Archive for February, 2010
effective presentations start with preparation
image by misssluluu, flickr artist
i was recently in an internal marketing meeting with one of the higher ups in the firm (when you’re a lvl 2, pretty much everyone is “higher up” than you are..), and — not to brag at all, but — i nailed it.
while i had some high esteem leaving the conference room, i thought to myself on the elevator: “gee, i sure hope to god i did nail my presentation; i’ve been giving pretty much the same brief for a year now.” bringing a new capability to market takes a while, and i’ve probably sold my work to both internal and external stakeholders at least once a month since i started working at booz allen last february. that’s certainly no short amount of practice time.
so the other day when i was giving my brief about how we came up with the idea, and how all the different pieces all come together to create a singular picture, about all of the benefits that can come from using this tool, they were the same words that i’ve said a hundred times over. that’s where i think the lesson comes in at:
effective presentations start with preparation.
reduce your frustration: stop using email
[i started writing this post as a comment on megan murray's blog post, actually, but it quickly grew into something more.]
i find email to be a burden to my work.
it’s the hammer in the tool box. the problem is, not every situation is a nail. sometimes you need a screwdriver, and other times you need a wrench. but we’re so dependent on email (i blame ms outlook for it) that we all try hammering in screws and bolts — even when we know it doesn’t work.
even though we have instant messaging, and even though we have enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs and more, we time and time again return to email.
what if your phone calls were like your social media?
image by hensever, flickr artist
i’ve made this argument before: social media is social. you can’t just broadcast information; you have to listen to what’s coming back at you and respond.
recent conversation at work brought up the notion of pre-planning tweets for a client’s conference — or having pre-approved topics that one could tweet about. while some purists might find fault with that, i don’t.
there’s no problem with pre-planning your tweets because the tweet is just the medium. if you or a client are attending a conference or some kind of convention and you want to make sure that you capture certain topics or information in your tweets — go right ahead and do it. would you make a phone call to a friend or a client without first planning that also?
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