Create a Successful Presentation

Developing presentations to present in public is sometimes a daunting task. I can remember days of planning for presentations where I would have piles and stacks of papers, charts, graphs and illustrations scattered all over my desk. My thoughts would be careening all over the place trying to determine an order, a flow. Needless to say frustration would soon settle in and rob me of the most precious commodity that we all posses… time.

If you have ever found yourself in this position, you realize that there are often barriers keeping you from achieving your ultimate goal of a good presentation. Some of those may be one or more of these factors…

Lack of Creativity
Information Overload
Lack of Confidence with the Subject Matter
Time Constraints

These are just a few of the many obstacles that can create a presentation from getting from concept to reality.

Part of this series will be designed to share with you tips from successful individuals who command respect and regard when presenting their points of view. We will take your questions and answer them in such a way that you can apply the learning’s to your own real life situation… to your own presentations.

What most people do not realize is how important the skill of communication is in business environments. Presentation’s combine a multitude of communication tools, the written word, the communicated word, the visual, and the graphic. Mastering these tools will put you in command of the very important world of business communication.

It wasn’t until an early presentation failure in my career that I discovered valuable lessons in putting together successful and powerful presentations.
My hope is to share those with you so that you can avoid some of the pitfalls and landmines that are buried along the path of presentation communications!

Keith

Organizational Skills…Learn from Walter’s Organization

While working for a Fortune 5 company, I recall one of my colleagues having the appearance of being the polar opposite of “organization”. I am sure you have met or worked with someone just like him. Walking by his office caused one to stop dead in their tracks and often times stay frozen in a look of bewilderment. “How in the world could a corporate executive work in those conditions?” Would often be heard by people passing by his office. To give you a visual… imagine piles and piles of paperwork stacked on the floor around his desk and credenza. I mean multiple piles… some reaching precariously teetering heights. Then on his desk and credenza, more stacks of papers, reports, printouts, and whatnots. It was so bad that his inbox had been lost in the mountain of paperwork. The chairs he had in his office were used for more paperwork, which precluded anyone for sitting on anything but paperwork! And to add to the visual, boxes were filled to the brim of yes, you guessed it…..paperwork.

You may ask yourself, as I often did….what is so important in those papers? And why did he feel it necessary to keep them? The next thing you might be asking is how did he do his job? I mean with all that clutter, surely he was disorganized, continuously behind, prone to mistakes and basically a failure. Um, nope. Quite the contrary, he was a strong performer in his position, and a great contributor to the organization. For the record, we will call this fellow “Walter”.. an assumed name no less.

Walter’s job… he was a financial guy. He was in charge of budgeting and financial accounting for the growth division of this company.

Wow, and scary…huh? Well, it depends. If I were to ask you for a story of organizational failure, would it relate to someone like my colleague Walter? Where on the surface it appears that turmoil brews below, but in reality it is a beautiful, well not really beautiful, balancing act? An orchestration of organization and chaos all rolled into one? Would your example be much like mine? If so, you fell for the same trap that I did when first meeting Walter. I assumed him to be an unorganized buffoon! I laughed behind his piles of clutter and debris. It was amusing, and I assumed terminal.

Boy was I in for a lesson. One day I was charged with working with Walter on a project. I sent over some preliminary emails with the documentation that I had compiled and planned a follow-up meeting with Walter to discuss the project. As I arrived in his office, I stood, and suggested that we meet in my (uncluttered) office. “O.K. he says, but first let me get the documents you sent me. I couldn’t wait for this! He was actually going to rifle through the thousands of documents he had in disarray and begins the endless search for the ones I sent him! Yea Right! Well, grab my socks, if he didn’t go right to them….in a pile located about 5 to the right of his credenza. I was shocked. Stunned. In disbelief. What just happened? It rocked my tightly organized world of proper placement, filing, organization, location theory and everything I learned in graduate school about management and organization was just exploded like a blast of C4 detonating. Off we went to the meeting with everything we needed.

Why is this important to you? Well where do I start? To be organized is subjective. Do not fall for the doctrine that states you must fit this certain mold in order to claim organizational success. It is much more than that. It all boils down to whether you have control of your environment or does your environment control you? That is the key separator between being organized and being completely unorganized. Your goal is to get to the control switch and begin embracing an organization plan that works for you. Regardless of what it looks like to others. Interesting, isn’t it? I am not telling you to look like the round peg. I am telling you to be sure you fit in the proper hole, regardless of your looks!

The learning I took away from my relationship with Walter is this…..when it comes to organization processes….feel free to march to your own drummer, as long as the music is sweet and harmonious, and the outcome is glorious, on track and timely!

Visit AskKeithNow.com for more insight on becoming more organized and to learn more about the keys to success in business!