What a Speech Is For

The most useful thing about writing a speech for a leader is that it forces a decision. A strategy paper can hold three incompatible positions indefinitely. A speech cannot: someone has to stand up and say one of them, in the first person, in front of people who will remember.

This is why the drafting process is so often mistaken for a drafting process. It is really a governance process wearing a stylistic disguise. The arguments about adjectives are arguments about commitment.

The craft, such as it is, lies in refusing false comfort. Every sentence that could be said by any organisation should be deleted. Every sentence that would embarrass the speaker if it appeared alone on a screen should be rewritten until it would not.

What remains is short, and usually more exposed than the client expected. That exposure is the point. A speech that costs nothing to give persuades no one to change anything.