Upon returning from a government meeting last, a friend of mine related to me a very grim scenario that I know happens everyday all over the world. Twenty people were invited from around the country to attend a two-day meeting intended to foster understanding and cooperation between organizations. The collective cost for this venture? Around $30,000. The value? She told me she could have gotten as much from a collection of presentations in an email and saved the stress that comes with two days of travel and two days in a high-stress, smog-filled city. She also said that much of the time was used to market the group on an offering that most of them were not interested in or able to take advantage of at this time.
In this week’s article, Ban Status Reporting Meetings, we review a meeting scenario shared by a reader and offer some tips to shift information-sharing meetings to be more collaborative collaborative in nature. I look forward to your comments as always!
We are all creatures of habit and whether we’re willing to admit it or not, the use of slideware (Microsoft’s PowerPoint and Apple’s Keynote) have become the ‘drug’ of choice for most businesses and governmental organizations. Oh too many organizations require folks to format their briefings to a company standard. Oh too many ‘addicts’ cannot kick their habits.
That said, consider breaking this mind-numbing habit by suggesting a new format for all inforamtion exchanges / briefings. Use pecha-kucha (20 slides, each slide shown for no more than 20 seconds) and/or design a PREZI (think of a BIG PICTURE approach w/ the ability to move about interactively). Both techniques force the presenter to think thru their material and distill it down to its essence.
See http://www.pecha-kucha.org/ and/or http://prezi.com/ for more info.