WHEN INTERNAL COMMUNICATION counsel goes horribly, terribly wrong. "Leading us all to / higher staaaandards"

Framing Expectations

I've posted some thoughts on internal service levels and framing expectations, over at CommLog.

Psychological Priming

BRENT EDWARDS HAS AN EXCELLENT POST up on "priming" (a psychological phenomena in which prior presentation of a word or concept could trigger a memory or other word and make it more accessible) and consonant confusion -- all in the context of a talking Elmo book that some folks heard as asking "Who wants to die?"

Priming, though debated within the academic community, has some strong research behind it. Gladwell devotes a portion of Blink! to the theory, which is where most people have been introduced to the effect. He cites a classic study in which two groups of students were asked to read a long list of unrelated words. Laced through one list were words associated with politeness; laced through the others were words associated with rudeness.

The students were then asked to return to an academic office down the hall to report they'd completed the task. For both groups, a confederate was blocking the door to the office with instructions to continue a conversation with the secretary until asked to move. The rude-word students were more likely to interrupt (and even barge in on) the conversation; the polite-word students were more likely to wait patiently -- some for minutes on end. That's priming.

A savvy speechwriter "primes," seeding a speech with words that will help invoke to broader but indirect strategic associations. Example: If the final part of a speech is to introduce a new strategic direction which employees might greet with caution, I might lace earlier parts of the speech with words that invoke assurance and confidence.

There's more on priming theory here, and John Bargh has produced much of the seminal research.

Tags: brent edwards, priming theory

Lawrence Lessig's Presentation on Google Book Search

STANFORD PROFESSOR LAWRENCE LESSIG IS LEGENDARY for his presentation style (as well as his legal mind). Lessig's style is both minimalist and cinematic, and several folks have written profiles to date [1].

One thing that's been nice is Lessig's willingness to post his presentations online (along with audio of his comments), and he's done so again: He's posted has latest review of the legal issues associated with Google's book search. It's a great example of a dynamic, speaker-augmenting use of presentation software And while it's a style that's likely too cinematic for most internal corporate presentations (especially if you're a junior presenting to senior management), it should, at the very least, act as inspiration (and if you're an outsider who's been brought in to speak, I suggest stealing shamelessly from the "Lessig style"). (Via Joho)

See Garr Reynolds, Sean Kelly, David Hornik, and others.

 

Technorati Tags: lawrence lessig, presentations, presentation style

* Scheduled post, written earlier.
 

More On Presentation Design

AN UPDATE TO THIS POST: Rebecca Blood points to this advice by Garret Vreeland. There are a million "here's how to present" pieces on the web, and this is the most frank, lucid, and absolutely spot-on set of counsel I've seen. Excellent advice, all of it. I'd add to his "stagecraft" section having a basic knowledge of production terms. I originally posted a basic lexicon some time ago at CommLog, but as the formatting is wonky from our change in hosts, I've placed it in the extended entry below.

Technorati Tags: dangerousmeta, presentation design, show production, garret vreeland   

Our Standard PowerPoint Layout

A COLLEAGUE AND I have spent the past few days helping a number of client teams prep for a significant presentation to senior management. We do this from time to time, and when we do our focus is typically on message strategy and credibility. That said, presentation design is a heuristic for both, and we inevitably end up teaching the basics of good v. bad slide design at the same time.

At the firm we take an approach to slide design that is different from traditional corporate practice. Our basic philosophy:

• You are the message: A person can communicate with greater persuasive power than any slide presentation.
• Exception: Pictures that say a thousand words. But they REALLY have to say a thousand words. They should also be high-resolution images, or don't use them. Garr Reynolds has more to say about this, and he's right.
• Your slides should "do no harm": They should never compete with the speaker, and only augment the speaker's point. As a result they should be lean on text and lean on animation (there's only one slide animation that has any taste, and it's the slow fade). Otherwise the audience is paying attention to the slide and not to you.
• Ensure everything is essential: Keep the ink:data ratio as close to 1:1 as possible. This means killing chartjunk and following sound principles of chart and table design. It also means killing all that branding and those logos -- the audience knows who you are.

As we explain this philosophy we typically point people to the research of Edward Tufte, which I'll do now. There's also much more in the CommLog archives if you search for "PowerPoint."

Yesterday we spent a lot of time coaching around the physical design of slides so they best reflect our approach. As we did I referred to the "CRA presentation style" more than once, and thought it might be useful to describe the physical setup of our standard PowerPoint template here as an example.

Our PowerPoint template comes in two flavors: White background and dark background. Here's a shot of each. We use the dark background in dark rooms, and the white background in light rooms (you may click any of these images for a larger view).

We've honored the Golden Ratio by matching the proportions of the slide itself to that of the Golden Rectangle (1:1.618). In our case the slides are set to be 10" wide and 6.18" high. This "letterbox" look is more interesting, permits more interesting layouts, and looks great when you project.

We use Gill Sans font, our preferred font for headings in documents across the firm (we use Garamond for text). Gill Sans is easy on the eyes, has an interesting feel to it, and holds up well regardless of text size.

When we use images (which we prefer to do over text ... they help convey an emotional dimension) they're always high resolution, and often full screen.

When laying out images and text, we turn on PowerPoint's "guide" function and set our guides so they reflect the "rule of thirds" and make layout choices based on the guides and their four points of intersection (for more on this go here).

When we DO use bullets, they're as simple as possible ...

So that's our template setup. We think it helps our on-screen stuff be more effective, which is our goal. We've also been inspired by the good taste of Garr Reynolds; go see his stuff. Hope the above is of use.

Technorati Tags: powerpoint, presentations, garr reynolds, information design   

* Cross-posted at CommLog.

Steve Jobs And The Ink To Data Ratio

THIS AFTERNOON I was describing "ink-to-data ratio" to some clients: the ratio of ink on the page / screen to the amount of meaningful information on the page / screen when conveying information visually. You want the ratio to be as close to 1:1 as possible, with every dot of ink / pixel helping to convey some relevant information to the reader / audience.

An example I often use when describing the ITD ratio is the default three-dimension bar charts presentation software (PowerPoint being the greatest offender) often creates -- in a simple graph showing a trend or comparisons along the x axis the depth of the bar conveys no meaningful information, but it does add ink (increasing the ratio of ink to data).

So I get online tonight and -- lo and behold -- Garr Reynolds has written a post about this very topic, but using Steve Job's recent MacWorld keynote as a case study. Many fine and illuminating illustrations, and as usual with Garr, an intelligent point of view. I won't bother presenting the matter further -- go read Garr's take.

Update: What do you know -- Garr points to a full post on the ink-to-data ratio here at MasterViews International.

Technorati Tags: presentation zen, garr reynolds, ink to data ratio, presentations, steve jobs, stevenote 

On Continuous Partial Attention

THE O'REILLY RADAR has a nice account of a recent speech by Linda Stone (former research lead at Microsoft) on "continuous partial attention" -- the diminished state of effectiveness that comes from attending to multiple communication inputs at the same time (noted before on this site here). Here's her hook:

Pop quiz.  It's okay to answer "yes" to a question even if you're contradicting an earlier answer:

• Technology has improved my life
• Technology has harmed my quality of life
• I pay full attention to people when they talk to me, when I am in meetings, when I work
• I pay partial attention to what I'm doing and I'm scanning my devices or software for other inputs
• Technology sets me free
• Technology enslaves me

In 1997 I coined the phrase "continuous partial attention".  For almost two decades, continuous partial attention has been a way of life to cope and keep up with responsibilities and relationships.  We've stretched our attention bandwidth to upper limits.  We think that if tech has a lot of bandwidth then we do, too.

With continuous partial attention we keep the top level item in focus and scan the periphery in case something more important emerges.  Continuous partial attention is motivated by a desire not to miss opportunities.  We want to ensure our place as a live node on the network, we feel alive when we're connected.  To be busy and to be connected is to be alive.

We've been working to maximize opportunities and contacts in our life. So much social networking, so little time.  Speed, agility, and connectivity at top of mind.  Marketers humming that tune for two decades now.

Now we're over-stimulated, over-wound, unfulfilled.

Sound familiar?

I've said it before and I'll say it again: turn the stuff off. Shut off the computer and turn off email auto-notification (after all, we have a mailbox outside the house that's available to people 24-7, but we don't check it 40 times a day, do we?). Frankly, shut off your cell phone, pager, Blackberry, and Treo while you're at it.

We need white space to think, work, and process. You may not be accessible, but trust me: you're still available. If somebody absolutely needs to get you during that hour or two (or three), they will. As you can probably surmise from this blog, I'm one of the most technologically connected people out there. That said, I unshackle those channels all the time (it's one of the reason so many of the posts here are noted "scheduled post, written earlier" -- when I blog, I blog, and when I don't, I don't).

It's essential to a decent workflow, and frankly, quality of life. Communication technology affords enormous advantages, but every technology also creates it's own problems -- continuous partial attention being one.

From time to time each day, unshackle the new media and set your work free. You'll be glad you did.

Tags: linda stone, continuous partial attention, oreilly radar

 * Guess what: Scheduled post, written earlier.

Jobs On Stage

HIS STEVENESS delivered his MacWorld keynote yesterday -- likely the most watched and critiqued senior executive speech in the world each year. Watch it via streaming video here (free QuickTime required) and see a senior exec. doing the on-stage thing about as well as it can be done. He does so well, in fact, that he easily breaks one of my rules: Give no speech over 20-30 minutes in length. It's a great example of how an authentic performance and interesting content can suspend time (and of those two, interesting content is much more important).

Job's focus on prep for the keynote is legendary, and there's a nice inside account of it here. He follows my Paul Newman Principle: He doesn't practice because he's Steve Jobs; he's Steve Jobs because he practices.

It's also a lesson in presentation development: You'll surely note that Jobs slides and the ones you likely see and produce at the office don't have much in common. (Yours should look more like his.) For more on the "right way" of PowerPoint / slideware development, visit Presentation Zen.

Technorati Tags: Steve Jobs, MacWorld, Speeches, Leadership, Presentation Zen

* Scheduled post, written earlier.
 

Miscommunication

FOUND THIS ON FLICKR:

Funny - that's just how we represent it at work. Actually, it's not that inaccurate. One stick person is saying "dots" while thinking "dashes"; the other is saying "plusses" while thinking "triangles." With a little symbol replacement, it could easily be one stick person saying "I'd like that by Tuesday," thinking "... because if I miss my deadline I'm going to get fired," while the other stick person is saying "Tuesday is no problem," thinking "... but if I miss it by a day or two it sounds like no big deal."

There you have it: Miscommunication (in this case, because of presumed and un-articulated context on the part of both parties).

Tufte And Advocacy

GARR REYNOLDS COMMENTS on Brent Edwards' comments (Brent has a nice blog -- new to me -- BTW) on Edward Tufte's view of advocacy in presentations. Read both; Garr also makes a nice link to Aristotle (50 extra points to Garr for invoking basic rhetorical theory).

In his post Garr asked for comments. Rather than posting a lengthy comment there, I'll post my thoughts here. I attended Tufte's seminar earlier this year, and posted my notes here should you wish to see them (they're in both a browseable MindMap and text format). My take on the issue Brent raises:

• As members of an audience, Tufte was encouraging us to appreciate that anyone presenting information has an agenda (noble or not), and as such, we should listen with a critical ear. His exact line: "As a consumer you need to ask: Am I seeing findings that come from evidence, or from evidence selection?" Other advice: It's up to the audience to figure out what was left out of a presentation, as it's impossible to present everything one could.
• As presenters, Tufte was encouraging us to do our best to present information in such a way that the audience can glean the "truth" you're trying to present. The biggest threat here is selection bias, or in Tufte's words, "cherry picking": "The single biggest threat to learning the truth from a presentation is evidence selection ... As a presenter, you need to establish that you're not a cherry picker."

To me, Tufte's concern was more that we establish our credibility such that the audience can listen with a critical but open ear, rather than a critical but skeptical ear. His position was (my words): don't pitch, tell. His words: "Pitching out corrupts within." I don't think his concern is about advocacy as with advocacy without warrants. For Tufte, it's about building a case.

Regarding Brent's comments on sparklines: they're great, and candy for the data-design-focused among us. I've posted about them before here and here.

Regarding Garr's thoughts on "balance" of ethos, pathos, and logos: Couldn't agree more. At the firm we counsel clients to overtly incorporate this balance into not just presentation planning, but all communication planning, using a simple schema -- begin all communication planning by asking:

• What do I want them to believe, know, do, and feel?
• How do I want to be seen?
• How should I communicate given the relationship I would like to build?

This, generally, gets at logos (believe, know, do), pathos (feel), and ethos (seen, relationship). Some simple examples over at CommLog (poorly formatted due to a recent import process) are here and here.

Frankly, it's wonderful to see sophisticated, thoughtful commentary like Garr's and Brent's on the topic of business discourse. I've always held that the golden age of internal communication is ahead of us; these are signs of progress.

Wasteful Meetings & Mono/Polychronic Cultures

THE FOLKS AT MINDEJET post about some research they've conducted on perceptions of meetings in Europe ...

According to the study, 61% of the respondents said that meetings could be more efficient or are even a complete waste of time, and 71% saw great potential for optimizing meetings if they were better prepared. 46% said that a more easily accessible display of complex information and tasks would help significantly to maximize the outcome of meetings. 61% of the respondents saw insufficient analysis of facts, and 57% pinpointed redundant and inefficient processes as the main reasons for hampering internal and external decision-making.

Moreover, a majority of respondents contended that existing knowledge would not be optimally utilized within their organization. More than half of the respondents referred to more flexible project planning, more transparent communications, and tighter project management as the three main factors needed to better harness team knowledge and increase productivity.

I'm certain many meetings in Europe, as in the States, aren't as productive as they could be. One thing to keep in mind when looking at pan-European results, though, is that different European cultures have dramatically different ways of thinking about time, and what constitutes the effective use of time.

It's the difference between monochronic (one thing at a time) and polychronic (many things at once) cultures. As I posted over at CommLog in 2004:

People in monochronic cultures tend to:

• Think of time as something tangible, like a road down which we journey, or something which we "spend"
• Segment time
• Dislike interruptions
• Believe the task and its completion come first
• Focus on fewer relationships
• Not change set plans even if it might improve the quality of the process

The United States, Northern Europe / Scandinavia, and Germany are examples of monochronic cultures ...

People in polychronic cultures tend to:

• Think of time is a single point, and not as something tangible (like a road) or quantifiable (like an asset we can spend)
• Involve many people when completing a task
• Focus on completing transactions over holding to schedules
• Believe relationships come first
• Change plans easily, especially if they believe it will improve the quality of the process

The Mediterranean nations, Latin America, and parts of Africa are examples of polychronic cultures.

The point is that if you have a meeting comprised of people from monochronic and polychronic cultures, it's very easy for them to arrive with very different views of what would make that meeting an effective use of time. I see this often, working with pan-European teams where the "monos" and the "polys" are driving each other nuts over things like deadlines and the prompt initiation of conference calls.

The coaching is to realize the difference in perception and "converge": Either decide to adopt the point of view of your host, or if it's a team of peers, have the discussion about time and set some principles about meeting management to which all parties can agree (and live).

Right Again

GARR REYNOLDS IS RIGHT AGAIN:

Attempting to have slides serve both as projected visuals and as stand-alone handouts makes for bad visuals and bad documentation. Yet, this is a typical, acceptable approach. PowerPoint (or Keynote) is a tool for displaying visual information, information that helps you tell your story, make your case, or prove your point. PowerPoint is a terrible tool for making written documents, that's what word processors are for.

Why don't conference organizers request that speakers instead send a written document that covers the main points of their presentation with appropriate detail and depth? A Word or PDF document that is written in a concise and readable fashion with a bibliography and links to even more detail, for those who are interested, would be far more effective. When I get back home from the conference, do organizers really think I'm going to "read" pages full of PowerPoint slides? One does not read a printout of someone's two-month old PowerPoint slides, one guesses, decodes, and attempts to glean meaning from the series of low-resolution titles, bullets, charts, and clipart. At least they do that for a while...until they give up. With a written document, however, there is no reason for shallowness or ambiguity (assuming one writes well).

To be different and effective, use a well-written, detailed document for your handout and well-designed, simple, intelligent graphics for your visuals. Now that would be atypical.

It's nice to know we're not alone in the wilderness. He has more sound advice before this in the post; read the whole thing.

Actionalbe Email

THIS POST AT 43 FOLDERS, in which Merlin Mann asks "how many actionable emails do you get each day?" (he also has a poll up), prompted me to post this comment:

I get plenty; they’re nearly all actionable. That said, I (and the folks in our firm) receive significantly less that our peers in other organizations, and certainly less than our clients.

Why?

1) We put “pull” information where it belongs: On the web. The core of our intranet is a blog, which we use to post any information that would otherwise find its way into an email distribution. If someone’s hosting lunch at Chili’s for Suzie from AR’s birthday or there are Dunkin’ minis in the break room, you need to check the blog to know. And if you miss something important because you don’t read the blog, you’re accountable for the miss.

2) We do a good job of matching message to media based on the principles of “media richness.” (Read more about media richness here). The result is that we spend more time in face-to-face or telephone conversation, which is more efficient than email for a whole range of topics.

Works for us, and thanks to the liberal use of David Allen’s Getting Things Done Outlook add-in across our firm, we nearly all go to bed each night with our inbox an empty box.

One of the reasons our IC practice has pushed blogs so hard with clients isn't because we have a high level of latent geekiness (well, not all of us). It's because one of their benefits is a significant reduction in email traffic. Over the three years that blogs have been the foundation of the CRA Intranet, employees have become wonderfully conditioned to (1) post anything there that's of interest to the group, rather than emailing it, and (2) check there on a regular basis.

As a result, nearly any internal email we get is either one-to-one or one-to-few.

As to media richness, certainly go read the CommLog post I linked to in the comment above and download its primer (it's a PDF file). When I speak about communication, especially to leaders, I hammer the point of media richness: the more uncertain, strategic, persuasive, or relationally important a topic is, the more it requires media closer to face-to-face conversation.[1]

"Uncertain" involves a lot of daily business discourse, but it typically doesn't mean "earth-shaking uncertainty." Indeed, most of these conversations are routine. Trying to set a meeting time among three people is a routine task. It also involves a large amount of uncertainty, which is why it's so difficult to do via email--the feedback channel for the medium has significantly greater lag than that of a telephone conversation.

We overuse email because it's in front of us and it's cost-efficient. But getting off your keyboard and on the phone, or face-to-face, often produces faster and better results.

1. More on these issues here.
2. This post is cross-posted here.

Great Stuff By IWB @ IBM

IBM VP OF TECHNICAL STRATEGY AND INNOVATION Irving Wladawsky-Berger has so many interesting posts up that you should just start at the top and read down. His transparency post alone is a worth a visit ...

I really think that building a culture of trust should be top of mind for any business that wants to be a leader in today's environment.  In the summer of 2003, IBM employees around the world engaged in an online "ValuesJam" - a sort of internet-based town meeting -- to shape and define the values that should guide the company and its people in the years ahead.  Several thousand comments were analyzed and follow-up interviews were conducted to distill the essence of what jam participants had said into three principal values to inform everything we do.  "Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships." was one of the three chosen values, along with "Dedication to every client's success" and "Innovation that matters - for our company and for the world." 

IBM Chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano talked about the practical importance of values and trust in a note to employees: "Clearly, leading by values is very different from some kinds of leadership demonstrated in the past by business. It is empowering, and I think that's much healthier. Rather than burden our people with excessive controls, we are trusting them to make decisions and to act based on values - values they themselves shaped. To me, it's also just common sense. In today's world, where everyone is so interconnected and interdependent, it is simply essential that we work for each other's success." 

Good advice, that.

I also had an opportunity recently to hear John Buchholz from IBM's internal communication team describe the ValuesJam. It sounds like a great process, not only for it's innovative use of new communication technology, but also for the credibility IBMers appear to have lent to the jam. (Often these types of activities turn into "leadership's in a vacuum" boondoggles; not so, it seems, at IBM.)

Read details here (note: PDF file), and see the results integrated into IBM's strategic message hierarchy here.

Being Heard Above The Din

SOME THOUGHTS FOR LEADERS trying to be heard above the electronic din. (Tips to the David's: Lidsky for the call; Allen for the pass.)

A SITE I VISIT OFTEN IS AMERICAN RHETORIC, a wonderful site on American speeches that Michael Eidenmuller, a SpeechComm professor at UT Tyler, maintains. I first found the site when I stumbled across its Top 100 Speeches database, a listing of the greatest American speeches as ranked by communication scholars. (Number 1: King's "I Have A Dream" speech.)

One thing I most enjoy about AR is the ability to listen to many speeches in their original delivery. A wonderful example is FDR's first Fireside Chat, in which he explains the banking crisis and coming change in the banking system. It's one of the best examples of rhetoric explaining change that I've found, but its real power lies in the delivery. It's the verbal and non-verbal cues--FDR's cadence, pitch, diction, speech rate, vocal variation, and more--that lend emotive power to a reasoned argument.

The site's gotten bigger and better with time, and now has background on the study of rhetoric in addition to speeches from politics, popular culture, and film. Of note is the Rhetoric Quiz; be warned -- Level 3 is tough indeed.