Today in one of our leadership development programmes, we discussed the ‘Big Idea’ as a hook to hang the journey of a presentation on – a simple, practical method of designing a great presentation.   A focus of attention to develop a journey against.   

An article in the recent FT weekend magazine demonstrated how powerful a Big Idea can be.

Simon Kuper wrote about the Power of Respect.  He talks about Mandela, one of the greatest living leaders of our time.   He states that ‘great politicians focus on only one or two goals, the rest is just detail’.   Mandela’s Big Idea, that he never strayed from, was “a free nonracial South Africa” – he didn’t get distracted by the ‘right’ way to achieve this.  His goal was fixed but his tactics were flexible.

As leaders we can use a Big Idea to create clarity and inspiration for finding a way to achieve what sometimes appear to be unachievable goals.