Category: Miscellaneous
Since PowerPoint 1.0 launched in September 1987 it’s grown to become a staple in our daily business life. It seems a meeting isn’t complete without a projector and a screen. At CRA we don’t always believe there’s a need for PowerPoint (sometimes uninterrupted dialogue is more powerful), but we do believe if created correctly, PowerPoint can be extremely helpful in illustrating your thoughts.
I’m sure many of you have witnessed a time when a presentation caused confusion and actually spoiled the main message. I thought about this as I read The Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, and Jill Butler. The book touches on principles of design that apply to everything from everyday computer programs to the not-so-everyday nuclear power plant, Three Mile Island. Below I’ve listed the book’s top design tips for a successful PowerPoint presentation.
1) Color. The color you use should serve a purpose: “to attract attention, group elements, indicate meaning, and enhance aesthetics,” the book explains. Use color in moderation, and limit your color choices to five (which is the number of colors the eye can process in one glance). For simple, successful color selection, stick with the primary colors.
2) Framing. Think about the order of your presentation. To make sure you tell your story in the best order possible. Think about how the audience will see and hear your story. Graphics, text, and background information can powerfully alter how people view your presentation.
3) Ockham’s Razor. Ockham, a medieval friar and scholastic scholar, is credited with the idea that when given a choice between functionally equivalent designs, the simplest design will be chosen. This means simple designs are favored over complex designs. While this seems like common knowledge, I believe it’s the number one cause of “death by PowerPoint.” We want our presentations to be flashy and attention-grabbing, but in reality the clutter makes the presentation less effective. When in doubt, stick to basics.
4) Picture Superiority Effect. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. Pictures are “generally more easily recognized and recalled than words, although memory for pictures and words together is superior to memory for words alone or pictures alone.” Audience memory increases even further when words and pictures are used together. With this in mind, you can emphasize key points incorporating pictures and words together to gain the highest level of audience recall.
5) Readability. I think the book explains this best, “It is a common belief that complex information requires complex presentation. This is not true. The most complex information requires the simplest presentation so that the focus is on the information rather than the way it is presented.” Avoid acronyms and jargon.
Avid CommLog readers know this isn’t the first time we’ve written about PowerPoint. To refresh your memory click here and here and view some of our other posts about PowerPoint. With these tips in mind, hopefully, we can all avoid “death by PowerPoint” and be more successful communicators in the long run.
Have you considered gearing up for your next speech by having a couple of cocktails while working on your presentation? Or, have you considered having a few drinks to ease your anxiety the day before a big speech?
Research on speech performance in the past has mostly focused on writing, speech anxiety, practice, and motivation. A new study conducted by R.K. Mitchell and L. Nelson has turned these studies upside down by focusing on the effects of drinking alcohol in the five days prior to a speaking engagement.
In this study, the negative effects of drinking prior to a speech outweigh all of the positive effects of writing, practicing, reducing your anxiety, and your motivation to perform well. This study shows a strong correlation: the more alcohol consumed in the five days before a speech, the poorer the speech performance. There is no clear evidence at this time as to the number of drinks or the frequency of drinking that will have a negative effect on performance, but there is evidence to show a correlation between the two.
We may want to take this into consideration before a speaking engagement. If you would like to know more, you will find the full research article under the title:
Don’t Drink and Speak: The Relationships among Alcohol Use, Practice, Motivation, Anxiety, and Speech Performance, found in the May issue of Communication Research Reports by R. King-Mitchell and C.L. Nelson.
(For access online, a subscription is required)
www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a778590849~db=all~jumptype=rss
Much of the ongoing dialogue among internal communicators suggests that a key trend for the future of the function is outsourcing, unless, and it’s a big “unless,” the function can clearly demonstrate a convincing return on investment (ROI). In other words, if your function isn’t making money, then you’re a cost – and costs get cut.
There is certainly enough evidence for this to be taken seriously. But let me suggest a counter-trend: internal communications will become increasingly valued as the internal execution arm of the chief strategy officer.
Never heard of the chief strategy officer? Maybe you already have one, but under a different title (researchers found more than 90 title variations for this role[CRA1] ). If you don’t have a CSO, it’s quite possible you will soon. The role is appearing with “increasing frequency,” according to the authors of the article “The Chief Strategy Officer,” in the October 2007 edition of Harvard Business Review. (Please note: you may need a subscription to read the full article.) http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0710D&ml_page=1&ml_subscriber=true
Whatever the title, the CSO role’s responsibilities for strategy formulation and execution entail heavy communications: clarifying the strategy, gaining commitment to it, and driving change to accomplish it. Smart CSOs are going to want and need the communications function close at hand.
Evidence for these trends remains anecdotal, but the experience last year of three communication functions in three different organizations in one city proves instructive:
- At an internationally renowned consumer-packaged goods company, internal communications and PR were moved from HR and Marketing respectively and consolidated directly under the chief strategy officer.
- At a troubled national health care concern, all communications were outsourced to a PR firm.
- At a global leader in “convenience retailing,” communications were also outsourced to a PR firm. The company then appointed a chief strategy officer who soon brought the entire communications team back inside the company as full-time employees.
The best CSOs recognize that their business success is built on effective communications. That recognition offers communicators the opportunity to spend less time trying to prove they’re relevant to the business, and more time achieving business results.
While many organizations block access to sites like MySpace and Facebook due to concerns about productivity and security, one organization encourages the use of Facebook as a way for their employees to get to know each other better and to promote communication across their offices.
It’s an interesting twist and a practice that might be easier for some industries to promote. Here’s a link to a full article on the topic.
In the business of baseball, it’s just as important to manage key relationships. While baseball fans in Philadelphia are happy the Phillies made it to the Playoffs for the first time in 14 years, NY Mets fans are upset about their team’s year-end meltdown. In an effort to manage the negative relational and financial impact of the disappointing season, Mets leadership sent this letter to season ticket holders. I think you’ll agree that it’s a great example of proactive and effective leadership communication:
Dear Mets Fans,
All of us at the Mets are bitterly disappointed in failing to achieve our collective goal of building upon last year’s success. We did not meet our organization’s expectations–or yours. Everyone at Shea feels the same range of emotions as you–our loyal fans–and we know we have let you down. We wanted to thank you for your record-breaking support of our team this year.
Equally important, Ownership will continue its commitment in providing the resources necessary to field a championship team. Omar will be meeting with Ownership shortly to present his plan on addressing our shortcomings so that we can achieve our goal of winning championships in 2008 and beyond.
You deserve better results.
Many thanks again for your record-breaking support.
* New York Post: Oct. 2, 2007
For those of you who struggle to create unique, interesting presentations, we’ve talked a lot about presentation design (see here and here). The basics: each presentation’s content should be inherently interesting or important to your audience. Also, your audience’s information needs should dictate your presentation’s content.However, engaging audiences with your presentations often requires one more element: an interesting visual data display. Here’s the rub: you’ll likely think your data sets, by virtue of findings, are meaningful. But consider your audience’s understanding of complex ideas or messages. For example, many business-oriented presentations endlessly cite statistics, ROI, growth, and more to prove the value of projects or initiatives. But to most audience members, even basic percentages, currencies (foreign or domestic), and raw numbers aren’t meaningful without bases for comparison.
That’s where visual data becomes important. And I’m not talking about PowerPoint’s extensive selection of clipart. Pretty pictures simply aren’t valuable if they don’t speak 1,000 words—at least. You have a limited amount of time to make your points, and visuals should help you make them. Consider this: if your visuals are meaningless to your audience, you might as well put together a 12-page position paper and post it to your Intranet.
Also, your audience should have no questions about why you choose any single example or illustration in a presentation. Visuals should make difficult points clear, and illustrate your strategic messages in ways words simply can’t.
We’ve extolled Edward Tufte for his data design genius, but a number of great resources are available. One in particular, IBM’s Many Eyes, provides a website where you can load nearly any kind of data, choose a format for display, and the result? A simple, visually appealing way to display numbers, percentages, ratios, etc. The site will help you to add texture to simple, bivariate data, as well as lengthy spreadsheets’ worth. Granted, you may need to understand data analysis to use this site effectively, but it’s worth a look when you’re building presentations… Check out some examples here.
No matter what kind of resource you choose, be sure to think through your visual presentations. Treat them as what they are: crucial opportunities to reach your most important stakeholders. Done well, these assemblies will help build awareness of your strategic messages, while intelligently-presented data will drive critical messages home.
I’m often asked to collect feedback for leaders. And a large part of my day is spent telling people things that others are unwilling to say (as you can imagine, some days are better than others). But there’s a critical moment in most of my conversations (and these are my better days) when, after hearing what people think of them, these leaders realize that their good intentions are often lost in translation.
In that moment, they start to realize how important the little things really are. And by paying more attention to how they say what they say, they’ll get better results. The CEO of a major Wall Street firm who was begrudgingly put through the feedback exercise recently described his enlightened reaction after hearing his own feedback, and I think it’s worth sharing:
“ …. The first thing that struck me is that leaders are defined by how they are perceived as much as, if not more than, by what they actually do. Public perception almost entirely depends upon getting people both inside and outside the organization to understand where you’re going and why. I became acutely aware of every leaders need to carefully modulate every personal interaction, in terms of not only the quality of the information being transmitted but how it is being perceived …”
In reading The Chairman’s Letter in this year’s IBM annual report I was struck that it’s an excellent example of several principles of effective internal leadership communication:
- Alignment of the “strategic message hierarchy”: The letter creates a clear and credible link between IBM’s mission, vision, strategy, initiatives, and metrics.
- The use of narratives to frame the strategic context: The headings of the information dashboard about halfway through the piece, when strung together, tell a story that frames the strategic context of the business and the 2006 results (and even better, the report offers quantitative support for each):
- Several years ago we saw change coming.
- We remixed our business, to move to the emerging higher-value spaces.
- And we decided to become a globally integrated enterprise, in order to improve IBM’s overall productivity and to participate in the world’s growth markets.
- As a result, IBM is a higher-performing enterprise today than it was a decade ago. Our business model is more aligned with our clients’ needs and generates better earnings, profits and cash.
- And that has enabled us to invest in future sources of growth and provide record return to investors … while continuing to invest in R&D — more than $28 billion over the past five years.
- Strong information design in presenting the numbers: Both the dashboard and the financial table would make Tufte proud.
- “The expert’s voice”: Sam Palmisano sounds more like an adviser than an executive … a solid choice for a document meant to reassure and offer guidance.
You may read the entire report here in several formats.
(Disclosure: Members of IBM’s internal communication team are friends of the firm, though they weren’t contacted nor consulted in my writing this post.)
Around Valentine’s Day, we hear more about relationships than any other time of year. Interestingly, the Wall Street Journal provides two interesting articles on relationships and technology. One story, its not u, focuses on ending relationships electronically– primarily through email or text messages. Its author calls the technology-arbited breakups, “techno brush-offs.”
Each article makes the point that our interpersonal relationships are changing for the worse. Tough conversations once reserved for face time are absorbed by people’s familiarity with—and inappropriate use of—technology. One woman, the recipient of a combination-text/email breakup, considers such a message “a product of our times.” “‘I hate what this has become,’ she says. ‘Every computer and cellular phone needs a little instruction manual to let people know what can be sent in a text, what can be sent in an email, what can be said on the phone, and what must be said in person.’”
Yet the appreciation for interpersonal interactions conflicts with our everyday tendencies. We check and respond to email constantly and depend on the web for to-the-minute information on both personal and professional topics. The WSJ article, Deleting the Habit, talks about the similarities between technology reliance and drug addiction. “Addicts” have a hard time unplugging during once-sacred quality time– on vacations, during family time, and even while honeymooning.
Global Ideas Bank, a London think tank, holds an annual “International Internet-Free Day” to encourage people to participate in face-to-face interactions. The Bank’s director said to WSJ, “It’s good to speak to people.” But getting off the Web grid encourages people to do things that seem archaic to techno-junkies, like reading newspapers, having face-to-face conversation, or making phone calls from (gasp!) land lines while sitting still.
Though the content of these articles isn’t groundbreaking, few of us relate these key learnings to our professional lives, like unplugging during meetings and conferences, and having phone or face-to-face conversations rather than instant or email messaging. Using one-way communication technologies, like the latter, cuts valuable interpersonal cues from our interactions. And like breaking off love relationships via email, breaking tough or sensitive news to colleagues is more difficult for recipients when they can’t hear your voice, ask immediate questions, or see your facial expressions.
We advise clients to consider the type of medium through which they send messages. The concept of media richness relates to the amount of feedback a medium affords to a sender or receiver of a message. Lean media are best suited to deliver specific, tactical, or historical information; while rich media are better suited to deliver strategic, persuasive, or emotion-invoking messages. And conversations with your colleagues, direct reports, clients, or leaders often fall into one of these three categories. Highly charged topics simply require face-to-face discussion, or at least a phone call. (Read more about CRA’s take on media richness here.)
So let this time of year remind you to move away from the computer, put down the cell phone, and take time to talk to your colleagues, friends, and family. Communicating this way may take more time (and sometimes gumption) on your part, but your relationships will more likely thrive and endure as a result.
(Read here about techno brush-offs and here about technology junkies. WSJ.com registration is required.)
Internal communicators are all too familiar with business buzz words—shareholder value, excellence, compassion—intended to engage employees. On the contrary, organizational strategy is often unclear to employees who don’t understand how their work fits into the mission. A Harvard Business Review piece (subscription required) explains that the “sweeping, general language” used in many organizational strategies and missions disconnects executives from staff. Authors and brothers, Chip and Dan Heath, explain this phenomenon as “The Curse of Knowledge” and offer the following definition:
Top executives have had years of immersion in the logic and conventions of business, so when they speak abstractly, they are simply summarizing the wealth of concrete data in their heads. But frontline employees, who aren’t privy to the underlying meaning, hear only opaque phrases. As a result, the strategies being touted don’t stick (HBR, December 2006).
To reverse the “curse,” Heath and Heath suggest making strategic messages sticky. Sticky messages are relevant and clear to staff, and encourage them to (1) remember what they learn about their organization’s mission, and (2) carry out that mission daily.
This is consistent with what we advise our clients. Perhaps more simply put, all strategic messages must be:
- Universal
- Simple
- Broad
- Actionable
- Accurate
- Explanatory of what you’re doing and why
The challenge, then, is how else you can increase stickiness. Like the Heath article, a chapter of Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point (which we recommend highly) identifies ways to do just this. For illustration, Gladwell presents two empirical studies of some of the least sophisticated, least biased audiences: preschoolers. From those studies, Gladwell highlights that people pay attention, and subsequently learn, when they understand the messages they hear and see. Taken together, Heaths’ and Gladwell’s arguments make a point that all employees echo: organizational strategies should appeal to common sense.
So how can you reverse the curse of knowledge? You can read more on sticky messages here, and consider these final tips. First, give people concrete language—even if it seems overly simplified. For example, “raising the value of our stock” is more concrete than the ubiquitous “creating value.” Next, the component parts of an organization’s strategy should be intuitive. Anyone can understand a phrase like, “Satisfy our customers’ needs.” The ways staff can satisfy their customers, of course, can be more complex and specific to each department or role. And finally, construct memorable stories that illustrate your organization’s values in action. Base the stories on what’s familiar—using well-known parables or examples of your staff doing great work—which will help eliminate business-speak, and create usable context for your staff.
