The way we've learned to communicate is wrong. Denizens of business, deep in the world of operations reviews, presentations and pitches, are communicating past each other, drowning in a sea of PowerPoint. It seems the general rule of corporate culture is to put that on a deck, or put some slides together. Many of you reading this will have lived through that ritual.
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When giving a presentation, do you think about who you are presenting to? What’s in a good presentation? (Bullet points don’t count.) What about, how to be a better presenter? “It’s not rocket science” as Gavin says.
For a time in the 2000s, I worked as an in-house editor and writing consultant at a school of nursing, where I wrote grant proposals, edited research articles, and provided writing resources for people who didn’t train to become writers, but whose professional advancement depended on it. “Accidental writers,” I called them.
“The world is built around the fact that the people who are good on their feet are the ones that get ahead…That cuts out 60% of the population.” I’m sure we’ve all felt or seen this in action at one point in our careers. In the interview below, Justin Foster talks to Gavin about how those of us who are introverts, not good on our feet, and break out in cold sweats just thinking about presenting can learn to overcome that.
An old EDS superbowl commercial gave life to the expression, herding cats. In the spot, a grizzled cowboy (more properly catboy) faced the camera over a swelling western soundtrack and montage of cats roaming the dusty plain and being wrangled by ‘catboys’
Who am I? isn’t just an existential question for a mid-life crisis. Self identity is critical for organizations. It guides actions and decisions in times of change and crisis. Without a strong self-identity businesses can flounder and fail. The history of business is riddled with companies that lost their way. Think of Apple before Steve Jobs came back. Xerox, which has struggled to reinvent itself as something other than the copier company, and Sears, once an iconic brand that has struggled to remain relevant today. That failure happens in face of changing markets and the struggle to shift from one identity to another. Kodak could not shift its core internal identity from a maker of camera film to digital technology company. Despite inventing the digital camera in 1975, it was not part of the company’s identity. According to Steve Sasson,
