Hey, you look like a runner. Wanna join me and the team and have some fun running next weekend? Asked my Italian friend/coworker. I had just relocated from India to the US. I had no prior experience running (except for a casual 2-mile run once in a blue moon). The fact that someone thought that I looked like a runner was enough of a motivation for me to say Yes. Little did I know what I was getting into.
The race that I had signed up for was a 50-mile dirt relay run (called Dances with Dirt in Hell, Michigan). I had a bad habit of converting units from Imperial to Metric system. The conversion of 50 miles to 80km only increased my anxiety.
A combination of endorphins, adrenaline rush, not wanting to let the team down, and lots of self-talk gave me enough motivation to finish the race.
I was sore for a week but that felt good! I self-judged my performance to be a bulls-eye. Long distance dirt run, steady/good pace even uphill.
I signed up for more races. Hoping that this mindset would keep me going. And here’s what happened:
My performance was scattered all over the place also known as NOISY. I had become a “noisy runner”.
The reasons were quite simple. Although I was motivated to run (to stay healthy), the unwanted variability was because I was mostly focused on my outcomes instead of putting a system in place that would help me influence better outcomes.
I used to read about other world class runners, watch live streams of marathons (e.g., Boston Marathon) but never took the interest to put together a system and follow it up with action. Not just talk. But walk (/jog and run) the talk.
After several honest conversations (+ being compassionate) with myself, I focused on deliberate planning and following a disciplined routine for at least 6 months; the quality of my performances started improving. I also had more energy than before. Is there still “noise” in my performance? Yes, there is. My intention will continue to become less and less noisy.

Among other things, this experience made me realize that I never had a system in place at becoming a better technology storyteller.
First of all, a large amount of my presentations and demos were not for board meetings (or keynote presentations). While I really enjoyed reading books on how to present like Steve Jobs, etc. and watching videos, a majority of the content wasn’t directly applicable/relevant to my day-to-day hustle on changing the minds of my internal and external stakeholders.
I never had formal training on how to holistically approach this subject. Have I learned how to use a specific tool (e.g., PowerPoint or Keynote)? Yes, of course. But knowing how to use a tool to share your ideas vs. convincing your audience to take action are two different things.
I started tracking noise in my performance routinely. And with tender loving care, continued to work on becoming less and less noisy. William, Kristian and Jill - authors of the Universal Principles of Design talk about Signal-to-Noise Ratio.
“The ratio of relevant to irrelevant information in a display. The highest possible signal-to-noise ratio is desirable in design. Minimizing noise means removing unnecessary elements, and minimizing the expression of necessary elements”. [1]
Watch out for more on how to reduce noise with technology storytelling in my future articles.
Warmly,
Keshav :)
[1] Excerpt from the book - Universal Principles of Design