wailing.

Like crafting a speech, creating that music requires a combination of skill, artistry, faith, knowledge of my audience (or assembly) and intuition.

How do I know when I've been successful? I can get some sense from the smiles, the comments after Mass, maybe even the cash in the offering.

But can I fully measure its effect -- the ailing parishioner who finds comfort in the melody that sticks with her days later, or the young man who finally stumbles on a church that's lively and welcoming and who starts on a path back to his faith? No.

Last week, an Employee responded to an intranet story on the Martin Luther King holiday. "I was born on the day that MLK gave the famous speech: I have a dream," he wrote. "I often think of that day, and what an impact he must have had on the world with those words."

Did Martin Luther King know his words would echo for years to come in the consciousness of a baby born that day? And did that baby grow into a child and a man whose decisions were sometimes influenced by those words that moved him so often?

Dr. King's speech was effective not because we can count the number of people who heard it or can measure the actions that it spawned. His speech was effective because he created the environment in which people were invited in. He wove skill and artistry, faith and intuition with a knowledge of, and care for, the people he was addressing.

In quantifying that, we would inevitably diminish it.

So, should we resign ourselves to the fact that we cannot measure the effectiveness of a speech? No.

We should embrace it.

We should look for the smiles and feel for the toe tapping and listen for the full-throated wailing and the remembrance that still lingers years later.

Kathy,

Your faith in the possibility of communication must be as strong as your faith in God.

Ian Frazier--I wish I had the passage--writes about the I Have a Dream speech, and how if you watch the film, there is an actual ripple in the crowd, which Frazier, more eloquently than I, compares to a golf course driving range, when a shot hits one ball that bounces into anotehr and another and another after that, creating a kind of chain reaction that is the very definition of success in communication.

Of course it is unmeasurable. Because it is magic!

Thanks for reminding me.

David

Hi, David. Long time listener, first time caller. Love your show. It makes the drive home so much faster.

How does one measure the effectiveness of a speech? Like you, I am also tired of the monolithic, sterile, impractical approach to measurement often put forward in our profession. Every time a speech I write is delivered, I have this vague, guilty feeling that I am being unprofessional because I didn't arrange to have an evaluation form and a pencil placed neatly on everyone's seats so I could measure their response on a scale of one to five. But it passes quickly, like the speech itself!

David, I love your crotchety rebellion against the cult of measurement. Larry Ragan couldn't have put it better. And, Kathy, you're right. How can you quantify the shudder of an electrified audience or the memories and decisions that are triggered days and even years after a great speech?

But I'm also reminded of the old "call to action" idea -- that a speech should inspire the listener to do something that they might not have done otherwise, like support a cause, or put pressure on a company, or quash a proposition, or influence a policy. Look at whether the speech generated the action called for or not, and you have your measurement. And if you can't measure it, then the call to action probably wasn't clear or powerful enough. (Or, of course, it wasn't that kind of speech. But why deliver a speech if you don't want to elicit some kind of a response? Obligation? Vanity?)

I can remember only one speech that I wrote that had immediate, measurable consequences. It was for an oil executive and it was delivered on the eve of the Kyoto conference in Japan, which would set a global goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

At the time, there was a vaccum of leadership both in industry and government on the subject of what Canada should do to address the climate change issue. Very polarized debate, and no one with any vision. My company had some good ideas, and our CEO was willing to exercise some leadership by sharing them on a high profile public podium.

In the hours after the speech was delviered and posted on the internet, we could track where the hits were coming from, and it was clear that many were generated in Japan, where bureacrats from the world over were gathered. The next day, the Canadian Prime Minister got up in the House of Commons with the speech in his hand and quoted it to members of Parliament, citing it as an example of corporate leadership on the issue. And, later, it became clear that the ideas in the speech had legs, and we could draw a direct line from them to how government policy was being formed.

So, in practical terms, you can indeed measure the effectiveness of a speech by answering the simple question: Did the speaker get what he asked for? And, in this sense, didn't Dr. King get what he was asking for, even if the most measurable actions came after his death?