Corporate Life - Presentations

I count myself fortunate that the number of presentations that I am asked to attend, have reduced substantially over the years. Either the organisation has come to its senses about the efficacy of this mode of communication, or my colleagues and I seem to share the same dread for this process. Of course it goes without saying that, on the flip side, the number of presentations that I give, has also correspondingly fallen.

What has taken its place is the "Telecon", which will be the subject of another blog.

In presentations, there are some simple unspoken protocols, that I have observed over the years:

1. Presenters are required to keep the audience guessing as to the number of slides that they intend to go through.
2. Presenters are often required to read line by line from the slides, as if the audience cannot read the slides for themselves.
3. The most important person is always the last to enter the meeting room.
4. All presentations have to last the allocated time, irrespective of actual requirements.
5. The level of knowledge of the presenters, is in inverse proportion to the complexity of the slides on display.
6. The more cluttered the slide, the less meat in the subject.
7. The time it takes to finish a presentation is in inverse proportion to the importance of the topic being discussed.
8. The level and involvement of the attendees is in inverse proportion to the relevance and importance of the topic.
9. Topics or issues that need to be properly discussed or require a decision have to be taken off-line.
10. The person most required to take a decision, is always the one who is interrupted by an urgent call, or needs to leave for another meeting, at the most importune time.

Most of the above (though not all) tend to apply for all presentations, irrespective of the topic or the presenter. People have nodded away, walked out, taken calls or disrupted presentations. On one occasion I had my line manager fall asleep in the front row while we had our Bankers giving a Trade Finance seminar in our offices. At least there were 50 other staff as audience for the presenters to focus on.

What was worse was when we had the President of the Zone, coming on her first visit to the country. The Board Room had been booked for the entire day, with every member of the local Management Team scheduled to talk (pontificate) about how great a job each was doing. The President had arrived after a gruelling 3 days swing around the Region and was obviously jet-lagged. Midway through the second session (Distribution I recall) there was a loud snore, and we could see that our President had tuned out. You could have heard a pin drop, and in retrospect, it is hilarious to imagine very senior managers (including the CEO of the Company) left completely dumb-struck as to how to tackle this most unexpected of problems.

The very same President on her second trip to the region, a couple of months later, was meant to address all staff over lunch. A hotel ballroom had been hired, and a stage set-up, with a few chairs, one being for her. As the CEO was introducing her, she dropped off again, ON STAGE !!! By this time, the local Management, had gotten used to her dropsy, and covered up the situation by announcing lunch, with Q&A being postponed after lunch.

Talking about disruptions, the icing on the cake was when there was a mandatory 2 day Regional Workshop (presentation in other words) on Governance (quite a dry subject at the best of times). Senior people had flown in from all over the Region. The presenters had flown in from the HO in Europe, and the Chairman (who is ultimately responsible for governance and hence a required attendee), walks in two hours late without a by-your-leave, interrupts the speaker, states how important, in his view, the workshop is, and then finishes by stating that he would not be able to stay on, due to the fact that he had a more important meeting to attend.

In one minute flat, he had contradicted himself on the importance of the workshop, and made all the other attendees feel less important. In one stroke he conveyed to the other 25 senior managers that this workshop was not important at all. You can only imagine the state of that workshop over the next two days. One presenter, towards the end of the second day, confided that he, in his 25 years of service, had neither attended nor facilitated a worse session. Talk about leadership !!