Hair’s on Fire
I don’t know about you but over the past couple of years I’ve noticed a significant change in the way people work.
People have always been overwhelmed, at least since the early 90s. Now they’re even more overwhelmed. They are running around as if their hair is on fire. They are in a reactive mode, dashing from one meeting to another, attending to the latest crisis, putting out fires. What they’re not doing is analyzing, reflecting, or planning.
So when I work with people — individuals or teams — helping them prepare major presentations, I have a two-fold challenge.
First, fewer and fewer of my clients (the people preparing, rehearsing, and giving the presentations) have enough time or focus to do it well.
I recently worked with one team, for example, that set aside five days to work with me on a proposal for a job worth 60 million dollars. They ended up working with me for less than half that time. Two days for a major proposal! They were constantly called out of the room — often by their bosses — to do something that “just can’t wait.”
Second, my clients are presenting to audiences who lack the time and focus to attend to the presentation well.
So you’ve got people whose hair is on fire presenting to people whose hair is on fire.
As a result, presentations have to be simpler, clearer, and briefer than before. The problem is, it takes time, attention, and skill to make presentations — especially about complex issues — simple, clear, and brief.
What have you noticed?
Image courtesy of lovstromp at flikr.
June 6th, 2011 at 9:18 am
Thank you. This is exactly what I’ve observed, and now I understand that the situation is due not to the personal weaknesses of any one person, but rather an overall cultural change. I’d like to add that in my experience, paring down a presentation to make it more concise takes twice the amount of preparation time! Also, the constant buzz from blackberry’s, etc. make the attentiveness of the audience even less.
June 6th, 2011 at 5:45 pm
Kathy, thanks for your input. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy, just being surrouned by so many people who are running around in a panic.
In my opinion, presenter face the most distracted audiences ever. And you’re right, making a presentation brief takes more time.
June 13th, 2011 at 11:06 am
When presenting it is important to not only make it brief and to the point but to draw everyone in at the start. The main focus of a presentation should be the opening and closing. A god opening will stop a great deal of the distractions; a good closing will make the point memorable and have them leave with it on thier mind.
June 14th, 2011 at 1:49 pm
Andrew,
I agree with you entirely about a good opening and a good closing. It’s just that I think speakers today can’t spend a lot of time between the opening and the closing.
BTW, what’s your favorite way of starting a speech / presentation? (Telling a story is mine.)