Dylan glanced frantically at the clock in the corner of the screen. Thirteen minutes to go. He clicked "Print," vaulted out of his chair and raced to the printer (color of course). When he got there he found Barbara waiting for her job to finish. "How much longer?"
"Oh, maybe five minutes…why?"
"Would you mind canceling so I can run my four slides for the board meeting in six minutes?" He actually had 10 minutes, but anything to strengthen his case.
"You owe me," she said, as she hit the orange Cancel button and left.
Dylan made it just in time. Later, Barbara had to re-queue her job, which cost her about five or ten minutes. Not much, but when you add up all the similar little wasted chunks of time, it's easy to see one reason why projects run late.
We all want to make a good impression, but is a good impression really worth bumping someone from a printer or waiting for one to free up? And do we really need beautiful PowerPoint, when a bulleted list on a sheet of paper will do?
I don't know of any cost studies of the frills we use in the everyday presentations that we give to each other. I do have a sense of how much time I've spent on such things personally, and I look back on that as misspent youth.
How do we get to a place where the project is three months late and still it makes sense to spend 20 minutes fiddling with a presentation color scheme?
To control the escalation
of arcane PowerPoint frivolity,
negotiate a Superfluous Artwork
Limitation Treaty (SALT)Two sets of players contribute — the presenters and the audience. As the audience, we do respond to well-crafted presentation graphics. We tend to confuse form and content, and we telegraph our confusion to presenters. As presenters, we use any technique we can to make the audience more receptive. Both audiences and presenters find themselves in a spiraling escalation of presentation craftsmanship, which leads inevitably to excessive use of printer supplies and project delays.
To control the escalation, negotiate a Superfluous Artwork Limitation Treaty (SALT). Agree that all presentations will be in black-and-white and free of color, animation, video, and audio, unless the content demands it. You'll get these benefits:
- Usage of expensive consumables drops.
- Demand for color printers drops.
- Productivity increases because less time is spent on graphics design.
- Instead of designing presentations, people begin to think.
- Instead of presenting at each other, people begin to discuss.
- Quality of group decisions improves, because of clearer thinking and more effective dialog.
A SALT could have prevented Dylan's interrupting Barbara's print job. How could it have changed your morning today? What can it do for your organization? Top
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
Team Thrills
- Occasionally we have the experience of belonging to a great team. Thrilling as it is, the experience
is rare. How can we make it happen more often?
Recalcitrant Collaborators
- Much of the work we do happens outside the context of a team. We collaborate with people in other departments,
other divisions, and other companies. When these collaborators are reluctant, resistive, or recalcitrant,
what can we do?
This Is the Only Job
- You have a job. Even though you liked it once, those days are long past, and a return is improbable.
If you could, you'd hop to another job immediately, but economic conditions in your field make that
unlikely. How can you deal with this misery?
Still More Things I've Learned Along the Way
- When I have an important insight, or when I'm taught a lesson, I write it down. Here's another batch
from my personal collection.
Entry Intimidation
- Feeling intimidated about entering a new work situation can affect performance for both the new entrant
and for the group as a whole. Four trouble patterns related to entry intimidation are inadvertent subversion,
bullying, hat hanging, and defenses and sabotage.
See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness and Effective Meetings for more related articles.
Public seminars
- The Power Affect: How We Express Our Personal Power
Many
people who possess real organizational power have a characteristic demeanor. It's the way they project their presence. I call this the power affect. Some people — call them power pretenders — adopt the power affect well before they attain significant organizational power. Unfortunately for their colleagues, and for their organizations, power pretenders can attain organizational power out of proportion to their merit or abilities. Understanding the power affect is therefore important for anyone who aims to attain power, or anyone who works with power pretenders. Read more about this program.
- A recording of a program presented June 29, 2017, Monthly
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- A recording of a program presented June 29, 2017, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
- A recording of a program presented June 29, 2017, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
- Bullet Points: Mastery or Madness?
Decis
ion-makers in modern organizations commonly demand briefings in the form of bullet points or a series of series of bullet points. But this form of presentation has limited value for complex decisions. We need something more. We actually need to think. Briefers who combine the bullet-point format with a variety of persuasion techniques can mislead decision-makers, guiding them into making poor decisions. Read more about this program.
- A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
- A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
- A recording of a program presented June 24, 2020, Monthly
Webinar, sponsored by Technobility
Webinar Series. PMI members can earn 1.0 Category 'A' PDU by viewing this program. View this program now.
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