applied know how
As an occasional extrovert, I believed I could present at will- stand up, talk. But when I saw Rob Campbell– Weiden and Kennedy Strategic Planner- present I immediately realized that my comfort with talking could also become a weakness when it came to giving useful presentations.
Equally, some of my colleagues are introverted and so avoid presentations when ever they could and when forced into it would really over prepare in great detail.… Read more
A question from Madeline, who says she’s a fan!
… Read moreI have a subordinate that just avoids wanting to make revisions to our HR presentation, and does it in a passive way leaving it to the last minute and then just passing the buck back to me. I don’t want to threaten to fire her for what could be seen as minor problem, nor do I want to spend my time micromanaging her?
I used to be a powerpoint wiz, and some of my colleagues spent a large amount of time animating, dissolving, colouring and prettifying their presentations as though the quality of their powerpoint could disguise the paucity of their thought.
So it’s noteworthy that Amazon founder—and new Washington Post owner—Jeff Bezos’ proscribes PowerPoint presentations at Amazon.
Bezos instead requires that employees compose 6-page narrative memos, and he starts meetings with quiet reading periods—“study halls”—in which everyone reads the memo from beginning to end.… Read more
Marketing is really simple, Marketers are complicated, and occasionally complicating.
I’ve been involved in Marketing for 4 decades of my life and the more I think about Marketing the simpler it appears to me.
For the uninitiated, marketing attracts a lot of loquacious intelligent and impressive people who complicate the obvious ( my favourite example is Lovemarks, see here for a debunking of this).… Read more
Previously I’ve written about Jeff Bezos and his encouraging his staff to read selected books.
I’m not in Bezos class, but I have suggested a reading list for my team members in the past and I’ve used these series of books as a basis for both self Learning and guided learning.
Self learning typically would encourage your team member to read the book (they are all quite short) and to identify three ideas they can implement now.… Read more