When people see an engaging speaker on stage, it is easy to underestimate how much thinking happened before the talk began. The delivery looks natural, so we assume it was effortless. The speaker seems confident, so we assume the message was already clear. The ideas feel simple, so we assume they were simple to create.
Usually, the opposite is true.
The most natural talks are often the most carefully shaped.
Not manufactured.
Not over-rehearsed.
Shaped.
In fact, most of my work with leaders comes down to the same challenge: taking something complex and making it accessible without making it simplistic.
In my book Impact, I describe that shaping process as the Path to Impact: Simplify, Transform, Perform. First, we simplify so the audience can access the idea. Then we transform the message so they can understand it and relate to it. Then we perform it in a way that creates connection and engagement. All three matter. And when you watch a great speaker, you are usually seeing all three working together.
I had the privilege of applying that process with health futurist Zayna Khayat, Ph.D. to prepare for Impact Talks: Picture of Health. But the story actually started before our preparation did.
One of the things I’ve noticed about great thinkers is that they rarely answer the question in front of them. First, they decide whether it’s the right question.
The original question we were exploring for the event was: Given that healthcare in Canada is delivered provincially, what would it take for it to truly work across provinces, professions, and the people who rely on it?
It was an interesting question. But as a long-time healthcare leader, Zayna had heard countless versions of it. If we wanted to create a truly meaningful conversation, she pushed us to ask something more fundamental:
If we were rebuilding Canada’s healthcare from the ground up, what would we build?
This is one of the things I love about Zayna. She is brilliant, yes. But also highly discerning. She was not simply deciding whether to accept a speaking invitation. She was asking whether the talk would be part of a conversation worth having.
With the question modified, Zayna agreed to join us as a speaker at Impact Talks alongside three other strong leadership voices: Dr. Jennifer Zelmer, John Tirmandi, and Mike Cloutier. Each brought a different perspective on healthcare, systems, and transformation.
And our coaching work began.
Shaping the Content
Zayna is a seasoned speaker. She has deep experience in healthcare innovation, a strong point of view, and the kind of energy that makes people want to listen. She did not need help finding something to say or delivering it well. But our work together helped hone her content and thinking into something the audience could follow, remember, and feel in her 15 minutes onstage.
In our first sixty-minute session, Zayna brought decades of knowledge, conviction, statistics, analogies, policy context, and experience inside one of the most complex systems in the country. Her ideas covered a wide range of topics: the history of Canada’s publicly funded healthcare system, the limits of the current model, the role of prevention, the possibilities of AI and digital infrastructure, the question of patient choice, and the future of universal access.
Zayna knows enough about healthcare policy to fill a semester-long university course.
We had 15 minutes.
This is where the real work of preparing for a talk begins. How do we take everything she knows, everything she cares about, and everything the audience needs to hear, and shape it into a short talk people can follow? Most experts don’t struggle because they lack insight. They struggle because they have too much of it.
That is where the Simplify part of the work begins.
One of the biggest myths about communication is that simplifying means dumbing something down.
It doesn’t.
In my experience, simplifying is one of the hardest intellectual tasks there is.
It does not mean making the idea smaller. It doesn’t mean making the idea so simple that anyone can understand it. And it does not mean sanding off the intelligence or nuance. It means creating access. It means doing the disciplined work of finding the purpose underneath all the material.
So, just about 2 months before Impact Talks, we started with three key questions: What is this talk really about? How is it different? Why does it matter?
With Zayna, those questions helped us define the talk’s core architecture. The “what” was the broken promise of universal access: a healthcare system built around a social contract that no longer matches many people’s lived experience. From there, the talk became organized around three shifts.
First, the model of care: moving from endless repair to upstream health.
Second, the experience of care: moving from fragmentation and friction to flow, supported by AI.
Third, the role of the citizen: moving from a one-size-fits-all system to greater optionality.
These were not small ideas. Each one could have become its own keynote. But together, they gave the audience a path through the argument. Zayna was not simply listing what is wrong with Canadian healthcare. She was helping the audience see why we are trying to run 2026 healthcare on 1984 infrastructure.
And so the spine of her aptly named talk, “Running 2026 Healthcare on 1984 Infrastructure,” was born.
Making the Ideas Memorable
Once the structure was clear, our next job was to transform the message. In Impact, Transform is where we take a simplified idea and bring it to life through story, analogy, language, humour, and imagery so the audience can understand it and relate to it. This is where a talk moves from clear to memorable.
Zayna used the analogy of education. She asked, “Imagine paying taxes and then being told there were not enough teachers, schools, or buildings for a teenager to go to high school. In healthcare,” she argued, “Canadians have been tolerating a version of that access problem for years.” That analogy did a lot of work. It made the healthcare access problem familiar, emotional, and impossible to dismiss.
The “1984” frame mattered too. That was the year the Canada Health Act was enshrined: the foundation of Canada’s promise of universal access to medically necessary care. It also gave Zayna a vivid way to illustrate the mismatch between the system we inherited and the outdated infrastructure that still shapes how care is delivered today.
And then came the image of the fax machine. In Zayna’s talk, this was not just a funny detail. It became a symbol of a system still relying on outdated infrastructure to move information between care providers. It made the abstract visible.
This is where the transformation happens.
The structure is in place. The core idea is clear. But the talk isn’t ready yet.
Now we start listening differently.
We listen for the stories that carry emotional weight. We pay attention to the moments where someone’s energy shifts and their eyes light up. We look for the examples that make people nod because they’ve lived something similar.
We search for the analogy that suddenly makes a complex idea feel obvious.
We look for the image, phrase, or moment that helps an audience not just understand an idea, but feel it.
And we become ruthless about what stays and what goes. A detail might be interesting. It might even be entertaining. But if it doesn’t deepen understanding or strengthen the message, it probably doesn’t belong.
This is the work of transformation. Turning information into insight. Turning expertise into a story people can carry with them long after the talk is over.
In one of our final sessions, near the end of the process, Zayna made an important point. If healthcare is going to transform, it won’t happen because institutions decide to change. It will happen because citizens begin to take greater ownership of their health. As she often says, people need to become the CEO of their own personal hospital.
Somewhere during one of our later sessions, a strange connection popped into my head.
Hip-hop.
Stay with me for a second.
Hip-hop didn’t begin with record labels, media companies, or established institutions. It began in neighbourhoods, on street corners, and at block parties. People created something because they believed in it. The institutions came later.
The more we explored it, the more it fit.
Partly because Zayna had already taken the audience back to the 1980s. But also because I knew something else about her: in her spare time, she’s a DJ. Yes, Zayna is super cool.
Her point wasn’t really about healthcare. It was about how change happens. Sometimes transformation starts at the edges. Sometimes people move first, and institutions follow.
Zayna decided to walk on and offstage to Grandmaster Flash, and closed her talk by sharing how hip hop moved from the margins to the mainstream.
That’s the kind of work that happens during transformation. You’re not looking for a story, analogy, or example because it’s clever. You’re looking for something that helps people see the idea more clearly. Something that makes complexity easier to understand and easier to remember.
Engaging the Audience with Authenticity
Clarity matters. Memorable language matters. But a talk also has to feel alive. It has to feel true to the person delivering it. Otherwise, even a well-structured talk can become forgettable.
When Zayna stepped onstage, she did not ease quietly into the 1984 idea. She embodied it. She came out 1980s style, wearing Reebok Pumps (yes, she still has them!) and a tracksuit, and opened by literally pumping up her shoes before talking about running 2026 healthcare on 1984 infrastructure.
The room laughed. More importantly, they got it before she even explained it.
That worked because it felt like Zayna. The 1980s theme was hers. The Reebok Pumps, the playful energy, the willingness to make the room laugh before asking it to think seriously about healthcare reform: that was all Zayna.
Those details were not presentation tricks added from the outside. They were authentic to her.
This was Zayna embracing the Perform part of the Path to Impact. Performance is not about pretending. It is about showing up with enough confidence, clarity, and humanity that the audience can connect with both the speaker and the idea.
Putting it All Together
I do not expect everyone in the room to remember every detail of the healthcare policy Zayna shared. But I suspect many people will remember the feeling of seeing someone show up in full 1980s style to make the case that Canada is running modern healthcare on outdated infrastructure. They will remember Zayna’s 1980s Reeboks, the fax machine, Grandmaster Flash, and the possibility that change can begin with the people before the establishment catches up.
Zayna already had the expertise. She already had the credibility. She already had the presence, personality, and point of view. The preparation was about shaping all of that into a talk with purpose: simplifying complexity, transforming the message, and performing it in a way only she could.
Zayna didn’t need more expertise.
She didn’t need more credibility.
She certainly didn’t need more opinions about healthcare.
What she needed was a way to help the audience carry the idea with them.
Because that’s ultimately the test.
Not whether people applaud.
Not whether they agree.
Not even whether they remember every detail.
It’s whether the idea stays with them on the drive home. And beyond.
That’s impact.
You can watch Zayna’s Impact Talk here.
Want to learn these skills and apply them to your own leadership?
Register for our free webinar, Executive Impact: Communicate with Clarity, Confidence, and Influence, happening on June 29th at 12pm EST. Attendees will have the opportunity to apply to be selected for a free 1:1 coaching session with a Kindler and Company coach.
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