Genuine Curiosity

Author Dwayne Melancon is always on the lookout for new things to learn. An ecclectic collection of postings on personal productivity, travel, good books, gadgets, leadership & management, and many other things.

 

Preaching With PowerPoint

A lot of folks gripe about "death by PowerPoint" (often appropriately). However, I want to share a way I use PowerPoint as a focuing tool. As a "trivia collector" I have a tendency to go a bit heavy on data when I'm communicating. This can be a problem if I have a tight time frame within which to deliver a message (i.e. "You have 10 minutes - go."), or if I'm dealing with a senior audience with short attention spans.

I've often heard that the more senior the audience, the more value there is in small numbers and primary colors. PowerPoint is a great tool to help focus your message to a simpler level.

There is no "one way" to do this, but here is a technique that works for me:

  1. Pick 3 to 4 points you want your audience to remember.
  2. Create 1 slide for each major point.
  3. Create 3 bullet short, crisp points for each slide (yes, get it down to 3 - not 4 or 5).
  4. Practice using these slides as a sort of "teleprompter" to deliver your message and test the soundness of the message:
    • Does each point add real value to your message?
    • Is each point essential in achieving your communication objectives / desired outcome?
    • Do you have the fact to support each point, if questioned?
    • Is the order / flow correct?
    • etc.
  5. When you formally deliver your message, you can either have a "6 up" handout view of the slides as a guide, or print the Outline view.

I find this helps keep the message tight and on-point. Got other tips? Share away.

Related items

Read More

Is blogging a waste of time?

Michael S. Hyatt says that some people question whether his blogging is a good use of his time.  After all, he's the CEO of a huge publishing company and he blogs on a corporate blog every day.  He doesn't think it's a waste of time (maybe it's just me, but it seems kinda natural for the head of a publishing company to publish every day...).  Anyway, I love his treatment of this topic - give it a read and see if you do, too.

So - I applied the question to myself:  "Is blogging a waste of time?"  Like anything in life, I think some people get a lot out of blogging, and others don't see how anyone could enjoy it. When I started blogging, I never thought I'd still be blogging 2 years later but here I am.  My first post was about "Finding your voice" and was inspired by Stephen Covey's book "The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness."

I don't know what I was expecting to get out of blogging.  It started as an outlet for my creative energy and a place to direct some of the thoughts I have as an introvert who thinks a lot but doesn't say all that much.

It ended up connecting me to some Great people all over the world that I wouldn't have otherwise met - and some of them you have become true friends.  A waste of time?  No way.

Read More

Enjoy - that has “joy” in it, right?

"How can I bring laughter into the lives of others facing adversity?"I'm a fan of Raj Setty's blog , and I really like the "Quought" series he's started. A Quought is essentially a thought-provoking question, and he's asked a bunch of people to provide them.

This weekend, I read a Quought that I really liked a lot - provided by Christine Clifford Beckwith:

"How can I bring laughter into the lives of others facing adversity?"

This hit home with me because I think we make a huge difference in others lives when we do things to make them happy. Even little things can make a difference.

On a related note, this reminded me of something I overheard at my kids' school a couple of years ago. One kid in the class was making fun of one of the other kids in the class, and the teacher told him: "<name>, please stop that. At this school, we don't steal other people's joy."

Thanks for sharing your Quoughts, Raj.

Read More

Get to the point

Got a presentation or message to deliver? Get to the point. To get the message to a more "crisp" state, here is a tip that helps me:

If the message, slide deck, or document is running too long, I pretend I have to deliver the message in half the time. I then go through a process that goes something like this:

  1. Decide on 3 to 5 main points you want your audience to remember.
  2. Print out the content (working from hard copy helps for the next step).
  3. Go through the content and highlight key points.
  4. Discard any content that is not essential to delivering and supporting your 3-5 points.
  5. If you find any points that don't directly support the main points, but you feel they are too important to delete:
    • Use the "So what?" test to figure out whether each point warrants an exception, or whether I feel compelled to add another main point.

It pays to be aggressive during this process, particularly when you identify and remove embellishments, non-critical modifiers, and other "fluff" from the message.

You, your message, and your audience will all benefit from this approach..

Related items:

Read More

Daily Report, Jan 13

Last night, I spent some time helping my daughter with her math homework (5th grade stuff). I checked her problems, and she kept getting the answers wrong on four specific multiplication problems. I'd mark them wrong and she'd go into the other room and try again. It was getting frustrating for both of us, so I decided to watch what she was doing.

After only a couple of minutes, I recognized what she was doing - her incorrect answers were rooted a few specific issues:

  • she was getting distracted during the equations and sometimes skipped a step or two;
  • she was writing her "carry" digits in a way that made it difficult to tell where they belonged;
  • she was jumbling some of her numbers together which made it difficult to tell which ones were carry digits and which ones were part of the original equation;
  • she was writing commas throughout the equations to separate the thousands places, and sometimes ended up adding the commas in as 1's when she solved the problem.

To me, as a detached observer, the reasons for the wrong answers were obvious. To her, it was vexing and not getting any better.

I was able to work with her on some changes to how she was writing down the problems, and get her to a place with fewer distractions. I then worked through the first problem with her. After that one came out right, she did the other three on her own pretty quickly.

Coaches can sometimes see what we can't

This morning, it dawned on me that I was acting as a coach in this situation. An incidental coach, perhaps, but still a coach. I was able to watch her "workflow" to determine why she was getting the wrong results, and I could see things in a way that was difficult for her. I was also able to contribute further advice and solutions based on my own experience.

She had the skills necessary to get the work done, but some of her current practices were preventing her from achieving the desired results. And it took someone else's perspective to get her to work in a more productive way.

Therein lies the value of coaching.

In math and life, technique and focus make a difference

The other thing I realized was that the issues confronting her in doing her math problems had a lot in common with the things that keep me from being productive:

  • when I get distracted from the tasks I should be focusing on, I tend to skip a step or two;
  • when I work in a disorganized way, it's hard to figure out where to start or when I'm done;
  • when I'm too close to the work, it's hard to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

Most notably, I've certainly found myself in situations where I tried and tried but didn't get the results I intended or expected.

And, I realized I've gotten a lot from coaches (both professional and incidental) over the years.

Getting lousy results? Feeling frustrated and don't know what you're doing wrong? Or, at a loss for how to fix the problems that are vexing you?

Maybe you need a coach, or a trusted advisor who can give you some outside perspective.

Related items:

Read More