Dec 17, 2012 | Communication, Marketing, Sales
Everybody, well almost everybody, uses Powerpoint. Some use it well, many use it poorly, and some are just appalling.
We have all sat through that presentation by somebody we thought had something to say, and they said it all on packed, almost illegible slides, which they then read to us!
Sigh!
So here are three simple, practical steps to take to make a boring presentation engaging, assuming of course that what is to be said has merit in the first place. No way to make a silk purse…………
- Use big fonts, the bigger the better. You therefore cannot get much on a slide, so need to distill the information down to the idea you are trying to convey. If you cannot distill the verbiage down to a few words that is the core of the message, work on your message, not the presentation.
- Use photos, drawings and graphics that convey a message, one per slide. As above, plus it gives you a visual hook onto which to hang a story. There are millions of images on the net, there will be many that convey the core message in a memorable way, you just have to find it.
- Do things in threes. For some reason my psychological friends can probably recite, our brains work in threes, we can remember three, and sequences of three, using this innate ability helps to organise your thoughts and presentation, and creates a flow for the audience.
If Powerpoint no longer does it for you at all, eventually the world does move on, then something like Prezi evolves, and simply makes the old stuff look, well, old.
Nov 29, 2012 | Leadership, Management, Strategy
We measure return on the capital investments we make, there is an extensive, well understood, widely used set of tools that offer a framework for the calculations, most of us would be lost without them.
However, whilst we all know in our guts that there is a set of practices that together we would call great management, and the businesses they run are better than those run by “ordinary” management, there are few tools available. Trouble is, articulating what make great management has been a qualitative process, significantly informed by hindsight.
So what are the characteristics of superior management?
Seems to me there are three characteristics, that are all the result of extensive sets of individual and group behaviour:
- A well executed strategy that differentiates in a manner customers value
- The management team is a cohesive, but questioning bunch of trained, intelligent people who have a strong sense of team competitiveness. This characteristic is reflected in the groups that exist at all levels of the organisation.
- There are appropriate measures that drive continuous improvement throughout the organisation
For comparative purposes, the Worldmanagementsurvey.org site carries an extensive database with the results of a multiyear, multinational academic survey that offers an opportunity to benchmark management performance. It offers an opportunity to start the process of identifying the behaviours that lead to superior performance by management.
Nov 26, 2012 | Change, Collaboration, Leadership, Social Media
What you do, say and think is no longer private. Our lives are opening up to scrutiny as our previously private data moves into the public domain at geometric speed. Much of being human depends on our ability to forge relationships with a few people based on dreams, problems, challenges, and attitudes that are shared with a small group, often only one person.
Radical transparency is the new reality of privacy where the notions of privacy as they have applied in the past to individuals and institutions are simply no longer relevant. It seems absurd to me that we still have regulated privacy in situations where there is a clear benefit to that community to remove it, such as in the case of contagious medical conditions, and whilst we shake our heads at the photos our kids (grandkids?) put up on facebook, that is the new reality.
This change happening around us is emerging as one of the most radical social revolutions in history. How are we, and our institutions going to deal with the absolute ubiquity of information?
Over the last decade, we have effectively given away the assumption of privacy as we understood it, surely the challenge now is to figure out how to manage the new transparency rather than doing a “Canute” about it.
This notion is engaging greater minds than mine. Part one of an email conversation between a couple of the real thinkers in this area, Clay Shirky and Don Tapscott, appeared recently in the Atlantic. It deals forces of change unleashed by the collective intelligence of the net, the 4 broad principals of the internet age, Collaboration, Transparency, Sharing, and Empowerment, as outlined by Don in his June 12 TED talk.
Part two of that conversation examines the impact of the information revolution on the Arab Spring, and its wider implications, demonstrating again, the 4 principals at work .
Radical transparency is a part of our world now, it cannot be undone, so our corporations, institutions, and every individual need to respond to this new reality.
Nov 22, 2012 | Communication, Innovation
Innovation is all about seeing beyond the obvious answer, making the connections others miss, recognising cause and effect relationships differently.
Most also accept that with training, our bodies perform better, we run faster, further, jump higher, etc.
Surely it is the same with our brains? The more we stretch the boundaries in our nuts, the better we become at doing it. Therefore, it seems to be pretty sensible to do some training. The cryptic crossword in the local paper, deliberately inserting yourself into situations that are different and uncomfortable, and even, yes I am assured by my 30 year old son with a couple of degrees, playing some of the more creative video games (cannot bring myself to do that one).
I often start a workshop, presentation, and even casual conversation with a conundrum of some sort to try and get the juices going, so these two posts from Holly Green are gold.
Nov 21, 2012 | Collaboration, Innovation, Leadership, Strategy
“The harder I work the luckier I get”
I’m not sure who said that first, but it is certainly widely agreed, absolutely true, and therefore almost a cliché.
The more ideas, the more the variation in the background, training, and attitudes of those exposed and asked to think about problems and opportunities, the greater the chance someone will see something new. It makes sense therefore to increase the diversity of people thinking about any problem or challenge, as their diversity brings different experience, perspective and understanding to bear, and can create connections not seen by others.
Discussion needs to be stimulated and encouraged, curated if you like, a hothouse for ideas and experiments, where every trial that does not work is one more way that we know does not work. “Edison’s law.”
The new collaboration tools of the web are fantastic, a breakthrough for innovation, but they still do not come close to the potential of motivated individuals exchanging ideas and views in a relaxing, but stimulating face to face environment.
Serendipity happens after the work has been put in, not before.
