Step Up to the Mic.

To All Presenters:

It has been some time since I posted on presentation skills. Oddly, many of the presentations I have been privy to in recent time have not been terrible. Not all rose to performance level, which should be the goal, but all-in-all they have not left me praying for a flock of rabid magpies to descend upon the presenter either.

I do, however, have a lesson to share.

Presenters, please know - simply holding a microphone in your hand does not actually make it work - in fact, the act of turning it on does not make it actually work. To achieve microphone success you must accomplish the aforemention steps and then hold it near, and point it at, your mouth.

Amazing amount of failures occuring around those last points.

For hand-held mics - waving it around a la Harry Potter, using it as a pointer or holding it waaay down by your side renders it all but useless.

For microphones attached to lecturns (which as a performer you shouldn't be using, but I digress) - pointing the microphone mid-chest is not accoustically helpful.

For the clip-on/wireless mics - please, actually clip it on. Otherwise, I promise you are either going to hold it so close to your mouth that you sound like Zeus commanding from on high, or you will be so far from your mouth as to render the tool useless. Worse yet, you will likely vacilate between these two points thus irritating the audience to a degree so extreme as to not be measuerable with modern technology.
Not awesome.

Here's how to fix it.

For handhelds - put your fist against your mouth like your blowing into it. The space your fist takes up is equal to the distance the microphone should be from your mouth at all times. Microphones have varying levels of sensitivity, so consider this more a guideline than a rule.

For lecturns - look down at the microphone and adjust so that you're staring into it like it were a tube. Then look up at your audience, the microphone is now pointed at your mouth.

For clip-on / wireless - stack one fist on top of the other and attach to the bottom of your chin while looking forward. The bottom of your bottom fist is where the mic should get pinned. And be sure this site is free of obstructions which will brush against the mic and disturb your audience.

Simple guides, yours to use.

THE POINT: Your message is meaningless if no one can hear it.

New thinking for the established stuff

To All Presenters:

Engage in creativity with a purpose.

3M used to allow employees to dedicate 15% of their time to near-unbridled creative exploration. Sadly, unguided creative thinking led to a lot of bloated ineffciency within that organization. In recent years, 3M has required a more process-oriented approach to the application of creativity within the workplace.

Creativity for creativity's sake has its place, but its value is difficult to quantify.

So often in the agile modern business world we are so focused on creating BestIdea 2.0 that we often overlook opportunities to achieve tangible results by reviewing current operations. If we took a little time to examine each highly ingrained procedure within our sphere of influence, took time to explore all the things that are "the way they've always been", what might we learn? If we couldn't do things this way, how would we do them? What would we do differently if money didn't matter? What opportunities for improvement does such a simple line of thinking present? Can the value of these opportunities be measured in a tangible way?

This last point being the most important because quantifiable value has a strange tendency to strengthen business cases, and to many managers - money does matter.

Rather than "free thinking" focus creative energy on an area which aligns with organizational objectives, ideally one over which you have some control and responsibility. In such a case you are best able to alleviate fear, remove constraints and try to move the organization from "yes but" to "yes and. . .".

Dedicating a fixed percentage of time to creative thought is a noble pursuit, but not necessary for achieve measurable advancement. More often a procedural trigger can be cause for creative review. Consider, you need to make a routine hire to add support to an established but growing product line. If you could manufacture an ideal universe for the management of this product in your organization - what would it be? Would this person report to you? Would this product even remain with you, or could there be new opportunities for growth if it, and the new hire, were integrated elsewhere? As you make one transition, are there others which could be beneficial, but had not previously been considered?

Sometimes there is value to looking in directions other than forward.

THE POINT: Evolution comes from revolution.

Top 100 Creative People

To All Presenters:

Fast Company has published their 2010 list of the top 100 Most Creative People in Business.

I read the magazine on a flight back from Chicago, and am still unsure about their choice for the number one spot. I'm not sure if I'm questioning the decision based on the individual's merits, or exposing my own creative prejudices.

Click here and decide for yourself.

THE POINT: Behold . . . inspiration.

Project Planning - A Creative Adventure

To All Presenters:

An associate of mine has a poster on his wall that reads something to the effect of, "Don't do project planning - this way failure can just sneak up on you and you avoid many months of worry."

I find project management to be a pretty interesting creative exercise - especially when it comes to risk management. The need to think about what could go wrong, and what could be done to mitigate risk in each case is to me, the modern day business version of a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book.

What happens if the vendor suddenly goes out of business?

What happens if we get hit by a seasonal natural disaster and have to close for a week mid-project?

What happens if the project is delayed past the target date?

What if the current system fails before the replacement is in place?

At a minimum - do we have a plan "B", "C' and "D" for all possible contingencies?

To go into the cave turn to page 16. To walk past the cave turn to page 22.

Discussions around risk and "what ifs" are opportunities to examine the creative thinking / level of paranoia that exists within stakeholders or members of the project team as well. I find sales people are the greatest source of obscure apocalyptic scenarios. If there is an opportunity for me to have to develop a "what if" strategy around alien invasion - it likely originates in a meeting with sales.

So while creativity in this instance generates unnecessary work - it also gives the project manager a chance to flex their creative muscles in turn.

So . . . project planning, who knows where that road may take you.

THE POINT: Creative adventure awaits, all it takes is a little planning.