How to evaluate your slides

Here is a presentation on how to evaluate your slides in simple and easy to remember steps...

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4 deadly communication mistakes

The 4 deadly mistakes...

1, Start a presentation by opening PowerPoint or the mail by typing into Outlook/ Lotus notes
2. Merge bits and pieces from presentations/ notes made by others
3. Expect the presentation/ communication to be bad
4. Use complex charts, tables, words wherever possible

Why are we calling these common preparation steps - mistakes?

Preparation Step: PowerPoint or Outlook are not software that aid thinking. You are busy adjusting font sizes and colours - not thinking about what needs to be actually said.
Even worse than this is merging presentations or others work. This is like trying to create the best car in the world by merging engine from BMW, doors from Renault, windows from Hyundai. It just does not work!

Expectation Step: Your expectation that the communication will be bad reflects in your words, body language and voice. After that, you can’t blame your audience for believing you!

Delivery Step: Complexity is a great way to turn off audiences. No one who sees a 10 X 10 table is interested in reading it, even if their lives depend on it. Straining the brain is hard work! Keep your words as well as charts/ graphs simple enough for audience to understand easily.

In brief, it is best to prepare your material separately in a notepad (by hand or software) and keep things simple. With all that preparation, you will be convinced yourself that your communication is good and your audience will believe you too!

Is your communication sharp enough to boost your career? Test yourself here

There is a well known story about a junior executive at IBM.

His senior manager who attended his presentation was impressed by his sharp communication skills. The junior executive was “noticed” and immediately promoted over higher-ranking people in the audience.

What this story highlights very clearly is the importance of sharp communication skills at the workplace. Think of what a great advantage sharp communication skills present, if you polished up your natural speaking and thinking style!

How sharp are your communication skills and are you on the right track to get “noticed”? Here is a 5-question quiz to evaluate your self...

1. When I am in a meeting and say something…
a) I speak a lot since I know the subject quite well
b) I speak little and others stop and listen to what I am saying
c) I speak little and prefer to observe

2. When a meeting is being held
a) I am always there. I love meetings
b) People always request me to be present
c) I hate meetings

3. When there is a presentation to be made
a) By my position in the company, I am usually asked to say something
b) People usually ask me to make it
c) I don’t like talking to large groups and avoid it as much as possible.

4. I love making presentations to groups…
a) Audiences adore me and allow me to talk for hours.
b) I enjoy the way my talk influences audiences and touches their lives.
c) When they keep quiet and don’t ask questions

5. Preparing for a presentation…
a) …is very easy. I just say everything I know about the subject.
b) …takes a lot of planning for presenting since I give a lot of insights.
c) …takes a lot of time to put together and edit slides especially from other presentations.

So how do you score on this quiz, what type of communicator are you?

· More of As: "Jagged communicator" : You are self-assured and use communicating as a means of impressing others. You will be noticed anywhere but are you sure you are making the right kind of impression?

· More of Bs: "Sharp communicator": You are absolutely on the right track. You enjoy communicating with people. You put thought into what you say and are on the fast track to be being established and noticed.

· More of Cs: "Blunt communicator": If you would rather be shot with a bullet than take the stage, then don’t worry. 90% of the world is with you.

Those in “Blunt” category take note… most people at your workplace judge you by your communication skills including your senior management. They spend most of their day in meetings and presentations and end up making judgments about others right there. They infer that good and clear communication skills are backed by a clear thought process. They mentally “earmark” these people. When the next meaty project or tempting assignment comes up, the “earmarked” sharp communicators get these assignments. So if you are in the ‘jagged’ or ‘blunt’ communicator category, don’t forget the importance of communication skills as you plan your career moves.

Creative Slides

Want to show that you are different, more creative or interesting?
The problem is that many people feel they may need to learn coding or flash programming to do this. No fear, you can do this using some simple techniques.

Here is a small video on learning. While it talks about why learning is important and about Metamorph, it also gives you an idea of the kind of videos you can make -
either to distribute among your team or use in a presentation with a background score or narration.

PowerPoint has an excellent feature to save slides as JPG in the "Save As" option. The slides in my video too were imported from PowerPoint to Microsoft Movie Maker and then transition effect was added there. You can take a look at it here..

Micorsoft Movie Maker is very simple to do and easy to use. It is not very time consuming either, adding just 10 minutes to your work time. The software is also usually installed with Windows.

Another option, is that there are a number of photo album making software like Wondershare Photo Story or even Microsoft Photo Story (available for free for download). These softwares are also very easy to use and intuitive as they are meant for anyone to use. They allow you to add text, music and some amazing transitions . You can save them as EXE or video, distribute them on email, put them up on a shared server or even upload them to a website.

Since all these options are easy, simple and take very less time, they offer a great way to make your slides look different and interesting.

Simplicity in Slides

Imagine you had to give a presentation on the difference in Western and Eastern cultures. How would you make the slides for these?

Here are some pictures that arrived as forward by email and stayed forever in my memory. These icons were designed by Liu Young who was born in China and educated in Germany.
You can see them for yourselves below. Even if you have seen these before, I would urge you to look at it with fresh eyes; the eyes of a person interested in learning more about creative slide-making.

Look out for the following:

1. Simplicity in conveying idea clearly
2. Pictorial representation which makes it unforgettable
3. Colour coding to differentiate between the cultures
4. Humorous touch in some of the aspects and emotional as in roles of elderly
5. All the ideas that the designer wanted to convey are covered.

Blue --> Westerner

Red --> Asian/Chinese

Life and Role of the Elderly




















Way of Handling Problems















Transportation

Concept of Punctuality

Wonderful aren't they?

Kill the bullet and other boring things

Sites like Presentation Zen already talk a lot about how slides should look. So I won't go into that. But let’s talk about making slides a little creatively to alleviate audience boredom. They tend to get fed up looking at the standard bullets and zooming animations. So, how do we work with PowerPoint more as a blank canvas, open to creativity rather than using it as a templates wizard?

It is the standard layouts in PowerPoint that makes slides look the same. It stifles creativity. So the next time when you start a new PowerPoint presentation, try the following procedure:

- Got to the slide master and delete the standard text box- which contains the same old bullet points and standard formatting
- You are left only with the Title master. You can play with this and place it anywhere or change the fonts and font colours. You can easily increase the font size to anything like 60-80.

The advantages are as follows:

DIFFERENT: This gives a good starting point to work on the presentation without being bound by its standard templates. Having a single Title box also eliminates the tendency to put in bullet points or copy sentences from documents.

ATTENTION GETTING: Each slide starts to look different – thus making the audience notice that something interesting is happening. The title box can be moved around in your normal slides and placed anywhere- experiment with placing them to the left/ right/top etc. especially when you have an image accompanying the words.

MINIMAL: As the font size is quite big and space available less, you are automatically forced to pare the words to a minimum and make them more dramatic.

Finally, if you MUST absolutely put in multiple points on a slide, avoid the tendency to use the bullet points. Try and use the something different in the form of a puzzle with multiple pieces or multiple thinking bubbles or Pyramid or steps or a using a picture with different parts.

Burgerizing your presentation

Have you ever eaten in McDonalds or KFC or a Pizza hut in India? Have you ever tasted these abroad? In India, McDonalds offers Salad sandwich and Aloo Tikki burger. There are people who clear up the tables after you. You will never find so many people working in a McDonalds anywhere else. Neither will you get anything but a blank stare if you ask for a veggie burger. A Pizza Hut still sells Pizzas but do not offer a Malai Kulfi or a Paneer topping anywhere else outside India.

These are all international organizations that try to have as much consistent products and delivery styles as possible. Yet there is a lot of difference in the experience and taste in each of these restaurants. This is because while people’s needs are basically the same, i.e. everyone feels hungry and needs to eat, their taste buds demands different kind of food. The varied cultures also dictate the range of food offered.

Imagine if you have to travel to Timbuktu or Texas or Tokyo to make a presentation. How difficult can it be? Do you think everything is ok, as long as they speak English? It is like food, they also eat Pizzas but their Pizzas are customized to their tastes. So you need to change your speech like the pizza and burger outlets have. The effort to customize is yours since you are the “foreigner” in their midst and if the audience does not understand you, you are losing in the bargain.

Here are some things you would need to check before crossing the seven seas…

- Simplify English: take out all the jargon, complex sentences, words that can have more than 1 meaning from your speech and slides. This might involve a lot of rework and practice. But if you want your audience to understand you, the effort to bridge the gap is yours. For example, ESOP is a word common in India signifying Employee Stock Options. But others do not understand this word. You may also need to tone down your humour because that is one thing that does not translate well.
- Localize: If you are telling any stories, using any names or locations try to localize it – so that your audience can relate to you easily. It also shows the effort you have put in to reach out to them.
- Speak Slowly: Your accent is probably quite new and strange and your pronunciation very different. So start slowly with information that is not so important so that your audience can acclimatize their ears to you.
- Ask questions: This is the best way for you to know their jargon, their problems and also understand if they are following what you are saying.
- Dress appropriately: Take their cultural niceties into consideration. Ask in advance. Wearing a sari is fine in India but it is NOT formal wear anywhere else.
- Be sensitive: You might try to contact colleagues and friends who have been to the country before to understand any social fine points. For example, in the U.S your audience may be quite sensitive to politically incorrect terms like “chairman” because they now use “chairperson”. They try and use genderless sentences (without using he or she). Making adverse statements about race or disability or hurting sensitivities in any other way can not only alienate your audience but also get you arrested. No, I am not joking!
So ask beforehand. Also remember that their body language and common gestures may be different to yours. Pointing a finger at someone for example can be considered extremely rude in one country and “ok” in other countries.

All said and done, remember your audience may have interacted with a number of people from outside their country. They may be willing to overlook small lapses as long as they know you have made the effort to connect with them.

How to cross the road and other learning

In this blog, I will be talking about the importance of Structure in presentations

As a child when you crossed the road, you were told to “look right, look left and look right again” and wait till there is a green signal for pedestrians to cross. This was your parent’s way of providing you with a formula to cross the road in a safe manner. For adults, crossing the road becomes an ingrained activity. We hardly blink before taking on half a dozen BEST buses zooming down the road.

As children, crossing the road is fraught with danger. Children are more likely to dash across the road without thinking. This is the reason why parents give the formula or the “structured approach’– to reduce the chances of making a mistake.

Structure ensures that we take all aspects into consideration. This is one of the reasons why so many managers and economists advocate their models – be it BCG growth matrix or Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. These structured approaches give a good starting point for analysis and ensures that you do not miss out on anything important.

So now let me apply this simple example of crossing the road, to one important thing that you do at your workplace: making presentations. Do you have a structure in place to create and deliver them? Is it still an ad hoc activity where you put together stuff from old presentations or documents? What do you do when you are asked to make a completely different type of presentation – like address your flagging sales team and motivate them?
This is where structure aids you. You have a starting point and you know you will not miss out anything really important. You also have the confidence that you are somewhere close to the mark because you have used a tool created from experience.

There are 2 ways to get this structure in place. The first is to build it slowly from your own experience of giving and attending speeches. The second is to use a tool provided by someone else – like a trainer or a book.

When you use a structure provided by external trainer or a book – thousands of others may have access to the same resources. Does it mean that everyone will start making presentations exactly the same way?

Let us go back to the simple example of crossing the road. Some people may not mind making a running out in front of a car just 3 feet away. Others may wait till there is nothing to be seen 20 feet on either side. Even with a structure in place, people twist it around to suit themselves. The structure makes it easy to understake a new acivity the first time. Once people get used to it, they start playing with it based on their speaking style and reaction from audience. An experienced speaker thus ends up with his/her own unique style of presenting, even if he has started with a canned structure.

Slide inspiration

Slides are visual aides to your speech. If you make speeches regularly or making presentations are important part of your life, you could be wondering how to make the slides more engaging or interesting.

If you are committed to having creative slides- then there is no dearth of ideas. Just look all around you. You would find inspiration just about everywhere!

Let us talk about Photos - looking at professional photos is a great source of inspiration.

Colours

(Sample photo)

They give you ideas about colours – what colour combinations go together. For example: the photo of a house – has green grass, and a brown house. Green and brown are good contrast colours. They are laid against the much lighter background colour of sky blue. So instead of just wondering, you know for sure that these colours go well together. You can readily use these colours as part of your presentation fonts and backgrounds.

Emotions
Green and brown in the photo also seems bright and cheerful. Look at any of the grayscale (black and white) photos. They give you a feeling of timelessness, of seriousness or convey strong emotions.

So what do you do when you want to convey emotions of seriousness? Use black and white images and grayscale slides!

You can easily use the colours in a photo also as part of drawing right emotions from your audience when you make a presentation. If you are familiar with any photo editing software- like Photoshop or even MS Paint- you can open up the photo in that software. This allows you to get the exact colour values using the eye dropper or pick colour tool.

(This slide uses similar colours and placement

as the sample photo above)

Placement

What else can you learn from photo? The great thing about professional photos is that the photographer is trying to get the viewers attention. The same as you – as a presenter - are trying to do. So a photo composition – how the objects in the photo are placed can also give you some great ideas.

In most photos, the main object is rarely at the center of the photo. The photo is primarily composed of horizon or a road stretching and the key object is placed off- center to the right / left. This is because of rules in photography called Rule of 3rds and Golden triangle. Without going into details of these rules, the basic concept is this is as follows:
Amateurs normally photograph with the main object placed right in the center. This is considered ‘visually uninteresting’. An off-center placement draws your eyes towards the object as well as gives an idea of the overall environment.

For example, if you see a photo of a man running, the man would be placed off-center to the right. This gives space for him to run towards the left. If there was no space for him to run to, a person viewing the photo may may feel uneasy, while not being able to correctly pinpoint the problem.

This concept can be used in 2 ways. The first is when editing photos to add to your presentation. The second is when you want to make your presentation layout more interesting. Instead of placing a picture right in the middle you can place it off-center.

Check the example of a photo colour and composition used in a slide above.

These are some ideas we can draw from the colourful world of photography. There are more areas for inspiration like advertisements, movies, product packaging, and web sites. Any such ‘artistic’ effort which tries to catch audience attention and leave behind an impression on its audience can give you creative inputs for your slides. So look around you- inspiration is everywhere

Stand up and Speak for yourself

How many people feel that presentation skills are important?

How important do you think it is? Is it a life changing skill or just so-so important?

Think of how many times you actually need to make a presentation as part of your job… it could be as part of any of the following examples:

In any training, you maybe called to stand up and present your point of view

When there are some new people who have joined the organisation, you are called to introduce your organisation to them.

You need to impart product knowledge or service skills to others

Supposing you are a manager, you have a team and need to motivate them
Assuming that you do not yet have a team, once you do…you need to keep them motivated, knowledgeable and presentable – remember they are going to learn from you

You tell your supervisors about all that you have achieved

There is a new idea or initiative from yourself or your group that needs to be presented and sold to a wider audience

You need to present in a conference or seminar where there are colleagues and peers

Your job role involves making presentations to customers.

In every one of these occasions and many more that are not covered – you are giving your audience a VIEW TO YOU. You are telling them in so many ways – by your gestures, by your content, by the way you carry yourself – who you are and what you know. Your audience forms an impression about your capability based on this.

Standing up and speaking in any forum – is granting you a golden opportunity to tell others something about yourself: to show yourself in the best possible light, to highlight your skills, knowledge and attitude.

Can you imagine what would happen if each one of the people in the audience came to you and sought your personal opinion and tried to judge you? Speaking up – whether you are doing it formally in a seminar or privately with your team - is important. Because it gives you a form to say something about yourself ( without seeming like an advertisement) - it can change your life and career for the better!

I would be interested to know your views on this subject...

Be the Amitabh of Presentions

One of the least talked about aspects of making a presentation is the presenters VOICE. This- is what a speaker uses in making his speech. The slides are just a visual aid to his speech. Yet, people don’t think about their voice when speaking.

Can you imagine Amitabh with a squeaky voice – he would never have had the same impact on screen! Listen to him carefully in an advertisement or movie. He lays stress on particular words; he says certain words in a certain way; his voice rises and falls; he whispers; he shouts to show his emotions. In short, he emotes through his voice.


If a speaker talks slowly and tiredly…then you would fall asleep. Imagine if the voice is too high pitched and irritating. Some invisible button in your ears would turn off.

So what can a person do if their voice is naturally boring or low or squeaky? Think of the radio jockey or the TV or movie stars. Are they ALL born with great voices? They are NOT. They train in voice and diction because they know that they want to enter the particular field. Bad voice projection can KILL a good presentation. If you make only a few presentations a year, then you can manage by
- Drinking plenty of liquids before your presentation
- Avoiding oily or too cold food
- Doing simple breathing exercises to relax.
Relax your voice during long training sessions by taking breaks or allowing your audience to speak.

Ever tried recording yourself? Try it and you may be surprised by what you find. You would discover what kind of words you tend to stress on, whether your voice has life (or is dull), whether you use a lot of ‘eeer..’ ‘ right..’ and other fillers…
You can work on the obvious problems you find and polish the good aspects – and see the results in your next presentation. Your audience would be sitting up and taking notice, because you are showing emotions – showing that you are interested in what you are saying.

For those who feel they need more assistance with their voice, voice coaching classes can help. Such classes are attended by people (Executives, Managers and CEOs) who make a lot of critical presentations. There are a number of them available in Mumbai. They are not just for call center executives or drama artists. And NO, you do not need to acquire an American accent…
Good diction is NOT about making you 'talk posh'. It is about clarity - making sure what you say is heard.

Doing productive timepass at work

After I wrote the last blog, I started reading this book- Sacred Cows Make the Best Burgers: by Robert Kriegel,David Brandt.

They talk more in depth about what I said in the blog– about how people don’t take time to switch between different sides of their brain- right and left (creative and analytical sides). They provide an example of a guy who plays golf in office every time his brain feels overloaded.

The authors put their finger on a very common problem in the corporate world today- overwork in a changing environment. When people try to do too much- they do too little and they do it wrong.

They advocate a kind of 80-20 principle. That is, make a list of all the things you need to do and knock off the bottom 20%. That way you feel you have less to do. You also, take more care in doing your work without messing it up.

Take Sushma, for example. What does she do when she finds work load is too much? She throws herself into her work like an athlete attacking the high jump pole. She emerges at the end of the day, only 50% of the work done but 110% exhausted. Some of it is very low quality work, because she is thinking of what she needs to do next…

Instead, what if, as soon as the extra work appears on the horizon, she just stops work? Is that a good idea? No…its a great idea!

She would probably play a game of FreeCell or drink some Masala Chai or play golf or read forwards in her mail box…what ever relaxes her. Not all of it at once and not for too long…just enough so that she feels in control and not “panicky”.

While her right brain is creatively engaged in “timepass” activities, her subconscious is solving the problem. She realizes that if she does jobs B and D assigned to her today, 80% of her work would be done. A, C and E can easily be done later. In fact, she can assign C to someone else. A is not at all urgent and E need not even be done!

This E in fact is the “sacred cow” the book talks about. An activity which has been done for so long that people do not even question it. It may be outdated and a complete waste of time. A process which wastes a gazillion man hours or a review that takes ages and produces no result…
Eliminating such “sacred cows” can free up time to do more productive activities like –making customers happy, getting a new sale or contributing to the profits.

So now, you can also justify why you went out to watch a movie in the middle of work. "I was working using my subconscious" you can say...

Are you an extremist at work?

For leftist , extremist workers who need to wake up the right side of the brain....

When you need to prepare a document or a presentation or a speech or a report, what do you normally start with?
1. Open up the relevant software and start putting in the matter directly
2. Figure out the logical sequence and flow and then start off
3. think over what needs to be done
o then figure out the logical sequence
o then start typing

If you answered 1 or 2, did you ever find that you missed an important aspect? That is because it is the right-side that is able to see the ‘whole picture’.

The right is the more creative side –something we may not use as much as the left – which is the logical analytical side. A good professional needs to be able to use his ‘whole brain’ properly. If you are working in a team, it’s the right side, that allows you to relate to and understand what others are saying. If you are a manager, the right side is what you will use to see the ‘whole picture’ when trying to solve a problem or learn something new. If you are in senior management, the right side understands creative thoughts. This is why someone understood what an employee meant, when he said, 'take the lifts outside the building so that it doesn't occupy space inside'. The fancy glass pod style lifts was born from that idea.

As it is, we all know that human beings use a very small part of their brains in their entire life time. Academics and work normally uses one small part of the brain – on the left side. Hidden Talents has a nice detailed break up of the components of the brain for those who are interested.

Gocreate has a set of work outs to simulate the right side of the brain and About.com has a list of qualities which go with each side of the brain.

Any ideas on what Manmohan Singh does in his spare time? How does he recharge his brain? No need to ask any one how Bush spends his spare time. Everyone knows he retires to his farm, goes fishing and has dogs. That is probably because our society seems to view taking time out as a sin! Taking time off is an important part of his life. Apart from using both sides of the brain, don’t forget, we need to recharge the poor thing too!

Powerpoint templates

Free powerpoint templates to download and use as you like...

Click here to go to resources page and download

The Saturday morning critic

Saturday mornings are always interesting. That is when the newspaper carries the weekly movie review column. Mostly the analyst expert cribs about various things. I always wonder, if the guy who made the movie or acted in the movie reads it. It is not of much use because while it criticizes, it doesn’t say what needs to be done to make it better – the next time. A person reading it is not learning anything except that it is a ‘crappy’ movie.

In your line of work, you too must be getting some documents or presentations or proposals to review. Does it ever bog you down, thinking…’Am I adding any value ?’

Let’s see if we can learn anything by using the movie example. What do they mainly write their review comments on?

- Introduction / Rating: They start with the name of movie, main actors, director etc. Normally stars (or other symbols ) indicate rating at a glance for those who don’t want to read through.
- Match Expectation: Expectation from the director or actor. Then it outlines basic story line
- Comparison: Compares with other movies of the director/ actor
- Examining components: Reviews songs and acting of primary actors
- Conclusion: concludes with whether you should watch the movie or not.


A good review should more or less contain the same things. What is additinally important is the way you convey it. This is because your ‘movie director’ will read the review and take it personally.

You are not interested in publishing the review in Saturday edition. You are interested in providing feedback to someone on their work. This feedback will help them put in what they have missed or add something to make it better. It will tell them what they have done right. So how do you go about it….

1. Match expectations
Before the review, let’s step back. You have been sent a project report for review. Before even opening the file or document, imagine what you expect the contents to be. If the document turns out to be quite different, you already have a main review comment.

2. Compare
Compare the information and details with previous reports or projects. Does this look as professional, does it contain as much data, is something important usually seen missing, is there anything that can be added to make it better? Comparing is a way to easily evaluate anything because it gives you a base. If the other person is also aware of what you are comparing with, they may be able to understand better and use your review productively.

3. Examine components and indicate specific improvements
If the report is broken up into 3 sections, break up your review and comments also accordingly. First off this tells the other person that you have taken the trouble to read all the sections. Second off, this also indicates where improvements need to be made. A generic comment that, you should provide more examples is not as useful as ‘Provide example in section 3.0 as it is a very complex situation.’

Don’t be afraid to provide a negative review comment. The person who sent it to you for review will appreciate it if you explain why you think it ‘could be better’ with a good reason. For example, ‘Using a graph instead of a table in section 4.5.8 will help to highlight the problem area.’ Or ‘Use spell check since there are a number of spelling mistakes like ‘bargin’ instead of ‘bargain’ in section 2.4.1.2. In a nutshell, don’t criticize, but provide specific comments with reasons.

4. Start and end properly

Of course, don’t forget the introduction and conclusion as this will complete your review comments. Summarize your comments at the top and indicate findings at the end.

This short write up has focused on providing review comments. This is a very common task that comes the way of many managers. Not all of them do it well, even if they have been doing it for a long time. Hope this little article helps you. At least, you would be reassured that you are doing things the right way.

Take the ZZZZ out of work

• Are you so bored by your job that you fall asleep as soon as you reach your seat?
• Do you feel it is so routine that you can work with your brain shut down?
• Do you complain that there is no excitement unless Ash and Abhi choose to visit your office?
• Are you so predictable that you wear white shirts on Mondays, blue on Tuesdays…?

Well then, what are you waiting for? GET up and take charge of your own work place! You are the only one who can do it. So, others wouldn’t appreciate it if you went to office dressed only in ostrich feathers tomorrow. No, they wouldn’t like it if you hung up red and green polka dotted curtains near your desk either. Nope, not even if they are small dots. Not even if they are squares.

Then, what is this creativity all about? It’s about doing things differently. Yep, start wearing those flowered grey shirts on Mondays. Wear purple ties with them. Now you are already feeling different, because you are dressed different. Okay and when we are about it, let's change the font too. Who said I should use only Arial or Times New Roman fonts?

No, I will not use the Windings font because you won’t understand what is written.
So we have seen 2 principles for being creative already:
1. Do things differently. Start with dressing differently
2. Don’t be so different that it is pointless

How can I be creative, you ask? I am not a painter or an artist, never will be, and never want to be. This creativity is not about art. It is not about understanding art. No, not even modern art, though that takes a lot of imagination and an ability to tell stories without blinking.

Let’s take an example. Do you think making tea is an extremely boring activity; just boil water, add tea sugar and milk and your tea is ready? What if we add a dash of creativity to it? One way to be creative is to not make tea at all, but Chocolate milkshake topped with ice cream. But let’s stick to basis here. You can’t really have Chocolate milkshake twice a day everyday. Ok, may be you can, but let’s not argue on that.

Let’s stick to tea. Take each ingredient: water, tea powder, sugar and Milk. Can we replace any of them so that we can enhance the taste?
- What about water?
o Canned water? Doesn’t sound interesting.
- Tea powder
o What about a flavored tea? Earl gray or mint flavor?
o What about adding that flavor yourself? Lemon grass? Cardamom? Ginger? Mint? Sounds good….
- Sugar
o What about honey?
o What about brown sugar? ( It is less “processed” sugar so it is better for health)
- Milk
o What about no milk at all? Your tea would look like beer!
o What about adding a dash of lemon instead.

With this simple exercise, we have already identified 10 different ways of making tea. Imagine how many other ways there are to do the complex tasks at your work place.

So now, we have seen how to start being different.
3. Take a task and break down its components. Change those components one by one and see what works.

Yes, take those headphones to office and listen to music tomorrow or take that great photo of holiday memories to brighten up your little corner. Great! You are already thinking creatively. Apply this simple principle to a little more to your work. Preparing boring reports? Can I jazz up those reports with a chart this time? Can I print those reports on yellow coloured paper? Can I summarize it and make it easier for the other person to understand? Can I get someone to program a macro in excel that makes the report for me?

Once you have started the process of being different, don’t stop. If you made mint tea once and then always make mint tea, you have once again fallen into the rut. So keep things changing. You will be drinking Chinese herbal green tea one day or finally realize the value of the good plain old “chai”. Great! You now know what works best for you.

To summarize:

-Know that things need to change and that you are going to change it
-Dress differently. It reinforces what you are about to do
-Identify the task that needs to change
-Break up that task into its components
-Start experimenting being different
-Don’t be so different that it is pointless
-Keep working on it, till it becomes a habit

Making your Presentation forceful

Making a presentation is all about putting things in logical order and presenting to an audience. Right? Not necessarily.

Let’s look at the problem of a manager in Atlas Manufacturing Co.

Vishwas Kohli is a manager in a company. He has a presentation to make this week to some seniors on an idea his team has proposed. He is nervous. His alumni classmate, Ankit Patel is a public speaker and trainer. He decided to call Ankit up to ask him for some tips. After the formalities, the conversation is as follows:

“Ankit, I need some advice. Do you have some time?”

“Go ahead. What’s the issue?” Ankit encouraged him.

“My team has come up with a innovative design change in the product. I need to present that and I am nervous. “

“I see…and…”

“Some of my guys have put together a PowerPoint presentation. But I am not convinced.”

“Then it’s a good thing you decided to speak to me. If you are not convinced, how will you convince your audience?”

“That’s a valid point. I never thought of that. What should I do then?”

“First and foremost, who is your audience?”

“It will be mainly senior management and my guys of course!”

“Hmmm…so Senior management is your target audience. Do you know what they are looking for when they spend an hour listening to your presentation?”

“Bottomline I guess!” Vishwas said laughing.

“All of them would be looking at the bottomline?”

“No…of course not! That is only what Rupesh Garware will look at. But Pereira will be there. He is the Sales and Marketing man. He would be interested in how it will sell. Devan is the manufacturing head. He will reject the idea if it is not easy to manufacture or will take lot more time and material….Ganesh…” Vishwas listed down everyone expected.

“…and is your presentation having material to convince each one of these decision makers?”

“I don’t think so. The presentation only talks about the change proposed. My guys are all kicked about how creative it is and so have put in a dozen slides on that.”

“So your gut feeling was right. What interests your guys will not “sell” to your audience. That is the key. When you make a presentation, think about two things
a) who is your audience and
b) what is your objective i.e. what do you want them to take away or decide based on your presentation.

Once you have these 2 in mind you will always be on the right track. " Ankit clarified confidently.

“I need to start rethinking what to put in this presentation...” Vishwas scratched his head.

“What’s the plan?”

“Simple. First, I will list down my audience. Second I will put down what each one will need to be convinced of.”

“Good plan. You will definitely feel more confident presenting.”

“I feel more confident now. I just need to build around the presentation my guys have made.”

“Let me know how it goes!”

“Will do that! I know this presentation is going to be a hit…”
Vishwas was all fired up as he went to an empty meeting room with a large white board. It was just what he needed.

INDEX

The contents of this site are classified below :

Presentation Skills - thoughts....

*NEW Get Noticed with Powerful Presentations: Why should presentation skills matter to you?

Evaluate your slides: A presentation on making slides memorable and audience-friendly.

Is your communication sharp enough to boost your career? Take the quick test now!
Simplicity in slides: Example of how difficult concepts are represented pictorally

Kill the bullet and other boring things: The first step to start making more creative slides

Burger-izing your presentation: Presenting to foreign audiences needs to be customised like burgers are to different countries.

Stand up and Speak : Are presentation skills important?

Slide inspiration: Getting inspired by photos for creative and emotion-getting slides

Talk the talk: Be the Amitabh of Presentations

Tips for preparing presentation

How to start on a presentation: Making presentations more forceful

Powerpoint templates : Free PowerPoint templates to use as you like.


Management
Motivation through humor : How to be a medicine man

Time Management : Creating and sticking to a schedule

Sacred cow hunting: About doing productive timepass and some comments on the book

Appraisals: Treating the appraisal nightmare

Managing team: At customer site

Quality: The quality attitude

Creativity : Adding creativity to work

Whole-brain thinking: Why right-brain thinking is essential...

Reviewing : A 'not so often 'talked about part of a managers job

Hope you find this site useful. Do feel free to leave your comments and suggestions.

DR. MANAGER: How to be the medicine man for your team ( without a Ph.d)

This post is about team management. If you are a manager who has recently been assigned a group of people and wondering what to do with them… or a manager who wants to be made to think....

Too many of my posts lately have been of a serious nature. It’s time to unwind and relax a bit.

Started to feel as if you are wasting time reading this article already? A bit of laughter does lot more. Consider these two case studies:

CASE A: Madhavan, the humorous
Madhavan, is a manager in a textile manufacturing company. Various floor supervisors report to him. He shows them smiling face. His main fault is that he gets tense when there are stiff deadlines to be met. But he encourages his guys to joke around, even in such situations. He takes all the floor supervisors out for a “cutting” tea when they meet their monthly deadlines.

When one of the supervisors tried to get workers to go on strike demanding better food in the canteen, Madhavan blasted the guy. Couple of days later, Madhavan was back to joking with the same guy and the incident was forgotten.

On Valentines Day, a supervisor had tied a dozen red balloons in the work area. Seeing this, Madhavan had burst out laughing. On the next occasion, that same supervisor was given the task of arranging the decorations.

CASE B: Prasad, the serious

Prasad is a manager in the same company. He keeps strict distance between himself and his subordinates. They are not allowed to smile or crack jokes in front of him. He thinks that it is insulting for subordinates to laugh in the boss's presence. He prides himself on his calm reaction to all news good and bad. When his supervisors meet deadlines, he calls them to his room and shakes hands with them.

When Prasad heard of the way Madhavan reacted to the red balloons, he said “my people have far more dignity than to do such things.”

NOW…
There is a new project coming up that has stringent deadlines. Remember I haven’t mentioned anything else about these two people – their educational background, the length of time they have been managers, their previous history of meeting deadlines, the kind of equipment they have…..

Which of the two managers, do you think, will be able to get their team motivated to achieve the target?

CONCLUSIONS

I am hoping and guessing you have said “Madhavan” because he has the right attitude to motivate his people. Given a boss who has a good sense of humor, subordinates automatically associate various other good managerial qualities to him. Remember, encouraging humor and bonhomie also makes any negative attributes seem less significant (Madhavan does get tense around deadlines!)

It takes time for a newly promoted manager who expected to lead a team, to adjust. No one takes to managing like a fish to water- because fish have always lived in water.
Management is a learning process and if a manger proceeds in the right away up the learning curve, he reaches a favorable point. That is, the point where his team considers him approachable, understanding and fair.

How can a manager be laughing and cracking jokes, you ask, when that manager is not naturally humorous? It is not necessary for the manager to be humorous. But can the manager encourage his people to be humorous- i.e. less stiff and formal and more open and natural around him?

If you have a team of 10 people, chances are that at least one of them is very humorous. Encouraged, this person will,
- act as a stress buster
- relieve boredom
- defuse tense situations and
- make the office a more attractive place to be.

Having found the joker in the pack, so to speak, your task as a manger, is to make sure those jokes are not offensive or interfering with work.

There are possible additional benefits to this. When people have less stress and feel that the atmosphere is open, they may be more productive, able to give more ideas and even undertake unpleasant tasks with good humor. Isn’t the idea of working on a holiday less frustrating, if other people at work were laughing and joking and working?

So go ahead, and be the medicine man for your team. Allow a dose of humor to take away the ills and chills of a workplace.

Thinking Quality

Ask anyone about a public service, and they will give you their free and incisive opinion about it. For example, ask them about the status of the roads. You will have to run away because they just will not stop complaining. They will condemn everything from the potholes, patchy repairs, the pollution and traffic jam caused by dug up roads, the condition during monsoon, and a hundred other things.

Let’s analyze this sample list of complaints:
- The potholes: caused by low quality material
- Patchy repaid work: leaving behind unwanted scraps, just addressing the specific part of the road with the pothole
- Pollution and traffic jam, dug up roads: carelessness about the people using the road, bad planning, closing off alternate roads at the same time
- Condition during monsoon: again to do with usage of low quality material that is unable to take the load.

Every one of these complaints is rooted in lack of two basic things:

- Quality focus
- Customer focus

The people who lay the roads are not bothered about quality or proper planning, because they are not bothered about how much the customers suffer because of their careless or money pinching attitude. They are laying the road, because they get paid money to do so.

It is easy to find fault with the public works department. That is because it is a problem visible to all and so easy to pinpoint. What about your customers? Are they complaining the same about the work that you deliver?

Now, think back to the work you do: whatever it is, running an organization or managing a team or driving a car. Think over the work your people do. Does this same attitudinal problem affect you or your team?

Here are some questions you can use to test yourself/ your team

1. When you deliver your product/service do you
a) wait till the customer tells you about a problem to fix it
b) do you take steps to fix any potential problems in advance

2. When the customer reports a problem, do you
a) Do whatever is required to make the customer happy
b) Address the customer’s problem, and put process in place so that it never occurs again. See if there are other related problems likely to occur.

3. When you offer more than 1 product or service, you
a) Leave it to your customer to figure out how to make these work together
b) You have done everything possible to be sure that they are complementary

4. When someone takes more time than the others to finish a project, or task,
a) He gets laughed at, because he is obsessive about being correct
b) Others are required to be as careful and obsessive about output

If you are answering with more A’s then you have the same problem as the Indian roads. If you have answered with more B’s, then you are on the right track. You are thinking Quality.
You are putting in proper process to reduce customer problems. You are encouraging people who are focused on doing quality work - less errors and less patchy fixes that come apart.

Do we really want to uphold the example set by bad road conditions? Are you or your organization still in that mode- the poor customer has to take whatever the organization chooses to give? He may not take it for very long, because, as we have seen before, without quality, there are complaints. Quality is in your attitude – see question 4 above. It reflects in everything you do.

There can be far more said on quality. But I will stop here for now.

Managing a team at the customer location

This is a case study:

Shyam Sundar (this name does not belong to anyone living or dead that I know of), was working in XOTIC Hardware systems. He was sent off to the customer's location abroad. He was pretty happy. He would earn in dollars, see new countries and it was like a promotion for him, he was going as a team leader.

The customer and the team members received him warmly enough. They briefed Shyam on what was happening. Shyam was determined that nothing should go wrong, because the responsibility ultimately rested on himself.

It turned out that things were not always so easy. If the customer was upset by the product features or delays he would blame Shyam. For the customer, Shyam was the person representing the company. He did not care if Shyam was not sitting and personally wiring together pieces of equipment. When his team members did anything wrong Shyam got blamed for it. Shyam had to accept all the blame quietly, because the project was running behind schedule.

It seemed to Shyam, working an 8 to 8 shift, that the number of complaints increased every month. He instructed his team to stop taking weekends off and start leaving late on weekdays to catch up. The customer would see how hardworking his team was. His team grumbled and did his bidding for a few days. One fine Sunday morning, however, he was the only one in office. He felt like his team had let him down. He started going to lunch alone and avoided time out with his team.

Shyam was sick of his team's behaviour and set up an internal meeting to coincide with the monthly get together with other Indians. He started to side the customer against his team. He was demotivated. He just wanted to go home. The customer’s voice and accent started to irritate him. His team started slacking off even more. Two of them actually quit and cited the reason for leaving as “Just too much pressure”.

The replacement arrived. It was a guy who was new to the job. Now, Shyam spent most of his time teaching the new guy. His other team members showed no initiative to help in anything. They seemed to take pride in making sure Shyam was perpetually embarrassed to meet the customer.

When Shyam returned home, his team was happy to see him get on the plane. They went to drop him off to be sure that he was going.

What happened here? Few simple words sum it up: Lack of Team management skills. When at customer location, under pressure, team leaders need to be able to stand back and take stock of how things are going for themselves. Customers have their own grievances and goals to achieve.
It is for the leader to view things in a more balanced way.

Shyam made many mistakes. Some of them are quite obvious. But, let's take a step further behind the scenes, and ask:

1. "Did Shyam know what was expected of him at site?"
2. "Was he trained in project and team management skills"
3. "Did he get adequate support and advice when he was there?"
   

This illustrative and purely fictional story is meant more for the bosses who send inexperienced people like Shyam to customer locations. Do people like Shyam, know what to expect, how to cope with stressful and demanding situations? They are left fending for themselves and have additional responsibilities thrust on them.

In a situation like this, the team leader needs to
- Manage the customer
- have excellent communication skills
- have good team management skills
- know when to escalate the situation to his bosses
- have project management skills
- even know how to be a buddy and mentor to new recruits.

With all this, he still needs to be able to take a balanced view of everything. If Shyam is sent to another customer site, is there any chance of his learning from his previous experience? In all likelihood, he will go with the idea in his mind , that customers will complain and team members will behave badly.

Without training before the event and support during the process, it is extremely difficult for the team leader to cope.

Appraisal Horror: Nightmare at work

Appraisal...does the word itself conjure up images of horror, disaster, headaches and story telling? A necessary evil..?? If you feel that way, then your team also feels the same. They know the injustice of it all and suffer silently or noisily. But suffer nevertheless. One of the important things that causes dissatisfaction and loss of morale is- the appraisal.

No, this is not about appraisal systems as such, how to set up a good system or how frequently it should be set up. This is aimed more towards a manager who has a team, and will need to conduct an appraisal, somewhere down the line.

If, as a manager, doing an appraisal is also unpleasant, then this is the right article for you. A guy in the middle, is in an unique position. He has unpleasant things happen to him from the top management and has to decide how to pass on this unpleasantness to people reporting to him. He has utilized his position best if he has learnt from mistakes his boss makes. If you are in such a position, have you ever tried listing down what it is, about your appraisal that makes it so bad?
Let me try and list some very common complains I have heard; do any of the following problems seem familiar?

- PARTIAL AMNESIA: The boss remembers only what you have done recently. He forgets that you had done that great job earlier in the appraisal cycle?

- PROMOTE YES MEN: The boss never bothers about what work you do. He just promotes those who pretend to do a great job and tell him what a great guy he is.

- MYSTERY OF THE RATING: He or she, just assigns a rating without really explaining why. You don't know from which hat the rating was pulled out of.

- BULL EXCUSES : Your boss owns that you did great work, but he just can't give you a better rating because of the normalization process. That process means that if he assigns VERY GOOD rating for a person, then he has to assign a VERY BAD rating to someone else. He is too soft-hearted to do that to anyone or is just telling you some of that stuff that comes out of the back of a bull.

- BACKDATED KRAs: Your boss says, YOU should have looked after so-and-so aspect of the job during the year - AT THE END OF THE CYCLE. Why couldn't he have said that before. How can he judge you on something that you didn’t even know you were supposed to do?
Did these strike a chord of deep sympathy within you? What if anyone from your team reads this, how would they feel?

Here are some simple tips on how not to let this happen to your guys....
1. Make a list:

List the thing that you dislike the most about the appraisal system. Make sure you don't repeat the mistake. Simple?? It is. E.g. I don't like my boss spending only 5 minutes at the end of the year explaining my mistakes or telling me what I did right. I would prefer if he told me right at the instant so I can remedy my mistakes immediately. Now, think, wouldn't your team also like to know as and when they do something wrong/great? Do correcting small behavior-related faults have one appraisal cycle gestation period…like a baby (9 months after)?

2. Note it down:

The good, the bad, the ugly. Note it all down. Open a notepad in the name of each one of your team. Periodically put down what they have been doing into it. E.g. Shiva managed to cross sell a product to a very difficult customer. He showed great communication and inter-personal skills. But he was very uneasy at the dinner table in the party hosted for them. Need to nominate him for the etiquette training. Next appraisal cycle, you have the whole appraisal ready with you.

There are so many additional benefits to doing this:

• You know the reasons you are going to give for the rating. No partial amnesia for you!!
• It takes less time per person, because you already have all the data. Projects or work don't stop during appraisal time. So get on with your other work.
• You can spend time explaining the reasons for the rating, citing specific incidents. E.g. I am giving you this rating, because for your role, the most important factor is being able to coordinate between Team A and Team B... so it will be clear that you are not promoting yes men.
• If asked offhand about suitability of your team members for a particular role change or promotion, you have the information - on the tip of your tongue.

Writing things down makes you conscious and aware of ideas existing vaguely at the back of your mind.

E.g. I recommend Ravi to be assigned to head this team. He showed a lot of
potential when we organized that large convention last month.

3. Tell THEM upfront:
If your organization does not have a system of telling people what is expected from their job or function upfront, then take initiative. Do it for your team. Tell them, what you expect. Sit with your boss and get the same done for yourself too. When you know what target has to be achieved, it is easier to achieve it! There is no use to anyone, telling after everything has happened: YOU SHOULD HAVE DONE THIS or I THOUGHT YOU KNEW!

4. and TELL them RIGHT...

Make sure you can evaluate your team on the Key Results you set. E.g. Mr. Khanna, you should communicate better this year, has no meaning. You can neither measure it nor can Khanna work towards this nebulous goal. Mr. Khanna, ensure that your team knows about all releases 2 weeks before their due date. This time they will be able to prepare themselves well in advance for the work load. You have given him a number...and made his goal tangible.

Does all this seem simple and intuitive? Management always is like that. So then I guess you must be already doing all this!

If you think, that in an organization with a zillion people, you are alone in doing all this, then don't despair! Your team will automatically look to you as their role model. When they lead teams, they will apply what they have learnt from you. They will tell others in other teams... Soon people will be asking their bosses, why something does not happen in their own team or department... and the trickle will become a drizzle...a whisper will become a roar...

Maybe you will create a revolution, maybe not. But you will truly do right by your team and to yourself. Just take that one thought away with you.

Working on a presentation.

Making a presentation? Starting off with preparing one? Here are some tips to get you on the right track...

JUST GET ON WITH IT
When you want to make a presentation, just open Powerpoint or Powerbullet or any other software and start typing. This will ensure that you start in the middle and end up in the river without knowing swimming. If you have no plan, the war is already lost. Who cares if, without a POA ( plan of action) you are DOA ( Dead on arrival)?

RECYCLE
When you have an old, borrowed or stolen presentation that worked or may work or could work , reuse it. Thats a great way to just get it over with. It doesn't matter if you look like a burbling fish being strangled by an octopus. Your audience is asking questions and you don't know why something has been put on the slide. Recycling will get you a promotion, as your organisation is fully environment-conscious.

MAKE IT SOPORIPHIC
Put your audience to sleep. With all the work they have been putting in, they suffer from insomnia. Read each slide, one by one, word for word, without explaining anything. Lull your audience to sleep. Best of all, no one can say - they didnt like it!!!


JAZZ IT
Your presentation software had such great features. Use all of them. Your audience will just love it. They will queue up afterwards to ask you, just how you achieved that particular effect. The one that blinded and dazzled them so much that they didn't notice what you were droning on about. Hide your noise by cranking up the jazz levels.

DATABASE-IT
Your presentation should have every possible information required by everyone from the watchman to the door knob to the CFO to the guy who joined yesterday. Cover every subject, under the sun, so that you never run out of material. Put in all the sales statistics from 1777 to date. Add in the projection for next 100 years just for effect. Dare anyone to ask a question which is not already covered. ...atleast on slide number 787. Yes, ofcourse the presentation was supposed to be only for half an hour....

Keeping to a schedule

On working from home...

Making a schedule
The worst aspect is sticking to a schedule.
There are so many things waiting to grab attention like a blood-sucking leech.
The stuff that came back with me, on the last day at my old workplace is still mocking at me from my cupboard. No time to open up that plastic bag full of memories and put them into their rightful place.

My life can get along fine without having that bag cleared out. Just like windows can do without dusting or that shoe rack can remain disorganised. My daily schedule is set and I am planning to stick to it.

Making the schedule sticky..

The schedule has to "Work", or there is no way I can stick to it. Morning is for "home" activities. Afternoon to evening is for work. This schedule goes for a toss only if absolutely necessary - like taking my kid to the doctor. Even then the time has to be adjusted on another day.

It has been working for a while now, with good progress. I feel more work-oriented since business related work starts at the same time. There is less tendency to slack off or take an off. There is a timetable up, which lists all that needs to be done. No dates put against the list yet. That may need to be done soon.

Deadline it
Have DEADLINES and SCHEDULES and stick to them. Your boss in office wouldnt stand for you to give excuses. You are your own boss. Don't stand it from yourself!