Are you weary of poor, content-heavy, boring PowerPoints? Have you been subjected to “death by PowerPoint”? Have you had nightmares of bullet points and clumsy animations? When is the last time you remember a slide show a day after seeing it?

This is an issue for almost anyone who has to give presentations. Imagine how it would help your organisation, your NGO or team, your relationship with donors or other audiences, if you could do this more effectively.

I am pleased to announce that Matt Brandon has created the first in what I hope will be a series about ”Creating Presentations that Matter.“ This 25 minute show describes the mindset and approach you need to create presentations that will enage and move people. What is unique about this approach is that the “slide deck” (the collection of slides) is put in its proper place – helping the audience to engage with the speaker and the content.

Presentations that matter are composed of three elements:

• The speaker. The person who is giving the talk (and who should be the main deliverer of content)
• The slide deck. Well designed slides that provide what I call the “emotional wallpaper” that reinforces what the speaker is trying to communicate
• The handouts. The documents, workbooks, and other physical items that the participants use during the presentation and/or take away with them. Written in a readable way, you no longer need to (indeed should not) give out copies of your slide deck.

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In the last blog, I started talking about what to do with the lessons that teams are learning from their retrospections / after action reviews (AAR). My basic rule is to

Everyone is busy. So when a team discovers a new lesson or an impediment that needs to be removed, start out doing “just enough” to address it and learn what else to do. Sometimes, the solution can be done quickly and sometimes it will require digging deeper, maybe even gathering a team together to discover the “root cause” of a problem. Do what is required to solve the problem. Just be sure not to try doing something more complex that is needed. The chances are, doing more than is required will result in a lot of wasted effort… and legacy documents that have to be maintained a long time for little benefit. 

When I implement a solution, I try to “touch things once.” That means, if I have to open a document to make changes, I want to make them right then if I can. Don’t create piles of things to do later (you will never find them again!). Throw the thing away. Go talk with the person. Try to make it so you don’t have to remember later to do something – there will always be something that will interrupt you.  

My other rule is to

Rule 2: Implement quickly. Remove impediments quickly. And make progress visible.

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After one of the AARs we did, a participant brought up the issue of a repository for AARs:

“If we are going to embrace AARs for various events and activities, I have a couple recommendations. The only reservation I have about tools of this sort is that an evaluation is made and then everybody forgets what form the conclusions took and where it was stored so they can quickly and easily refer to it again. Sometimes people forget that an evaluation was made and don’t bother to look it up again.

I recommend we create an AAR folder somewhere on a network drive and make sure all AARs from any department or source be placed there. If some need to be confidential, password protect them. Also, some kind of standardisation should be adhered to so that there is some consistency. An AAR template or form perhaps?

Additionally, I think AARs for repeating or similar events should not be separate documents but be updated within the same, original document. Otherwise observations and conclusions get siloed and you hinder the benefit of accumulating knowledge.”

Look at the Return on Effort

Over the last 20 years, I have tried most approaches. I suppose the rule that has worked best for me is,

Put another way, do what is “good enough” and get feedback to see what else you should do. Don’t waste time designing something that is more that your “customers” or “users” are asking for. Let the solution emerge as you discover what people really need. (more…)

We have returned from three weeks in the UK and Iraq. We trained headquarters staff in the UK and three field teams in Iraq who are working to rebuild essential infrastructure (water, roads, erosion control), women and family development and English, and holistic reconciliation and life-saving heart surgeries.

It is interesting: What initially got their interest were the coaching and workshops on project management and on creating photographic essays – things that are practical and important to their fund-raising and current work. At the end, they felt that the training on best practices and Knowledge Stewardship were even more important… happy discoveries.

One of the challenges that any field team (especially NGOs) has is getting its story out: to donor agencies, individual donors and sponors, local governments, local citizenry, and even the home office. Telling your story through photographic essays is a powerful tool to do this. It is what we call “high-value knowledge” because it takes a fair amount of intentional work to do it well and the payoff potential is great. (more…)