May 2026
Beginner
240 pages
3h 48m
English
Content preview from Driving Buy-In
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
CHAPTER EIGHTDELIVER—PRESENT TO WIN BUY-IN
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
—Maya Angelou
The butterflies weren't the problem. The jet lag was.
I had just flown into Melbourne after having an amazing Thanksgiving with my family in Lisbon. Jet-lagged. Exhausted. But I figured it was fine—I'd pushed through fatigue before. I knew the material.
I was wrong.
Standing on stage, staring at the slides, my mind was blank.
Nothing came to mind.
The words on the screen were all I could get out of my mouth.
Word. For. Word.
Full robot mode. In front of 600 people.
I was horrified. I watched their faces change—from confusion to boredom to scrolling on their phones. I couldn't stop it. My brain was running on fumes, so I just kept reading the screen to burn the time.
Fight-or-flight mode kicked in. And flight won.
I barely mumbled something at the end about “that's the key takeaway,” then hauled my butt out of there before anyone could ask questions.
I will never forget that keynote. It was the worst one in my life. I felt horrible. These people flew in from across the country. They gave me their time. And I gave them a robot presenter reading text off the slides.
Even as a veteran global keynote speaker, I froze.
It wasn't just exhaustion. I had worked through that before.
Something weird happened before I got on stage. I started to second-guess myself. Why?
I was determined to find out and never ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.