Why Organizers Ask You to Shorten Your Speech

“What do you do when your time is suddenly cut short?”

Speaker Matt Miller recently asked this very question. What do you do when the event organizer comes up to you at the very last minute and asks you to shorten your speech?

Okay.  We’ve all been there.  

Imagine.  You agree to a 60-minute keynote and see yourself listed on the agenda from 10 to 11 a.m.  Then, you step on stage to start your speech and take a quick look at the timer. Instead of saying 60 minutes, it says something shocking…

“Only 41 minutes left!”

What do you do in this situation?  

Do you panic?  Do you plow on stubbornly?  Or, do you just rush through your content… waiting for that vaudeville hook to yank you off the stage?

Something similar just happened to me last week when I was speaking in Pittsburgh… (the shortened time, not the hook.)

According to our agreement, my breakout session was supposed to be 45 minutes. But the event organizer called me a week before the event and told me it was shortened to just 25 minutes.

Geesh… how was I going to cram 45 minutes of content into 25 minutes?

Before we tackle that big problem, it might help to empathize with your event organizer.  After all, there are five main reasons why your time on stage might be suddenly cut short.  (And none of them are your fault.)