Are your “listeners” checking iPhones every few seconds? Texting? Chatting in side conversations?
Do they sit with glazed, far-away looks?
The problem is probably you.
No way are you delivering on what should be a passionate, especially powerful presentation.
Your Presentation Audience Needs You to Be . . .
In this video interview with Concentrated Knowledge Corporation’s Executive Insights Program, Andrew Clancy quizzes me on how to connect with an audience that seems disconnected and disinterested in what you have to say in your business presentation.
Here, I identify a remedy for you – how to hook and reel-in an errant audience. Here is what you need to be for your audience. It isn’t your listeners’ fault if you’re monotonous, unprepared, listless, nervous, or dull. It’s your job to entertain and energize your audience with your own enthusiasm.
Giving a business presentation is much more than just showing up in front of your long-suffering presentation audience and delivering a stilted talk. Much more.
Respect your audience and work hard to dazzle your listeners. They’ll appreciate it more than you know.
In addition to giving you solid counsel on your audience, I also suggest how you can energize your presentation by discarding one of the most common speaking crutches and by moving into the Command Position.
It’s not easy, but you can do it with several techniques developed over centuries of public speaking practice.
Please overlook my bad hair day in this video as you take in this powerful advice on How to Engage With Your Presentation Audience for an especially powerful presentation.
Not many of us readily accept coaching or suggestions of how to improve ourselves, particularly when it comes to highly personal aspects of our very being. For instance . . .
Your voice.
There’s nothing sacred, sacrosanct, or “natural” about your speaking voice. Your voice is the product of many years of development from numerous influences, many of which you may be unaware of.
Why not evaluate your voice today? See if it gets the presentation job done for you.
Does your voice crack? Does it whine? Do you perform a Kim Kardashian vocal fry at the end of every sentence? Does it tic up at the end of every sentence for no good reason?
Do you lard your conversation with nonsensical filler such as “whatever,” “umm,” “totally,” and “like” hundreds of times per day?
Why not change for the better?
Develop an Especially Powerful Voice
It’s time to recognize that your voice is not a sacred artifact, nor is it some precious extension of your very being. It is an instrument with which you communicate.
You can sharpen your communication skills by improving your voice. Simply thinking of your voice in this way will improve its quality. Working to improve it will improve its quality dramatically and build your voice into an especially powerful skill for personal competitive advantage.
Let’s consider here several things you can do to improve your voice. Nothing extreme at all. Have a look . . .
Microsoft’s PowerPoint multimedia software has gotten a bum rap, and this unfair reputation springs from the thousands of ugly presentations given every day from folks who don’t know how to work with PowerPoint.
And yet, PowerPoint is a brilliant tool.
Yes, brilliant.
But just as any tool – say, a hammer or saw – can contribute to the construction of a masterpiece . . . or a monstrosity, PowerPoint can contribute to the creation of an especially powerful presentation.
Or it becomes the weapon of choice to inflict yet another heinous public-speaking crime on a numbed audience.
Good Work with PowerPoint a Necessity
PowerPoint isn’t the problem. Clueless presenters are the problem.
So just how do you use PowerPoint?
You can start by consulting any of several PowerPoint experts who earn their living sharpening their own skills and helping other to hone theirs.
Folks such as Nancy Duarte, who has elevated PowerPoint design to a fine art. You can subscribe to her newsletter here by scrolling to the page bottom and signing up. You can also enjoy her supremely interesting blog here. She’s done all the heavy lifting already – now you can take advantage of it.
Garr Reynolds is another giant of the PowerPoint kingdom, and his concepts approach high art without being too artsy.
Meanwhile, if you want immediate help on-camera, do have a look at my own short video on how to work with PowerPoint. It is enough to get you started and, I hope, whet your appetite for more instruction.
For once you create those marvelous slides inspired by Nancy and Garr . . . you then must use them properly in a ballet of visual performance art called a business presentation.
This short video reviews several of my own techniques that provide basic guidance on how to work with PowerPoint.
It’s always exciting to debut a new lecture, and today in Philadelphia I unveiled a new seven-hour seminar for business executives.
Three months in the crafting, the Great Battles seminar had its germination in the suggestion by one of my colleagues.
He had hired me to deliver my earlier lecture series on Competitive Intelligence, which used historical military examples and multimedia, and thought that a full-blown seminar focused on the nexus between business strategy and military strategy might be well-received.
Why not offer a seminar on business lessons from military strategy?
Why not, indeed.
And so I did.
I believe it was received well, and what follows is the gist of this powerful offering . . .
War, Conflict . . . and Business
In business, we have adopted the language of war and of conflict.
We talk of market penetration . . . we counterattack a competitor . . . we out-flank our opponents . . . we get ambushed in office meetings . . . we form alliances and we battle against alliances . . . we conduct “hasty retreats” when facing a superior foe . . . we “make peace” with our enemies.
And we craft our strategy for our next campaign.
Perhaps it’s only natural that we should speak this way. Ours is a world of conflict and cooperation. And sometimes the cooperation seems only a prelude to conflict.
But rather than simply adopting the machismo of war-words, we can go beyond the surface similarities. We can study and learn something about planning and executing business strategy from the actual techniques of martial combat. Here, we look at some of the tactical techniques utilized by the military and codified in military manuals worldwide.
Some of techniques of maneuver and attack are familiar to most people. Others are not so well-known. The best strategic maneuver, of course, is one that Sun Tzu recommended more than 2,000 years ago. Sun Tzu urged us to consider techniques that would yield bloodless victories.
He said: “To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
Few of us are blessed with the kind of acumen or situation that affords us the luxury to win without battle.
And so we must suffice with techniques that can yield victory, if applied judiciously and the proper place and time.
We must suffice with business lessons from military strategy.
Circumspection a Must
But we must be circumspect and shrewd.
We must observe certain principles, and the hallmark of a sound principle is its successful application, across time, to situations in which the terms and technology may change, but the principle still holds true.
Principles serve as a north star to guide us, to keep us going in the right direction. In conflict situations, The Principles of War offer us guiding ideas for executing any strategy against a determined opponent – Objective, Offensive, Economy of Force, Maneuver, Unity of Command, Mass, Security, Surprise, and Simplicity. If the point is to learn how to think strategically . . . to exert a measure of control over a chaotic world and sometimes hostile world.
All smart and successful organizations make use of war principles but call them something else. So let’s do call them “Principles of Competition” . . . because they can be utilized by anyone involved in any conflict, great or small . . . they can be used at the organizational level . . . and they can be used at the personal level.
Many countries and many theorists have devised principles of war over the centuries. This noble and venerable lineage stretches back to the time of Sun Tzu, Thucydides, Vegetius, Machiavelli, Clausewitz, Jomini, Foch, and many other notables.
But regardless of the time and place and personality, the principles have always retained a sameness . . . They may change at the periphery, but they maintain a steadfast core character.
Principles of Competition
For this seminar, we appropriate for ourselves a set of Principles of War distilled by British Colonel John Frederick Charles Fuller during World War One and into the mid-1920s and adopted almost immediately in a slightly different form, by the United States military. These are principles that had been handed down less formally for centuries.
The lessons learned on the battlefield can help us in the boardroom and they can help us compete effectively against a determined and equally capable competitor.
In this seminar, we examine business lessons from the great battles of history – General Pagondas at Delium in 424 BC, Hannibal at Cannae in 216 BC, Lee at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg in 1863, Zulu Chief Cetshwayo at Isandlwana in 1879, Hitler’s Blitzkrieg of France in 1940, the Battle of Kursk in 1943, Israel’s Raid on Entebbe in 1976, and the First Gulf War, among others.
Was today’s seminar delivered with elan and panache? With brio?
Was it an especially powerful presentation?
One hopes, and we’ll see.
The jury is still out on this one and we await the verdict.
McTips – Presentation Fast Food that denies you personal competitive advantage
Presentation tips are about as valuable as “tips” to become a rocket scientist.
Let’s look hard at the phenomenon of presentation tips . . . what I call McTips.
And then discover the actual path to personal competitive advantage to deliver a powerful business presentation every time.
The Two Groups?
With regard to presentations, I deal with two large groups of people.
For sake of descriptive simplicity, let’s call these two groups “Natural Born” and “McTips!”
“Natural Born” and “McTips!” represent two extreme views of what it takes to become an especially powerful and superior business presenter.
Neither is remotely accurate.
And neither group is what might be called enlightened in these matters. Members of both groups are frustrating and irritating in their own ways and completely self-serving.
Here is why . . .
We often look for folks to excuse us from what, deep down, we know we ought to do, or what we can do.
If we look hard enough, we find what we search for, and excuses are extremely easy to find. Let’s look at these two excuses that hold us back from fulfilling our potential as especially powerful presenters.
The First View
The first view would have us believe that great speakers are born with some arcane and unfathomable gift, combining talent and natural stage facility.
That Bill Clinton sprang from the womb declaiming that he feels our pain.
That Ronald Reagan was born orating on lower capital gains taxes.
That Oprah Winfrey began her talk show career in kindergarten.
If the first view holds that great speakers are born with a gift, then quite logically this view leaves the rest of us to strive with middling presentation skills.
It’s an excuse for us not to persevere. Why bother to try?
Why not, instead, hire some of these natural born speaker types to do the heavy presentation lifting? The rest of us can skate along and pretend that we’re not actually lazy . . . or frightened . . . or disinterested . . . or unambitious.
The Second View: Presentation Tips
The second view is the opposite of the first.
This “McTips!” perspective would have us believe that delivering effective presentations is a snap.
So easy, in fact, that one of my colleagues assured me confidently and with not a little hubris that he could teach his undergraduates “everything they need to know about presenting in 30 minutes.”
He also assured me that “all that other stuff you talk about is B.S.”
Teddy Roosevelt: Personal competitive advantage for a President
Has the presentation landscape changed so much that what was once taught as a fine skill is now mass-produced in 30-minute quickie sessions of presentation tips?
I actually saw a headline on an article that offered 12 Tips to Become a Presentation God!
Have the standards of the presentation become so weak that great presenting can be served up in McDonald’s-style kid meals . . . “You want to super-size your speaking McTips?”
Hardly.
In the 1800s, public speaking was refined to an almost-art; “elocution” was the new science/art, and departments of elocution and public speaking flourished in universities throughout the land.
In Philadelphia, on Walnut Street in fact, the National School for Elocution and Oratory became a Mecca for would-be stars of the pulpit, the stage, the bar, and the political wars in the 1890s.
On into the first decades of next century, public speech was regarded with respect and a high-skill to be mastered with much study and practice.
The fact is that despite however much we might wish otherwise, today’s PowerPoint high-tech software multi-media offerings cannot change the fundamental truth that it is still you who must deliver the presentation.
So no . . . you cannot learn “everything you need to know about presenting in 30 minutes” with a handful of presentation tips.
You cannot become an especially powerful presenter at the fastfood drive-in window, unless you want to ply presenting at the lowest common denominator of mundane slide-readers that populate every business and law firm from New York to Nashville, from Boston to Baton Rouge, from Savannah to San Diego.
Ask yourself this. If learning to deliver top-notch presentations is so doggoned easy, then why are 9 out of 10 presentations such awful forgettable bore-fests?
The Third View – The Power Zone
There is a third group, and it is destined to remain small.
This group is privy to the truth, and once you learn the truth about presenting, you can never go back to viewing presentations the same way.
Consider this pop culture analogy from the 1999 film The Matrix.
In The Matrix, humans live in a world that is not what it seems. In fact, everything they believe about the world is false. Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburn) offers to reveal the truth to Neo (Keanu Reeves) about his existence.
Morpheus offers Neo a Blue Pill and a Red Pill. The Blue Pill returns him to his old state of ignorance. The Red Pill reveals the secret, and once he learns it, Neo cannot return to his old life.
The process of presentation discovery is much like the red-pill/blue-pill choice that Morpheus offers to the young computer hacker Neo . . .
You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Likewise, you can stop reading this article this instant – the blue pill – and return to the righteous and relaxing world of “Natural Born” or “McTips!” Both viewpoints allow the average presenter to remain mired in mediocrity with an excuse that sounds plausible.
One perspective means you don’t try at all, other means you offer token effort as befits a low-level pedestrian task.
So, if you decide to take the Blue Pill, close this site and go your own way. Bon voyage! I wish you a hearty good-luck and Godspeed, and perhaps you will be happier for your choice.
But if you are one of the few who thinks for a moment . . . “Hmm. What if the Professor is right?”
Then . . . Take the Red Pill
Take the red pill for especially powerful personal competitive advantage.
Then you can read on to the next brief paragraph – the red pill – and be forever shorn of the excuse for mediocrity.
For the truth is in the Power Zone, and once there, you will never be satisfied with your old presentation life again.
You cannot go back.
You can only go forward to personal competitive advantage.
That’s the paradox, the Curse of Freedom. It is completely within your power to seize the fruits of great presenting. It’s your choice.
You can launch an auspicious presentation career right now, right this minute.
Or you can dismiss this site as yet another fraudulent claim to revealing secrets to you . . . only to have it exposed as a method that requires you to actually do something.
A method that transforms you.
Choose the Red Pill. Step boldy into the Power Zone.
The Power Zone is the province of the privileged few who understand the truth that anyone can become a great presenter, with the right kind of hard work and the willingness to become a great presenter.
To join this third group requires you to take on a new state of mind.
If you already carry this view, that’s superb. If you don’t . . . you can decide now to adopt it or forever be relegated to the other two groups – believing you’re not good enough, or believing you are good enough when you’re actually not.
Public presentations – great presentations – require study and practice and preparation and technique. A deep philosophical, academic, and professional history undergirds public speaking. This history informs the very best presenters and their work. You dismiss it only to your great loss.
No, you need not become a scholar of public speaking. In fact, few people have that deep an interest in the subject and even fewer can claim that kind of knowledge today.
But what you can and should do is this: Open your mind and heart to the possibilities of found treasure.
You actually can become a capable presenter. You can become a great presenter.
When you enter the Power Zone, you are both cursed and blessed with knowledge. This knowledge represents two sides of the same coin.
You are cursed with the knowledge that the only limitation you have is you. You are blessed with the knowledge that you can become a good – even great – speaker.
An especially powerful presenter.
Now, you have no other real excuse. It’s up to you.
For the ultimate guide to developing your personal brand as an especially powerful business presenter, CLICK HERE.
After I delivered an incredibly inspiring lecture in a class last year – one of many, I am certain – a student approached me and shared this:
“I stand in one spot for the most part during my presentations,” he said. “But another professor told me to move around when I talk.”
Hmmm.
Move around when you talk.
“Did he tell you how?” I asked.
“Tell me what?”
“Did he tell you how to ‘move around?’ Did he tell you what it would accomplish?”
“No, he just said to ‘move around’ when you talk.”
“Just ‘move around?’”
“Yes.”
Ponder that piece of advice a moment.
Ponder that advice and then reject it utterly, completely. Forget you ever read it.
What rotten advice.
Never just “move around”
Never just “move around” the stage.
Everything you do should contribute to your message. Movement on-stage is an important component to your message. It’s a powerful weapon in your arsenal of communication.
Movements can and should contribute force and emphasis to your show.
But some people move too much. Like the professor urged, they just “move around” because they don’t know better.
And why should they know better, when some professor urged them to start prowling the stage for the sake of it.
Just as there are those who are rooted to one spot and cannot move while they speak, some folks just can’t stop moving. They stalk about the stage like a jungle cat, constantly moving, as if dodging imaginary bullets.
They are afraid to cease pacing lest their feet put down roots.
Never move just to “be moving.” Proper movement can imbue your business presentation with personal competitive advantage
This kind of agitated movement is awful.
Aimless pacing around the stage is worse than no movement at all.
Aimless movement usually indicates indecision, the sign of a disorganized mind. It’s usually accompanied by aimless thoughts and thoughtless words.
“Move around when you talk.”
It’s not the worst piece of advice a professor has ever given a student, but it’s incredibly naive.
At first, the advice seems innocent enough. Even sage. Aren’t we supposed to move around when we talk?
Don’t we see powerful presenters “move around” when they talk? Didn’t Steve Jobs “move around” when he presented at those big Apple Fests?
Yes, we see them “move around” quite well.
But do you know why they “move” and to what end?
Do you understand how they orchestrate their words and gestures to achieve maximum effect? Do you recognize their skilled use of the stage as they appeal to first one segment of the audience, and then another?
Do you think that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama just “move around” when they talk?
If I tell you to “move around when you talk,” what will you actually do? Think about it for a moment, how you might actually follow-through with that sort of vague advice. Will you flap your arms? Do Michael Jackson isolations with your shoulders? Shake your fist at the crowd?
Move, You Say? What great advice!
How? Where? When? Why? How much?
Awful advice.
We will never know how much damage such well-meaning naiveté has done to our presentation discourse. Like much of what is said, it carries a kernel of truth, but it is really worse than no advice at all. Centuries of practice and delivery advise us on this question. Edwin Shurter said in 1903 . . .
Every movement that a speaker makes means – or should mean – something. Hence avoid indulging in movements which are purely habit and which mean nothing. Do not constantly be moving; it makes the audience also restless. Do not walk back and forth along the edge of the platform like a caged lion. Do not shrug your shoulders, or twist your mouth, or make faces.
You are well on your to mastering your voice and to speaking like a powerful motivator. Now it’s time to incorporate essential movement.
What must you actually do during your talk? Where to do it? How to do it? Why should you do it . . . and when?
In tomorrow’s post, I’ll answer those questions and show you how to incorporate meaningful movement into your presentation – exactly the types of movement that add power and gain you personal competitive advantage.
Interested in more especially powerful techniques for your business presentation? Click here and discover the world of business presentations.
One of the keys to successful and confident performance of your business presentation is practice . . . and avoiding presentation practice errors.
The right kind of practice.
This is even more the case with a team presentation with more moving parts and variables in the mix.
The good effects of the right kind of diligent rehearsal is twofold:
1) your material is delivered in a logical, cogent fashion without stumble . . . and,
2) the practice imbues you and your team with confidence so that stage fright is reduced to a minimum and your team’s credibility is enhanced.
Practice strips away the symptoms of stage fright as you concentrate on your message and its delivery rather than extraneous audience reaction to your appearance.
But you reap the benefits of practice if your practice makes sense. This means that you practice the way you perform and avoid the two biggest rehearsal mistakes.
Presentation Practice Error #1
First, do not start your presentation repeatedly, as almost all of us have done at points in our presentation careers.
There is something in our psyche that seems to urge us to “start over” when we make a mistake. When we stumble, we want a “do-over” so that we can put together a perfect rehearsal from start to finish.
But when we do this, what we are actually practicing is the “starting over.” We become very good at “starting over” when we make a mistake.
But is that what we plan to do when we err in our actual presentation? Start over?
No, of course not. We don’t get to start over after evey blunder. But that is exactly what you have practiced.
If you’ve practiced that way, what will you do when you stumble? You won’t know what to do or how to handle the situation, since you have never practiced fighting through an error and continuing on.
You’ve practiced only one thing – starting over.
Instead of starting over when you err, practice the gliding over of “errors,” never calling attention to them. Practice recovering from your error and minimizing it. Perform according to the principle that regardless of what happens, you planned it.
Presentation Practice Error #2
The second big mistake is practicing in front of a mirror.
Don’t practice in front of a mirror unless you plan to deliver your talk to a mirror. It’s plain creepy to watch yourself in the mirror while talking for an extended period of time. There is nothing to be gained by rehearsing one way . . . only to do something entirely different for the actual event.
Of course, you will observe yourself in the mirror as you adjust your stance and appearance to ensure that what you feel is what people see while you present on all occasions. But you do not practice your finished talk in front of a mirror.
Why would you want to grow accustomed to looking at yourself present, only to be faced with an entirely different situation for the actual presentation?
That’s just bizarre. Instead, practice in front of your roommate . . . or go to the classroom or auditorium where you’re scheduled to present.
In short, create as much of the real situation as possible ahead of time.
To ensure an especially powerful presentation every time, practice hard and repeatedly . . . but practice the right way.
Tell a Business Presentation Story for Power and Impact
We all believe that we should weave stories into our business presentations, and who wouldn’t want to weave a compelling Business Presentation story?
But most of us rarely do. This might be a result of simply not knowing how.
Admit it . . . most of us think we’re pretty sharp – we all think we know what a story is, don’t we?
But do we really?
What is a Business Presentation Story?
Here’s my definition of a business presentation story, and it’s honed from a series of definitions that by their nature are slippery. It’s like trying to define “culture.” Most folks offer up definitions to suit the points they try to make.
A story is a narrative of events, either true or untrue, that appeals to the emotions more-so than the intellect and which features a character’s struggles to overcome obstacles and reach an important goal.
A business presentation story is . . . well, it’s no different.
Now, why is this important? Don’t we all somewhat believe, maybe, that stories are important in presenting?
Sure, but when it comes to “serious” presenting, many folks back off what they profess and offer up the usual tofu. Who knows why, but that’s usually what happens.
Maybe it’s the fraud that many perpetuate that business presentations are a “soft skill” that must yield to . . . something else.
You choose that something else: “facts,” “numbers,” “hard data.”
These substitutes for a compelling business presentations story offer false precision and faux comfort.
In this book, Haven compiles a wealth of sociological stories that inform us exactly what is meant by “story” and the source of its power. He contends that stories work so well because our brains are hardwired to learn most effectively from story-based narratives. “The mind-boggling and extraordinary truth is that each and every one of thousands of original sources agrees that stories are an effective teaching and learning tool.”
The results of this research are compelling and difficult to believe. Here is a small sample of findings:
“Story is the best vehicle for passing on valuable information . . . . Story structure proved equally more effective for teaching theorems, facts, concepts, and tacit information all across the curriculum and the spectrum of human communications.”
The bad news is that most folks remain ignorant of this power. Not through any fault of their own, but because of the impetus in modern business thought that has erected barriers against story narrative.
The good news is the same point. You can gain incredible power and advantage by embracing the power of a great business presentation story.
Have a look at Kendall Haven’s book, and be convinced.
CAVEAT: I do not ordinarily use profanity in my writing, even as I am a former soldier who well-understands that in certain coarse segments of society, the F-bomb is considered the most versatile tool in the English language, capably performing the functions of almost every part of speech. Nor do I intentionally offend any group. Having said that, far below I recount parts of an actual conversation that, without its inherent offensiveness, would lose much of its meaning and impact. You are fair-warned.
Here I sit, afflicted with acute self-awareness such that I write about that very self-awareness and its sometime creative vacuum.
It’s not that I am at a loss for words . . . it’s just that I am uncertain which words might do justice this odd notion that came to me on a subject that has fascinated me for years.
Would I want to waste precious words on it?
This subject is the notion of fitness. The kind of good, general fitness that leads to a physical appearance that is, in my view, an asset in presenting.
Surely this is something to strive for, and there is nary a downside to it. But in its extreme form, it is a sub-culture in many countries.
And it is uni-dimensional, at least in my opinion. It is limiting, and in its most extreme forms it is anti-intellectual and can be physically harmful. Yet it holds fascination for me because of the extreme discipline that it requires to live such a “lifestyle.”
I do not refer to the life of an ascetic monk. Is that really so debilitating? Or is that an easy way out, to isolate oneself from the tribulations most humans face in an increasingly complex and baffling modern society?
The Physical Culture Lifestyle
No. This sub-culture is euphemistically called “Physical Culture” by its aficionados. Years ago, I was peripherally involved in this sub-culture.
What is physical culture?
Bodybuilding.
Bodybuilding and the accompanying “lifestyle.”
Sculpting the body, straining with lead weights for hours on end each day, crafting one’s diet to weird and untried specifications (tuna, supplements, apple juice), and of course the inevitable injections of various illegal growth hormones and steroids.
And that’s about it.
That’s the entire lifestyle, as far as I can make out.
Now in this day and age of egg-walking, you criticize at your risk. And this bodybuilding community, after all, is a clearly identifiable minority in our society. But having been a peripheral member of that minority, oh-so-briefly (I actually won a contest in 1983—Mr. Physique in the city of what was then West Berlin), it may give me cover to offer up a few stray opinions that someone may find interesting.
Actually, I am a person who believes in the nexus between body and mind, and I cardio-up 2-8 miles each day for the beneficial health effects, but also for the endorphin release it provides. It helps my writing.
I think it does. It strikes me that it could be entirely unnecessary to suffer physically, drink oneself into stupefaction, or to claim a damaged past to write well.
But what about this extreme Physical Culture thing? Are there any novel ideas lurking in the gym, hidden ’twixt the weight plates or behind the Pilates stability ball?
Think of the wealth of possibilities for an entire series of novels on this bodybuilding lifestyle.
When you come up with any, please let me know.
But let’s pause a moment and go through the exercise. Of what might a novel about bodybuilders consist? What sort of dialog might we be compelled to craft? What possible plot could one contrive?
Steroid theft?
Fixed contests?
Love in the gym?
Conflict between the “good” bodybuilders and the “bad.”
Contrived Conflict
This last one is staple of film, particularly vintage martial arts films in which the conflict is between one school and another rival school (“I fight white-stomping-horse!”), one of which is invariably “evil.”
But this contrivance isn’t limited to foreign films. I am reminded of the movie Twister in which there were “good” stormchasers and “bad” stormchasers. Remember that somersault?
In Twister, it wasn’t sufficient to have man and woman aligned against a powerful force of nature, so a scriptwriter came up with the subplot of “competing Stormchasers.”
The bad stormchasers were well-funded by nameless corporations, and they drove black, nazi-like vehicles in a tight little convoy. They were motivated by money, fame, and greed. The good stormchasers were an underfunded rag-tag outfit in a little van with makeshift equipment and the usual motley collection of good souls (at least one beard) doing it for the betterment of mankind.
Never mind that both Twister groups were engaged in studying the behavior of tornadoes so to better understand and survive them. The film required the conflict, and it gave it to us in the form of a contrived good and bad dichotomy.
But back to the gym and our bodybuilding novel:
“You look pumped, today, Jim.”
“You, too, Apollo.”
“Where you going later?”
“Home to pop a can of tuna and rest up for my next workout.”
“Very cool. What’s on tap?”
“Quads and hams. Maybe some glutes.”
“I’m working on bis and tris.”
Apollo flexes his arms, admiring the vascularity and bulk in his forearms achieved through weeks of contest preparation, during which he restricted his diet to protein served in five meals per day along with handfuls of supplements and various illegal substances.
“I’m over the border to Tijuana, Jim. Wanna come with?”
“Juice?”
“Yeah, heard about a new cocktail of Human Growth Hormone and Dianabol.”
“Man, I don’t know about those injectibles,” Jim said with a shake of his head sitting atop his overdeveloped trap muscles like an orange atop Pharaoh’s pyramid. “Oral’s good enough for me.”
“Poor results, dude. No cut, no bulk, no vascularity. Just piss-poor all around.”
“But no acne or ball shrinkage.”
Writer’s block kicks in, and I’m grateful for that.
That’s all I can come up with at the moment, and given my languor on the subject, not much else is forthcoming.
Let me go to my gym for some primary research on a Saturday late afternoon.
So I do.
I go to my gym in mid-town Philadelphia for a Saturday evening workout and maybe a story idea or two.
Not much drama taking place along the row of treadmills—just a lone walker in spandex, arms pumping, sweat flying, her eyes riveted on the monitor overhead broadcasting CNN.
Nor is there much conflict on the hard rubber mats in front of regimented racks of various sizes and weights of dumbbells. One tattooed African-American giant is squatting with what looks like a railroad axle on his shoulders. Whoa, now.
He does not look conversational.
The music throbs loudly, and even as this pulsing techno beat fills the gym with false energy, I find no true spirit of the steel, no bonafide discipline of the iron.
I’m out of literary luck in this venue.
I leave. Pumped, blood flooding the muscles, endorphins raging . . . but still out of literary luck.
But then a mere 30 minutes later . . .
I stop off at Ruby Tuesday’s on the way back to my studio apartment. Just for a single libation in the early evening, mind you. Replenishing those carbs.
It was there I became trapped in a social situation not of my choosing. Believe me.
The bar area was crowded with transients, located as it is near the airport hotels. I had sat down alone, wearing my underarmor compression tee and carrying a book on Fundamentals of Strategic Management that I planned to skim for its section on ‘case analysis.’
A buzz-cut fellow at the bar kept eyeing me. He invited himself over. He sat down and offered his hand.
“Brad.”
Our encounter began evenly enough, even as I tried to conduct a delicate self-intervention to prevent it.
You see, Brad wore a checkered short sleeve shirt, unbuttoned to reveal an undershirt. And tattoos. Lots of tattoos.
Arms. Chest. Ugly ominous black tattoos. No hearts or cupids or flowers in sight.
Tattoos send a message, and in my experience it is rarely a good one.
After Brad pulled off his shirt in the bar, I saw that he had tattoos around his neck as well. Chains, skulls, knives, claws . . . dark things, dead things.
Swallowing Tobacco Juice
Brad’s message was definitely not one of sweetness and light.
He was chewing tobacco. The wad of Copenhagen dip tobacco caused Brad’s lower lip to bulge, and it left flecks of black about his lips.
“Where’s your spit cup, Brad?”
“I swallow it.”
“You swallow tobacco juice? Isn’t that unhealthy? I mean, aside from the cancer risk.”
“Yeah, it might give me stomach cancer but what the hell.”
Brad waved at the bartender.
“Drink up! Beers for my man here! On me!”
He put my Yeungling on his tab.
“Um, thanks Brad. Why the tattoos?”
He sipped his vodka tonic, obviously the latest in a long sequence of vodka tonics stretching back into the afternoon.
“I was in a gang,” Brad said. “The AB.”
“In prison, you mean?”
“Where the fuck else? I been in for 20 years. I just got out eight hours ago, mother-fucker.”
“Well, I thought it might be some street gang or fraternal group.”
Brad’s eyes narrowed and he tilted his head at a funny angle.
“Whaddaya mean by that?” Brad said. “What the fuck’s a ‘fraternal group’? That a fag outfit?”
Descent into Madness
“It’s just a club,” I said, with an involuntary throat clearing.
“No . . . AB ain’t no club.”
“What’s AB?”
“Aryan Brotherhood.”
“I see.”
“Without your brothers, you die.”
Yes, Brad’s an ex-con.
“I just got out,” Brad said. “Did I tell you that? Eight hours ago. And I’m trying to get to the West coast but got stuck here ’til Monday. Stayin’ in that ratty motel right over there.”
Brad’s got a job lined up.
He’s going to be a rep for some kind of bodybuilding supplement company, the name of which I won’t divulge. He claims that I, too, can be a rep and receive $3,000 of free stuff each year.
Brad keeps looking at my arms and chest. Am I nervous?
“Hey, I ain’t no fag or nothin’, man, but I see you walk in and you know what’s what. It’s obvious you know what’s what, right? Dontcha?”
“Huh?”
“You know what’s what! You ain’t dumb!”
“Yeah,” I said. What is he talking about? “You better believe I know what’s what.”
“I thought you did! I knew it!”
I grin stupidly and raise my beer, and I drink that beer as fast as I can.
“Brad, what can I say? You know what’s what, too.”
“Damn right, I do!” he said, and he smacked the table.
“What you got? Nineteen?” He nodded at my arms.
“Beg pardon?”
“Come on, man, you know what’s what! Nineteen inches?”
“Almost seventeen.” I said.
Brad nodded approvingly. He held up a hand.
“Hey, I ain’t no fag or nothin’, but I’m just sayin’ you got what’s what. Just admirin’ the truth, y’know.”
“Thank you.”
Brad keeps claiming that I’m “on the juice.” That’s bodybuilder talk for steroids. Deca, Dianabol, Equipose. That kind of thing.
“You tellin’ me the truth, Stan? You’re natural? What the fuck, man! You know what’s what!”
“All natural! I know what’s what!”
“I thought so!”
Hepatitis Can Slow a Man Down
Another long sip on his vodka tonic. Brad grabbed his side.
“Can’t drink too much of this with this Hepatitis C. Bad for the liver. Tomorrow I’m gonna feel like a fuckin’ brick right there. Hey, you know I just got out of the pen.”
Long pause during which I know I better say something or this fellow might get nervous. What do they say in the movies?
“I guess that’s why you know what’s what.”
“Damn right.”
“So, what were you in for?”
Brad leaned in close.
“I was in their highest level of custody,” he said, leaning closer and showing me his bureau of prisons inmate card. A red and white plastic card with Bureau of Prisons on it, I think. That’s what it said on the card: “Inmate.” With a number.
“I used to have one of my brothers guard me when I went to the john,” he said. “A man outside the stall. A man guardin’ me when I took a shower. It’s hard in there, man. You got to be hard. Got to watch your back all the time.”
He nodded over his shoulder.
“See that guy there? If he puts his hand on my shoulder, I’ll break the fucker. I’ll snap that fucker’s arm. I’ll put this in his fucking neck.” He held up a pen he was using to write down the name of his supplement company for me. He shakes it at me. “I’ll put this in his neck right into his brain stem.”
“You just bought that guy a drink, Brad. I don’t think he wants trouble with you.”
“I don’t care man, you gotta take care of yourself.” He looked around. “See these people in here, I mean I could kill anyone in this place.”
I nod.
“I believe you could, Brad.”
Brad’s Rap Sheet
I raise my glass and give a tight little grin. What else can I do while listening to a man just out of the pen, locked up for bank robbery and boasting of three murders while in lock-up? Challenge him? Set him straight?
“Well, what were you in for?”
Brad sat back.
“I was in for bank robbery. Twenty years.”
“Were you framed?” Isn’t that what you always ask these folks?
“Nah, man, I did it! I just got caught. Twenty years on the inside. Man I’m forty-four now.”
He wiped his mouth and lowered his voice.
“I did three murders, too, but that was on the inside, so they don’t count. They were inside jobs and they don’t care nothing ’bout that. Don’t give a shit ’bout that. Those murders don’t count.”
I drained my beer.
“Uh, I have to go now, Brad . . . lots of work to catch up on. Thank you for the beers.”
“Don’t let me hold you up.”
“Is that a joke, Brad? Hold me up?’”
Brad points at me and offers, I think, a smile.
“Ha, ha—you’re a funny man.”
I offer my hand, and he takes it, his little finger jutting at an odd angle from a break doubtless suffered in a long-ago fight over stakes that didn’t matter. Save survival.
“I wish you luck, Brad. You might want to stay mellow tonight. I don’t think anyone here will jump you, so please don’t break any arms or stick that pen into anyone.”
Brad looked at me.
“You know what’s what, man! They arrest you for fighting, not loving. I’m gonna be a lover from now on.”
I pointed at him and nodded.
And, blessedly, I left.
And I do not feel good having dipped my toe into that morass that grips much of humanity and turns it inhuman. Three murders that don’t count? Aryan Brotherhood? In my apartment, I felt like I wanted to take a hot psychic shower to rid myself of certain images.
But there is dramatic grist here.
That man has a story. Brad is out of the pen, he’s hawking bodybuilding supplements between vodka and tonics and is living a lifestyle now that I cannot begin to fathom. Lord only knows how this man will spend his day tomorrow . . . and the next . . . and the one after that.
He has a story, but I just don’t know if I could stand to hear it.
Could you?
I mean . . . do you know what’s what? Because I surely do not.
Group Presentations can be a source of your Personal Competitive Advantage
“How come I never get a good group?”
Recognize that your group has been assembled with a professional purpose in mind, not to make your life miserable.
You will disagree with each other on aspects of the group presentation.
How you disagree and how you resolve those disagreements for the good of the team and of your group presentation is as important as the presentation itself.
It’s essential that you maintain civil relations, if not cordial relations, with others in the group – don’t burn bridges. You don’t want to engender dislike for people. Perhaps for the rest of your life.
The people in the various group projects will form an important part of your network in years to come.
Remember that the relationship is paramount, the presentation itself is secondary.
The Arrogance of “I don’t have time for this.”
Your job is to craft a group experience, assign responsibilities, develop a reasonable schedule.
Some members of your group will make time commitment choices that do not appear aligned with the objectives of the group.
You hear phrases such as “I can’t make the meeting.” You may hear the outright arrogance of “I don’t have time for this.”
Make Your Group Fabulous and Reap the Rewards!
This, of course, is simply a choice to be somewhere else to spend time in other pursuits.
Because everyone has the same amount of time, no more and no less.
Different people make different choices about the use of their time.
Recognize that this will happen and that it is neither good nor bad – it is simply the hand that you are dealt.
How you react to it will in large part determine the success of your group. One part of your job to properly motivate others to contribute to the group goal.
I always communicate to my students what to expect in a 5-person group. The 2-2-1 rule will usually hold.
Two people work hard, two cooperate and are damned happy to be there for the group presentation, and one rarely shows up, because he or she has a “busy schedule.”
Another popular take on it is to apply the Pareto 80-20 rule: Eighty percent of the work is done by twenty percent of the people.
The corollary, of course, is that 80 percent of problems are caused by 20 percent of the people. A different 20 percent.
“But that’s not fair!”
That’s reality.
Is it “fair?”
Maybe or maybe not in some cosmic sense, but that’s a question for philosophers of distributive justice and irrelevant to the imperatives of group work.
Regardless of how you couch it, do not take your group woes to the professor for solution. Your professor knows well what you face. He wants you to sort it out.
You must sort it out, because your prof is not your parent.
Your professor won’t appreciate it any more than your CEO or VP superior at your company appreciates solving your personnel issues . . . repeatedly. It reflects badly on you and gives an impression of weakness.
Moreover, if you begin to focus heavily on who’s not carrying their “fair share,” then that becomes the dominant theme of your group dynamic. Rather than that of accomplishing your group goal.
And such misplaced focus and animosity reflects badly in the final product, and you may forfeit valuable personal competitive advantage.
Keep these guiding principles in mind as you chart your course through the labyrinth of group work. Every group is different, temporary, and frustrating in it’s own way.
Don’t allow the briers of this ephemeral activity catch your clothing and slow you down from your ultimate goal – an especially powerful presentation.
A powerful group presentation can yield personal competitive advantage
You find all sorts of problems in group work.
Anyone who has participated in even one group project in college knows this.
Perhaps you believe these challenges are external to you? Others cause problems, because surely you must not be contributing to the challenges facing your group?
Let’s examine, understand, and overcome these challenges before they get out-of-hand.
First . . . Unpredictability
The first major reason is the unpredictability of your situation.
One key characteristic of your group presentation is its rampant unpredictability. The project appears submerged in ambiguity that we seem powerless to affect.
It’s bad enough to face the unknown variables of case analysis and its attendant presentation, but then several other variables are added to the mix in the form of . . . those pesky other people.
We all prefer to control our own destinies.
Most all of us want to be judged on our own work. We like to work alone. This is very much the craftsman’s view. Our labors are important to us. We take pride in our work.
But with group work, the waters muddy. It becomes difficult to identify who is doing what, and consequently, we worry about who will get the credit.
We worry if there will even be any credit to distribute if our presentation collapses under the burden of multiple minds and differing opinions and people who seem not to care.
Collaboration is a fact of life in business presentations . . . if you can master it, you add to your personal competitive advantage
We begin to worry that our contribution will be overlooked.
We worry that someone else will take credit for our work and we’ll be left with the crumbs.
We see ourselves becoming submerged, and as we sink into a kind of group ethos, our individual identity is threatened. How will the boss, the professor, or anyone else, know what I do?
How will they know our contribution?
With every additional person, the unknown variables multiply.
Worse, what if we get saddled with a reputation for poor work because someone else screwed up?
The second major reason for group failure is the ordeal of time management and schedule coordination.
Six different students, each with differing class schedules and who often are working part-time, must somehow work together. Moreover, you may be involved in several classes that require group projects.
And you invariably are faced with the pathology of one or two team members who “don’t have time for this.”
So the difficulties mentioned here multiply.
Why the Group Presentation?
The group presentation is not easy.
It can be downright painful.
Infuriating.
It can turn student-against-student faster than anything else in college outside of Greek rush.
So why do your professors require them? Why do all of your B-school professors seem determined to put you through this misery?
You’ve probably heard the spurious reasons. One pervasive student myth is that professors assign group work so they can cut their own grading work load.
The reasoning goes something like this: it is much easier for a professor to grade six presentations or papers than to grade 30 individual papers.
This myth is so pervasive that it has become conventional wisdom among students.
Group Work? Learn to Embrace it
We see three big problems with this.
First, by definition, individual work is not group work.
If group work is an essential part of the workplace experience, then individual papers or other assignments do not contribute to the learning experience that is specifically designed to prepare you for the workplace.
Second, professors often are required to assign some form of group work in their courses.
The prevailing pedagogy in most business schools advocates the group work experience as essential to prepare students for the 21st Century workplace. Frankly, this is the way it should be.
Third, this myth assumes that professors enjoy watching students stumble their way through awkward presentations, poorly prepared and half-heartedly delivered.
While you, as a student, prepare for only one or two presentations, the professor oftentimes must watch 25 presentations or more during a semester and then evaluate them.
I assure you that this can be an unpleasant experience.
Embrace Group Work
The proverbial bottom line that we all talk about in business school is this: You do “group work” because it is essential to the 21st Century business world.
In fact, corporate recruiters list it as the second-most-desired skill in the job candidates they consider. So why not embrace the group presentation as a necessary component of your school experience?
The days of the business generalist are all but dead in corporate America.
Specialization rules the business workplace, and the manipulation of knowledge is ascendant.
This means, from a practical standpoint, that we cannot produce major products by ourselves. There is little doubt that you will become one of these knowledge-workers upon graduation.
You also will begin to specialize in certain work, especially if you join a large firm. This is because business operations today are incredibly complex and fast-paced.
These two factors make it almost impossible for any one person to isolate himself or herself from the combined operations of the firm. Major tasks are divided and divided again.
Think of it as an extreme form of division of labor.
So we must work with others. The globalized and complex business context demands it, and you can gain incredible personal competitive advantage if you embrace it.
In Part II, I show you how to not only survive the Group Presentation, but how to thrive and turn it into the cornerstone experience for your first job out of school . . . or your next job after getting your MBA.
Recognize and accept that your presentation is a wholly different communication mode than your final memorandum or report.
Treat it this way, and your chances of winning your case competition increase dramatically.
How to win a Case Competition
If your analysis is robust and your conclusions are sound, as should be with all the entries, then a powerful and stunning presentation delivered by a team of confident and skilled presenters will win the day most every time.
The competency of most case competition teams is relatively even. If a team lifts itself above the competition with a stunning presentation, it will win.
If you have reviewed the step-by-step preparation to this point and internalized its message, you understand that you and your teammates are not something exclusive of the presentation. You are the presentation.
By now, you should be well on the way to transforming yourself from an average presenter into a powerful presentation meister. You know the techniques and skills of the masters. You have become an especially powerful and steadily improving speaker who constantly refines himself or herself along the seven dimensions we’ve discussed: Stance, Voice, Gesture, Expression, Movement, Appearance, and Passion.
Employ the Seven Secrets to Win a Case Competition
When I coach a team how to win a case competition, the team members prepare all of their analysis, conclusions, and recommendations on their own. Here are some tips how to do this. Their combined skills, imagination, and acumen produce a product worthy of victory. The team then creates their first draft presentation.
It is at this point that the competition is most often won or lost.
Powerful winning presentations do not spring forth unbidden or from the written material you prepare. The numbers “do not speak for themselves.”
The “power of your analysis” does not win a case competition on its own. You cannot point to your handout repeatedly as a substitute for a superb presentation.
Your case solution is not judged on its merit alone, as if the brilliance of your solution is manifest to everyone who reads it. It is judged on how well you communicate the idea. Powerfully and persuasively.
Each member of your team must enter the presentation process as a tangible, active, compelling part of the presentation. And you must orchestrate your presentation so that you work seamlessly together with each other, with the visuals you present, and with the new knowledge you create.
Phase 2 of your case competition preparation begins when you’re issued the case.
Recognize that the nature of this case may differ from what you are accustomed to. It could be more incomplete and open-ended than the structured cases you’ve dealt with before.
In fact, it could be a contemporary real-world case with no “solution.” It could be a case crafted especially for the competition by the company sponsoring the competition.
Case Competition First Step
Your first step – your team members read the case once-through for general information and understanding, to inventory issues, and to define the magnitude of the task at hand. You are drawing a philosophical and psychological box around the case to encompass its main elements. Here, you make it manageable prevent time-burn in discussions of unnecessarily open-ended questions.
Discussion proceeds on defining the problem statement.
At this point, your expertise and skills gained in years of business schooling should guide you in developing your analysis and recommendations.
The difference in acumen and skill sets among teams in a competition is usually very small, so I assume that every business team will produce analytical results and recommendations that are capable of winning the competition. This includes your team, of course.
Victory or Defeat?
The quality of teams is high, and the output of analysis similar. This means that victory is rarely determined by the quality of the material itself. Instead, victory and defeat ride on the clarity, logic, power, and persuasiveness of the public presentation of that material. I have seen great analyses destroyed or masked by bad presentations.
The Presentation is the final battlefield where the competition is won or lost.
And so we devote minimum time on the preparation of your arguments. Many fine books can help you sharpen analysis. This post concerns how you translate your written results into a powerful presentation that is verbally and visually compelling.
We are concerned here with the key to your competition victory.
Here is your competitive edge: While 95 percent of teams will view their presentations as a simple modified version of the written paper that they submit, your team attacks the competition armed with the tools and techniques of Power Presenting. You understand that the presentation is a distinct and different communication tool than the written analysis.
Cut ’n’ Paste Combatants
Many teams cut-and-paste their written paper/summary into the presentation, unchanged. This usually makes for a heinous presentation that projects spreadsheets and bullet points and blocks of text on a screen. These monstrosities obscure more than they communicate. It is a self-handicap and a horrendous mistake.
Sure, at times you will see winning presentations that do this – I see them myself on occasion. This usually happens for one of several reasons, none of them having to do with the quality of the visual presentation . . .
1) Substance trumps: The business analysis and recommendation is substantially better than all other entries and overcomes deficiencies in presentation.
2) Mimicry: All entries utilize the same defective method of cutting-and-pasting the final report onto PowerPoint slides, thus leveling the playing field to a lowest common denominator of visual and verbal poverty.
Don’t present all the fruits of your analysis. Too much information and too many details can cripple your initial presentation. Remember that you should hold back details for use and explication during the Q&A period.
A parsimonious presentation should deliver your main points.
Deciding what to leave out of your initial presentation can be as important as deciding what to include and emphasize.
This case competition guide can prepare you to win your next business case competition long before you even know the case . . .
The key to doing well in case competitions is to differentiate yourselves beforehand by following you case competition guide, before you ever travel to the site of the competition.
Before they ever give you the sealed envelope with your business case enclosed.
This is much easier than you might imagine, and you begin by consulting your case competition guide.
The Three Ps of Business Presentations provide a roadmap to ready you for your competition.
Principles . . . Preparation . . . Practice
Principles.
You don’t start tuning your instrument for the first time when it’s time to perform a concert, and likewise, you don’t begin honing your presentation skills when it’s time to present. By the time of your competition, all of your team members ought to be thoroughly grounded in the principles of especially powerful presentations.
The principles offered here in this case competition guide.
This part of your competition prep should already be accomplished, with only a few review sessions to ensure everyone is sharp on the Seven Secrets: Stance . . . Voice . . . Gesture . . . Expression . . . Movement . . . Appearance . . . Passion.
Second, Preparation
Our case competition guide divides the preparation for the competition into three phases.
Phase 1: Lead-in to the Competition
You are made aware of the competition’s rules. You acknowledge and embrace the rules and what they imply. Your entire team should become intimately familiar with the parameters of the competition – think metaphorically and spacially.
Recognize that the problem has length and breadth and depth. Understand the finite limits of the context presented to you, what you can and cannot do. Think of it as an empty decanter that you fill with your analysis and conclusions on the day of the competition.
Later, upon receiving the actual Case, you will conduct the same process – recognize that the Case Problem has length and breadth and depth.
But now, prior to the competition, take stock of what you already know you must do . . . and then do most of it beforehand as the rules permit.
This includes embracing the problem situation long before you arrive on-site for a competition and before you receive the case in question. Learn the parameters of the context in which you will operate. The case competition guide breaks the competition environment into discrete elements:
Competition rules
Length of presentation
Total time available (set-up, presenting, Q&A, Close-out)
Number of presenters allowed or required
Visuals permitted or required
Sources you may use, both beforehand and during the problem-solving phase
Prohibitions
You know that you will be required to provide analysis of a case and your results and recommendations. Why not prepare all that you can before you arrive at the competition?
Some competitions may frown on this or forbid it . . . fine, then do it when you can, at the first point that it is permissible. This way, you can spend the majority of your case analysis time filling in the content.
Follow the Case Competition Guide
Prepare your slide template beforehand according to the principles expounded here.
Business presentations have a small universe of scenarios and limited number of elements that comprise those scenarios. A well-prepared team that is composed of team members from different functional areas will have generic familiarity with virtually any case assigned in a competition. The team should have no problems dealing with any case it is presented.
Determine beforehand who will handle – generally – the presentation tasks on your team as well as the analytical portions of your case. The following is offered as an example of how the task might be approached:
Your Case competition Guide suggests that you distribute your tasks long before the competition . . . your business presentation will be the better for it
As part of this initial process, prepare your slide template with suitable logos, background, killer graphics, and charts and graphs requiring only that the numbers be filled in.
Leading into the competition, it’s essential that your team be familiar with sources of data that you may be permitted to utilize in conducting your case analysis – market research, industry surveys, and such like. Familiarity with online databases like Business Source Premier, Mergent Online, and S&P NetAdvantage is necessary since not all schools may have access to the data sources you use most often.
No Place for the Unprepared
With respect to the delivery or your presentation itself, a case competition is neither time nor place for you to polish your delivery skills. You should have honed them to razor’s edge by now. As well, your orchestration as a team should be perfected before arriving at the site of the competition.
At the competition, you lift your performance to the next level in terms of application of all the principles, precepts, and hard skills you have applied in business school – finance, accounting, marketing, operations, strategy, analysis – and you apply them in a tightly orchestrated and professional presentation that pops.
If you have engaged the case competition guide successfully during the lead-up to the competition, then your taut case-cracking team will be ready when you are finally issued the case. A team ready to address the issues involved in the case problem.
Thoughtful visionaries must craft compelling business presentations to make their rarefied concepts intelligible
George H. W. Bush might have called it “the vision thing.”
He beat me to it by about 20 years, and while it might have been a phrase suitable for ridiculing an uptight politician, I think it does capture its amorphous quality.
It seems that the vision thing is amorphous . . . to everyone but the visionary. To the visionary, the vision is clear, rational, bright as white phosphorus burning on a moonless night.
And quite as hot.
At best, the visionary is surrounded by lesser minds whose feeble synapses cannot loop themselves about the vision.
At worst, they are idiots and obstructionists.
Our Visions . . .
Vision, passion, presence . . . your business presentation needs them all
Of course, we all have visions.
To us, our own visions are clear. They are indeed rational, bright as white phosphorus burning on a moonless night.
And yes . . . quite as hot.
These are exciting visions, and visions that are bound to disappoint us as we make others aware of them.
For no one else understands. Because . . . communicating that vision may be as difficult as confecting it in the first place.
For every sympathetic ear lent to you by a fellow visionary who has been put through the meatgrinder of negativity, there are 100 naysayers eager to turn the crank on your vision.
No . . . 1000 naysayers.
Not that naysaying is always bad, mind you. All visions are not created equal, and some can be downright nasty.
The man or woman with a vision could easily be an artist or architect, or could well be a developer scarfing up land to lay down asphalt for a superhighway or to lay foundations for a new Trump Tower.
Or it could be an entrepreneur — wild-eyed, committed, driven by a vision.
Driven to Create
Or a would-be novelist with one good plot in him . . . or her. Or a dozen plots seething and straining at release from the prison of our poor imagination. A would-be novelist, driven to write. Or driven to distraction.
Is there so much difference between an entrepreneur and a writer? For novelists are entrepreneurs. Each time the bold writer casts a blank page upon the screen to begin a new tale, it is a fresh project, new to the world and unlike anything that has gone before. One hopes.
The endeavor requires a particular set of attributes. Determination, patience, acumen, imagination, education of a sort (not necessarily formal), experience in life, literacy. The ability to communicate . . .
This last, of course, is the trick.
For words are the medium most of us use to convey our vision, whether a novel or an idea for a product that does not yet exist. A product that meets a need that we do not yet know we have. A story that resonates with feelings we have not yet explored.
Even the painter must use words to “explain” his art to those unable to grasp its subtlety or significance — such explanation, by its very nature, is usually a forlorn exercise.
The vision thing. Our visions can be great or small, creative or mundane.
In my classes on business strategy, I talk about the vision thing in oblique terms. I actually broach the concept of businessperson as artist. The artistically inclined in my courses (and some liberal arts folks do slip in) look askance at the idea, and most of the fact-motivated business-inclined in my courses don’t seem to care.
Or, even if they were to care, simply do not understand the point.
The notion is not warmly received. Perhaps the point is nonexistent. Or strained. Or ludicrous.
Perhaps it is a futile exercise. Maybe it is something that I see that others do not. Even so, it is possible that this thing that I alone see does not necessarily have value.
No Boundaries to Creativity
But I do believe that there are no disciplinary bounds that contain creativity. Many of the products of advertising agencies abound with creativity – at least in their initial stages before the corporate leavening process strips away edginess and originality and anything which might prove too startling for public sensibilities.
For corporate leavening is designed to package knowledge in comprehensible, digestible bites. It is designed to link information seamlessly into the already-known world of popular culture, more to massage viewers with familiar verities and comfortable genuflections than to stimulate thought. It is the proverbial cooks spoiling broth.
Your vision should animate all you do
So it is with business generally. There is an art to business, but it is never described as such lest such creativity be hooted from the room.This is the realm where ideas are “run up flagpoles” and such like, where outside-the-box thinking receives the obligatory tip o’ the hat, but where genuine “outside the box thinking” is neither expected nor appreciated.
The articulation of true thinking outside the corporate box is risible, if anyone unschooled in the unwritten corporate rules dares to give voice to such heresy.
This is the conundrum. The paradox.
Now, we all engage in pop-psychology from time-to-time, and this allows us to speak of the “average person’s” attitudes, beliefs, and reactions as if we, ourselves, are free of this “average person’s” afflictions. But indulge this hubris for a few more moments.
The conundrum is that when the artist, the visionary, thinks outside the box, it leaves others feeling threatened and insulted that they, themselves, are perceived as restricted to thinking inside this box.
Likewise, the average person tends to interpret his own inability to understand a vision as the other person’s quackery . . . whether the artist is a painter, composer, writer . . . or businessman.
There is a balance to be struck here.
Those of us without calluses on our fragile psyches can be wounded by the mass rejection of our vision, such rejection leaving us questioning our sanity and ability. Conversely, those of us informed by our own arrogance and too callused may be deaf to legitimate criticism or to gentle suggestion.
Thus, the conundrum of the vision. Visions are difficult.
Conundrum of the Vision
I said that not all visions are created equal. Not all are salutary or benign. Some are unsavory, insidious, dangerous, cold.
Others are just boring, derivative, smug, pale.
But I desire not to judge a man’s vision. Not hereabouts, anyway.
These problems of distinguishing good vision from bad are worth essays and books in their own right, essays and books that are perhaps beyond this scribe’s abilities to pen.
Rather, at this point, I call attention to the angst and anguish of the man who perceives that his vision cannot be grasped by others. His impatience with naysayers, his irascibility, his inability to compromise, his propensity to scoff rather than to explain. Ultimately, his resignation that any explanation will not be enough.
For if it were explicable to the average mind, then the average mind would have long ago seized upon the vision and made it corporeal.
That is yet another conundrum for the entrepreneur, the artist, the visionary. Perhaps it has always been this way, and it is not necessarily restricted to those of genius stature.
If the vision itself, indeed, is true art – an assemblage of something truly unique, then of course it will not be immediately apprehensible to the hoi-polloi.
And so not to sound haughty, perhaps it could be better said: “immediately apprehensible to us of the hoi-polloi,” to those of us not privy to the vision’s intricate fabric, the obscure linkages, the high concept that informs the few.
Beware the Sneer of the Wise
Let me issue a caveat that complicates the issue.
There are those in our lives who exhibit a raft of negative characteristics – irascibility, inability to compromise, the sneer of the wise – without the saving grace of having a vision or anything resembling it. But shrewd and clever folks are afoot, and they know the trappings of the visionary, the finery of the thinker, the vernacular of the annointed.
But he is hollow. And how to spot this poseur?
Again, I digress in the interest of clarity and refinement. Back to the point-of-the-moment, and that point is this:
Communicating the vision is incredibly difficult. It is difficult because of snags all along the communication chain. It is difficult because of flaws inherent in the visionary, in the medium, and in the those receiving the message. Given this, it is a wonder that useful communication occurs at all.
Think of the equation: An irascible, haughty, driven, and quirky entrepreneur attempts hurried and imperfect communication with an unresponsive, suspicious, and fallow audience.
For inevitably, the recipient of a fresh, new, insightful, electrifying, unique confection of art, vision, or theory will respond in predictable manner.
The recipient of this revolutionary information responds to the truly new by filtering the information through sensors that massage and mold it into images and words and reality that are already known. For it all has been heard before, seen before, considered before, and catalogued before.
Nothing is truly new . . . especially to the clever man, who for the most part has no personal stake in recognizing and processing novelty.
If perchance, an idea takes root, a theory is accepted, art recognized for its texture, nuance, and universalism . . . well, the problem of communication is instantly forgotten after the fact.
We’re All Geniuses . . . After The Fact
After the fact, of course, it is all different. We all recognize novelty, genius, the great idea after the fact. Long after the fact. It becomes “obvious.”
The unserious novels of Charles Dickens. The absurd notion that people might appreciate a service that provides overnight delivery, a service with the ridiculously stuffy name “Federal Express.”
In each of these dramatically different cases, an entrepreneur recognized something that others, perhaps much like us, could not or would not.
Entrepreneurs and novelists are usually driven people. I tend to believe that they are one and the same. Would-be authors are entrepreneurs. In fact, they are repeat performers, whether crafting fiction or non-fiction . . . every new book is an entrepreneurial effort.
They visualize what is not there, what others cannot see. Or can see only through a mist of reality that clogs the imagination. Imaginative and single-minded, they embrace their mission with religious zeal (and I do believe that those two words, religious and zeal, are joined at the hips, much as to “redouble one’s efforts”).
A touch of the maniacal, the obsessive, the glassy-eyed dreamer, the take-no-prisoners, uncompromising drive. The determination that compels one to rise each day to face the idea that no one understands, to embrace yet another day alone in one’s belief.
An attitude that says “do not tamper with this vision.”
This is, of course, the only way for entrepreneurs to succeed. If they were any other way, they wouldn’t be entrepreneurs.
Which brings me to the final point that is not so disentangled from what has gone before to be a standalone.
I have waxed on about communication and its difficulties. The word has become almost a cliché in that everything these days can be labeled a “communication problem,” even when the problem is not lack of communication, but rather too much accurate communication.
The “communication” conundrum I refer to afflicts anyone who would write to inform others, who would convey thoughts and notions and concepts.
In fiction, and even in non-fiction, I have noted a disinclination on the part of many undergraduates and some graduate students to edit their work. As if such editing is equivalent to the “corporate leavening process” I mentioned earlier.
They confuse the goal of clarity with senses-dulling censorship.
In their classic Elements of Style, Strunk and White touched upon this, and where Strunk and White are sometimes looked upon as too basic, their insights provide a solid technical foundation that many young writers would do well to absorb. Strunk and White observed a tendency among young writers to confuse spontaneity with genius, to affect a breezy, careless, even world-weary style.
I believe the modern vernacular for this is the “been there, done that” posture.
But of course, such an attitude leads to ambiguity and sloppiness in writing — whether one is conveying exactly a child’s appropriate emotion in a funereal scene, or whether one is conveying the impact of various liquidity ratios on a novel business model.
Invariably, what is communicated on the page is not what the writer believes he or she is conveying. First drafts are always afflicted with a primitivity of communication. Yet, ironically, the first draft carries for many writers an aura of spontaneity and genius that resists change.
First Draft for Spontaneity . . . Edit for Power
The solution? Editing.
If there is a single act that can improve this communication issue, it is careful and ruthless editing. Only through editing can clarity, focus, and especially powerful meaning be teased from the morass of words. This is a lesson taught on Storytellers many times, but it demands repeating.
Chart your course, then stick to it
The daily difficulties of communication abound. When the subject is new or the product unique, the obstacles increase dramatically, for all the reasons I have listed in such disorganized fashion. Through the act of editing, perhaps we can at least overcome one obstacle in the difficult task of communicating our vision.
The problems lie all along the communication chain – in the personality of the visionary, in the unique nature of the vision itself, in the inadequacy of the medium with which we communicate, and in the prejudices of the recipient.
Is there a formula to address all of these issues along the communication chain? Probably not. I certainly do not have the answer.
But at risk of sounding like the cookie-cutter b-school professor, let me iterate that the good news is that awareness of a problem and its proper identification is a giant step toward its resolution in our personal strategic planning process.
The more rarefied the vision, the more intractable and personal the issues we must deal with.
And as a result, I suspect that each of us must define our own problems and search out our own answers to our communication issues.
For only we can grapple with them and, ultimately, deal with them.
Business Case Competitions test your business mettle in ways you can’t imagine
The business case competition puts you in front of Corporate America in naked competition against the best students from other schools.
No hiding behind a resume.
No fast-talking a good game.
No “national rankings.”
Just pure performance that puts you in the arena under lots of pressure.
Business Case Competition as Crucible
In case competitions, your business team delivers a business presentation in competition against other teams in front of a panel of judges.
Teams display how quickly, thoroughly, and skillfully they can ingest a case, analyze it, and then prepare their conclusions.
They then present their recommendations to a panel of judges.
Business case competitions vary greatly in the details, but they do have a standard format and purpose. The operative idea behind such competitions is to provide a standard case to competing teams with a given time limit and then to rate how well the teams respond.
There is, of course, no direct competition between teams. Rather, each team is judged independently how well it handles the assigned case and presents its analysis and recommendations. There is a time limit and specific rules.
All teams operate under the same conditions.
Business Case Competitions Far and Wide
Competitions can be internal to the Business School or involve teams from several different schools.
Sometimes there are several rounds of competition, with the final round typically judged by outside company executives. The teams prepare a solution to the case and deliver a written report.
Teams then prepare a presentation of their analysis and recommendations and deliver the timed presentation before a panel of judges.
The judging panel sometime consists of executives from the actual company in the case.
The University of Washington’s Foster School of Business is good about this in its renowned Global Business Case Competition. Twelve to fourteen schools from around the globe compete in this week-long event. Its 2010 competition featured a case written especially for the competition on the Boeing Corporation.
Business case competitions can enhance your personal competitive advantage
Executives from Boeing acted as judges.
One excellent aspect of case competitions that are judged by outsiders is that they provide a truer indication of the competitors’ mettle.
For the most part, they are far removed from the internal politics of particular institutions, where favored students may receive benefits or rewards related more to currying favor than to the quality of their work.
In some competitions, additional twists make the competition interesting and more complicated.
For instance, Ohio State University CIBER hosts an annual Case Challenge and creates teams from the pool of participants (i.e., members will be from different schools) instead of allowing the group of students from each school to compete as a team.
In this case, once students are assigned to teams, there is a day of team-building exercises.
The key to doing well in case competitions is to differentiate yourselves beforehand. This is much easier than you might imagine. Start with the Three Ps of Business Presentations. They provide a steady guide to ready you for your competition.
Principles . . . Preparation . . . Practice.
In subsequent posts, we deconstruct the business case competition to help you and your team prepare to your potential and deliver an especially powerful presentation.
Bookending is an especially powerful business presentation tip
I offer this superb business presentation tip – bookend your presentation or presentation segment to give the audience a satisfying experience.
What is bookending?
This means to start your presentation with an anecdote, cue, or visual image that hooks your listeners into the narrative. This is your “grabber.”
Your “hook.”
You follow with your clear situation statement of only one or two sentences.
Then you offer your major points of your presentation, usually three major points. As you wind to a conclusion, you hearken back to the original introductory anecdote, cue, or visual image that launched your segment.
A Powerful Business Presentation Tip
When you have finished your presentation message and are ready to set your second bookend that concludes your presentation, call on these magic words.
You say these words: “In conclusion, we can see that . . . .” Then – repeat your situation statement.
Then say: “We believe that our presentation substantiates this.”
You come full-circle. The audience gains a sense of completeness.
This recapitulation of your theme knits together your segment into a whole, and your audience appreciates the closure.
This technique offers much more than a linear march, where nothing said seems to relate to anything that came before. The satisfying circularity of bookending brings your audience back to the familiar starting point.
It drives home the major point of your talk in two especially powerful ways. First, the outright repetition of your theme cements it in the minds of your listeners. Second, the story convention of providing a satisfying ending ties up loose ends and gives psychological closure.
It’s an elegant business presentation tip that can pay big dividends in terms of audience response.
Personal Presence confers Personal Competitive Advantage
Personal presence distinguishes the business presentation as a distinctly different form of communication, and it is the source of its power.
I should say potential power.
For much of the potential power of presentations has been forfeited.
Forfeiture of Power
That potential has been squandered out of corporate fear, ignorance, egotism, conformity, and simple habit. Lynda Paulson describes the unique qualities that a business presentation offers, as opposed to a simple written report.
What makes speaking so powerful is that at least 85 percent of what we communicate in speaking is non-verbal. It’s what people see in our eyes, in our movements and in our actions. It’s what they hear through the tone of our voice. It’s what they sense on a subliminal level. That’s why speaking, to a group or one-on-one, is such a total experience.
Here, Paulson describes the impact of Personal Presence.
It’s the tangible contribution of the messenger to conveying a convincing message. A skilled speaker exudes energy, enthusiasm, savoir faire – the speaker becomes part of the message.
Here is where you become part of the message. You bring into play your unique talents and strengths to create a powerful personal presence.
Naked Information Overflow
But modern technology has swept the speaker into the background in favor of naked information overflow. We see pyrotechnics that miss the entire point of the show – namely, persuading an audience.
Lots of people are fine with becoming a slide-reading automaton swept into the background. And they’d be happy if you faded into the background, too.
Most people don’t want to compete in the presentation arena. They would rather compete with you for your firm’s spoils on other terms.
Become an automaton, and you cede important personal competitive advantage.
The true differentiating power of a presentation springs from the oratorical skills and confidence of the speaker. That, in fact, is the entire point of delivering a presentation – a project or idea has a champion who presents the case in public. Without that champion – without that powerful presence – a presentation is even less than ineffective.
It becomes an incredibly bad communication exercise and an infuriating waste of a valuable resource – time.
The Secret of Personal Presence
Today we are left with the brittle shell of a once-powerful communication tool. Gone is the skilled public speaker, an especially powerful presenter enthusiastic and confident, articulate and graceful, powerful and convincing. Gone is Quintilian’s ideal orator: “The good man, well-spoken.”
We are left with an automaton slide-reader in a business suit.
This is surely a far cry from how we imagine it ought to be – powerful visuals and a confident presenter. A presenter commanding the facts and delivering compelling arguments A presenter using all the tools at his or her disposal.
This vast wasteland of presentation mediocrity presents you with a magnificent opportunity.
Your choice is to fade into that gray background as yet another corporate mediocrity mimicking the herd . . . or to seize the moment to begin developing your presention skills to lift yourself into the rarefied atmosphere of the High Demand Skill Zone.™
Isn’t it time you decided to become an especially powerful business presenter and seize the incredible personal competitive advantage that personal presence provides?
There is no such thing as an inherently uninteresting topic. Nor is there an inherently interesting topic.
Interest is something that you generate, combining your unique gifts and training to create something special that appeals to the audience. Whether your audience is the CEO, a potential client, the Rotary Club, or your fellow students.
That’s your job. In fact, that’s what you’ll be paid to do upon graduation.
Interesting? That’s Your Job
Cases are not assigned to you in B-School to interest you. No one cares if they interest you.
That’s not the point.
Whether you find your topic personally interesting or not is irrelevant. It’s your duty to craft a talk that interests the audience, perhaps even captivates the audience.
Persuades the audience.
We all would love to be spoon-fed “interesting” topics, wouldn’t we? But what’s an “interesting” business presentation topic?
I’ve found the following to be true:
The students who complain about never getting an interesting topic actually do get assigned those topics – topics that are rich with potential and ripe for exploitation.
Students don’t recognize them as “interesting” because their store of information and context either is absent or is untapped.
So they invariably butcher a potentially interesting topic and miss every cue and opportunity to craft a great presentation.
It’s time to recognize that you simply want an interesting topic for yourself . . . not so you can do a bang-up job for the audience.
The Tenpenny Nail?
You make the business presentation topic about nails interesting . . . it’s your responsibility, in fact
The upshot is that if you don’t take presenting seriously, you won’t do anything different for an “interesting” business presentation topic than you would for a “boring” topic.
The creative challenge is greater, in fact, for presenting on the topic of tenpenny nails than it is for, say, the Apple iPhone. The initial perception might be that the iPhone is more inherently “interesting.”
It’s hip. And familiar.
Students gravitate to the topic like bees to flowers.
But give me a student who gladly takes a business case that involves tenpenny nails and who weaves a compelling, imaginative, and professional presentation, and I’ll show you a future business star.
The best students recognize the drama and conflict and possibilities in every case. They craft an interesting presentation regardless of the topic.
How do you generate interest? How do you mine a case for what is dramatic, different, uplifting, unusual? Public speaking master James Winans provides several suggestions from almost 100 years ago:
[I]nterest is, generally speaking, strongest in old things in new settings, looked at from new angles, given new forms and developed with new facts and ideas, with new light on familiar characters, new explanations of familiar phenomena, or new applications of old truths.
It actually requires thought and a broadening of context.
It requires the extension of horizon, and the expansion of the personal frame of reference.
In short, the learning of new stuff, which is always more difficult than relying upon what we already know – the tried and the true and the comfortable.
The Business Presentation Topic Beast
And as an aside, what would you do with the topic of tenpenny nails if you were assigned the task of demonstrating to the general public, say, their value to the building industry?
Are these the three-inch nails that take their name from the original price-per-100? I always thought so.
But an alternative explanation says the name has nothing to do with price. Instead, it has to do with . . . . Well, when you deliver a presentation on nails, you’ll find the answer.
The name, by the way, dates from the 15th Century, the same century as the invention of the Gutenberg printing method.
Now that’s a “killer app” with staying power.
Sound like an “interesting” business presentation topic?
Presentation Story Sensuality should permeate your Business Presentations
If you want to regale your presentation audience with an especially powerful presentation story, you must position the audience inside your story with Sensory Involvement.
Sensory Involvement is a powerful technique that imbues your presentation story with sensuality.
You engage the senses of your listeners so that they experience the story rather than simply hear it. Where possible, incorporate all five senses in your story.
The more senses you involve, the better.
Put Your Audience Inside the Presentation Story
This sensory technique positions the listener inside the presentation story. You invite the audience into the story. The audience becomes part of the action.
This is a fiction-writing technique. It draws the reader into the story by stimulating the audience’s sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste.
When you use color, aromas, tastes, and powerful sound and visual imagery, your presentation evokes the emotions of your listeners. It captures their interest. You convey a more compelling message.
Your call to action is more powerful than if you recite only facts and figures.
Use imagery in your business presentation story to stimulate the senses
This use of multiple sensory stimulation affects your listeners in ways that they are really unaware of. They find themselves deep inside your presentation story and feeling what you want them to feel.
And they respond to your message.
Engage as many senses as you can. The audience should hear your presentation. They should taste it. They should see it. They should feel it.
Smell it.
They Become Part of Your Presentation Story
The sensory technique paints a mind picture. It makes that picture vivid and powerful.
It’s powerful because it pulls the listener inside the story as a living, breathing, vicarious participant. You position the listener inside the story rather than allowing the listener to loiter outside the story as a bystander.
Engaging the Senses
Use imagery. Stimulate the senses! The 1999 supernatural film The Sixth Sense illustrates the point.
In this film, the Bruce Willis character – in spirit form – moves about within the story among living people. He can observe and, in a sense, participate in the various dramas around him. Think of Bruce Willis as the audience of your presentation.
Willis feels and senses the angst, joy, anger, sadness of those around him. Yet he is not an actual participant.
Bruce Willis is as close as he can be to the dramas around him without actually being there. Likewise, your story’s vivid and emotive sensory stimulation engages your audience in a powerful way.
Position your audience inside the presentation story.
You can place them inside the presentation story, much as the Bruce Willis character is placed into the mini-dramas that unfold around him.
Employ Masterful Writing Techniques
Dean Koontz is a master thriller writer, and he advocates involving as many of the reader’s senses as possible in a story. Koontz does this himself in his own taut novels.
Koontz engages smells, colors, sounds to enliven his descriptions. He does this in unexpected ways. Not only does Koontz involve all the senses, he combines surprising descriptions, crossing from one sense to another.
For example, he describes the glow of a bulb as a “sour yellow light.”
Koontz combines taste with color to evoke a startling and memorable image.
This is the same technique that serves powerful presenters well. It can serve you well and you should do this. For your own stories, remember to involve all of your listeners’ senses if you can – taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing – and you cannot fail to engage your audience.
Give it a try in your next business presentation story for an especially powerful effect.
Storytelling has become a powerful tool in 21st century management, and it would do you well to embrace, understand, and utilize that power to advance your own personal competitive advantage. Several of the most effective storytelling books that I recommend are: The Story Factor by Annette Simmons, Around the Corporate Campfire by Evelyn Clark, and The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling by Steve Denning. A business storytelling blog by Gabriel Yiannis is particularly valuable.
Do you face a listless, distracted audience?
Not many of us readily accept coaching or suggestions of how to improve ourselves, particularly when it comes to highly personal aspects of our very being. For instance . . .
In earlier posts, we examined the lead-in steps for your case competition preparation.
