I took accounting in college, got a C, and was grateful to make it through.  It just didn’t come easily.  At 19, I couldn’t envision a time when I would need to read a profit and loss statement.  The best thing about it was it was a summer course so I could study at the university pool, and the boy who volunteered to tutor me was pretty cute.

It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy courses outside my major, journalism.  I loved biology, for example.  My semester project was to research and write a vegetarian cookbook with original recipes (fairly radical back then.)  I discovered that I detested the lentils and tofu.  It’s a texture thing.  I grew up in the Midwest where we eat steaks and burgers for breakfast.  But I digress.

As I look back, I realize that that I’ve always liked learning through experience.  History is replete with stories of people who did, too.  When Apple’s Steve Jobs dropped out of college he enrolled in a caligraphy course, which he credited with helping him to develop the deep appreciation for design that now characterizes every Apple product.

Some things you can learn in a book, others you can’t.  The other day, a friend emailed to ask me to recommend some books on public speaking.  She was distraught about a business presentation and writing a to do list - did I have suggestions?  I told her to forget the books- and get busy speaking.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m the author of two, soon to be three books, so I believe in reading. But books are just the first step in speaking well.  Get your head out of the book and get up on your feet.  Schedule a talk.  Practice.  Take  a course.  Give another speech.  Take another course.  Join Toastmasters.  Give another speech.  Speaking is something you learn by doing.

Many of our clients love to read.  So do I.  But this proclivity can be an obstacle if you don’t take the next step.  At a certain point, reading one more book won’t help you improve one iota.  

Every leader I’ve ever worked with who is a great speaker tells me they started speaking early in their career - and kept going.  You can learn later in life.  You just need to put some muscle into your plan.  If you do the same thing with the same result, it’s like going to the gym and doing curls with two pound weights; no matter how much time you spend, you’re never going to have Popeye arms.  No pain, no gain.  Raise the stakes.  Then, practice like mad.     

It’s also important to get clear about the difference between “preparation” and “practice.”  Preparation is the thinking and writing and editing of your script and materials such as slides or handouts.  Practice is getting up and saying it out loud.  Many times.  Many, many times.  

Sometimes clients will say, “I’ve been working on this for weeks,” or “I’ve spent hours on this presentation.”  However, upon further examination of the above statements, I find they’ve been dinking around with the slides, rejiggering the bullet points, creating four quadrant process visuals that you couldn’t read with a magnifying glass.  As far as “practice?”  The night before the presentation, at 9 pm, they get in bed to review the slides, until their loving spouse or significant other roles over and begs them to turn off the light.  This, my friend, is not practice.  

So if you love books, keep buying books for heavens sake.  Support your favorite authors.  Just don’t stop there.  As Gloria Estefan sang,

Get on your feet

Get up and make it happen

Get on your feet

Get up and take some action  

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“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”

-Steven Covey

It’s that time of year - corporate strategy meetings, team off-sites, global leadership meetings, board of director meetings; they’re coming fast and furious.  If you’re like my clients you are preparing at least one presentation, probably a few.  Some of my clients go into this process like a Chinese fire drill (which I realize isn’t exactly politically correct - I looked it up - it’s a pejorative expression originating from the 1900’s referring to a bucket brigade that is accomplishing nothing) so if I’ve offended you then so be it.

Now I love all these clients but let me explain what I mean by the fire drill.  One of them emailed his 14 page draft with about 17 slides at 10 p.m. the night before our 7:30 a.m. coaching session.  Another sent five separate documents related to her presentation with detailed notes five minutes before our 1-hour coaching call.  A third guy just went MIA.  We were scheduled to talk the day before a ”test run” with his boss and I never heard from him.  Three days later he replied to my voice mail with an email apology - he was sorry but it hadn’t been ready, he thought it was okay, not sure, would like to talk… but was heading out for a long weekend… catch up next week… 

Let me take a step back and say it’s fine to do some things “just in time.” If you’re asked to bring a salad to the neighbor’s backyard barbeque Saturday night you can run to the grocery store at 5:45, whip it together at their salad bar and show up looking like a hero.  However, preparing a presentation is not like making salad.  You can’t just toss it all together the day before you speak.  And once you’re past the third grade, the dog ate my homework excuse just doesn’t fly.   

Whenever clients fail to meet a deadline or go right up against it, you can take it to the bank - they’re doing the same thing at work.  With a coach, they’re just flushing company money down the drain.  At work it can be their careers.  In their wake - they create chaos.  It doesn’t just hurt them - it hurts everybody who is waiting on them and counting on them.     

We all have pressure.  Unless you work for the Save the Endangered Caterpillar division of the Environmental Protection Agency and your hours are 9 to 3:30 and everything can wait, you have deadlines. If you’re not busy you’re dead.  For the sake of your career and your sanity it is time to stop pretending that you can do it all.  You have to know your priorities and be ruthless about how you use your time.        

The other day I was on the phone with a client and I recommended he make a list.  1 through 10.  What are you priorities?  What’s the next action step?  When can you complete it?  How will you know you’ve succeeded?  It’s easy to do this with a coach or mentor but you can also do it for yourself.    

1. priority -activitiy - deadline- measure of success

2. priority -activity - deadline - measure of success

3. priority - activity - deadline  - measure of success

etc. 

It’s simply amazing what happens when you write things down.  Writing engages your brain, the list stimulates creativity and checking things off gets you pumped.  You don’t need a ten hours of strategic naval gazing introspection to get your priorities on a piece of paper.  They’re in your head anyway, for heavens sake.  It took my client ten minutes.   

Of course, if making a list was the start and end of success then we’d all be Warren Buffet. Once you have the list, you have to take one more step.  SCHEDULE those activities ON YOUR CALENDAR.  What gets scheduled gets done.  You know this because if you switch over to your own calendar right now you’ll see a bunch of things scheduled today.  You’re an efficient person.  these will get done.  

So stop trying to rearrange your to do list.  Put the important stuff first.  Get it on your calendar.  Stop the madness, set priorities and put down your bucket. It’s spilling all over the place. 

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“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”

-General Stanley A. McChrystal, leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan

One of the most widely-emailed stories last week was an above-the-fold, color-splashed New York Times PowerPoint diagram portraying the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan.  As the NYT observed, it looks more like a bowl of spaghetti than a strategy.  As I read it I thought about the old black and white war movies in which war generals drew battle diagrams in the dirt with a stick.  Boy we’ve come a long way, haven’t we?  

Computer generated charts, graphs and bullet points are now apparently a running joke at the Pentagon.  Military communications are dominated by unruly PowerPoint presentations that are stifling real communication.  “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” said General H.R. McMaster. 

I don’t know about you but I’m not laughing.  I’d like to know that when those brave guys and gals go out on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan that everybody’s got the same clear plan in their heads.  I don’t mean to imply that the military considers this a laughing matter.  High ranking military officials have serious concerns that PowerPoint is damaging critical thinking and thoughtful decision making.  But the horse is out of the barn and nobody knows how to corral it back inside.

Kinda makes you think, doesn’t it?

Bad PowerPoint is such a running joke in American business today.

Maybe lives aren’t at stake, but your business is. 

The other day one of my new clients came in to prepare for a presentation he was giving in London to about 400 global leaders in his company.  He’d delivered the same presentation to small groups; but it was going on the big screen and he wanted to “check the slides” before he left.  “Minor adjustments,” he said.

“More like a PowerPoint grenade,” I replied.

One structural diagram had so many boxes and messages in the smallest type I’ve ever seen (is there a “nano-point”?) which you couldn’t read with a magnifying glass.  Another had six text boxes each with 12 bullet points.  I’m not kidding. 

Here’s what I’m going to propose.  Copy my article, or just cut and paste the photo and send it around your company today.  Ask for comments.  Get people talking about PowerPoint.  Then send me your comments.  I will post them in the blog.  

By starting the conversation perhaps you can make some changes.  It’s time to start using visuals to make things easier, not harder, to understand.  It’s not too late to win the battle in business.  

Pass the sauce, please.

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If you had already completed your budget planning for 2009 around October 1st, you are probably bemoaning the fact that you’ve had to throw out your budget and start over.  When the  stock market started plummeting and economists began their doomsday predictions of a prolonged recession, the orders came down to cut back.  So you know you can’t go into the board of directors or the senior management team with the original presentation on your budget for next year. 

At the same time, you’ve put a lot of thought and careful planning into the budget for next year.  You know the rationale still exists for many of their projects.  In fact, some of these projects seem absolutely critical, given the challenges ahead.   

 The question is how should you adapt your presentation when the financial landscape shifts?  Should you throw it out and start over again?  The answer is yes, and no.  Of course you have to demonstrate that you’ve tightened your belt, eliminated excess, done without, and become more efficient.    However,  your budget should have been clearly linked to important strategic initiatives that lead to revenues and profits.  If it was, make your case.  Do your homework and have the courage to present your projects and advocate for them in the best interests of the company.  Cut back in some areas and then take a stand where it will make a difference.

If you’ve prepared a plan that focuses on the company’s most important objectives, it should be easy to present a clear and compelling case.  You need to tie the investment directly to growth, profitability, productivity, efficiency, competitive advantage, and new opportunity.  If you do this then it should be easy to demonstrate measurable ROI.

 When we help our executive clients prepare presentations, we always start by thinking about the end “user.”  That is, who is listening to your presentation?  What would persuade them?  What are their concerns?  Forget about the beautiful slides, graphs and charts.  Put it all aside and write down the top five questions on the minds of your audience.   Then be sure you have great answers. 

For example, when you walk in the door to make your presentation, they might be thinking:

·         What do you want to do and why?

·         Can we get by without it?

·         How does it help us right now?

·         What’s it going to cost?

·         How can we do it cheaper, better, faster?

If you don’t answer those questions right up front, you will lose them.  Get right to it.

So my advice is, before you blow up your presentation, see what you have that works.  Then, write down the top of mind questions.   Answer them with compelling facts.

FI you don’t do this,  you’re doomed to fail.  If you do, you may walk out with exactly the budget you hoped for, or something close.  As the song goes, you don’t always get what you want.  But if you try sometimes, you get what you need.

For more tips on how to prepare important presentations, click here

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