I keep expecting the use of PowerPoint, the system for making presentations to die in business. My predictions of 2010 are not being lived up to: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/09/managing-time-at-work-challenge-of.html and as I highlight here many of the problems persist. PowerPoint is now coming up to 22 years old. Whilst different facilities are available, the basic approach of landscape-orientated slides which can hold about four items of information has remained. The criticisms of PowerPoint notably by Edward Tufte from 2003 onwards do not seem to have dented its usage. It is not a good format for presenting the kind of complex information that is often necessary to be discussed in business. In some ways it stops the content becoming over-specialised for a general audience, but the constraints imposed by making the words fit to the slide size (often hemmed in further by company logos and frames) and yet still be legible often in large rooms means that the content is over-simplified.
Further problems come from how easy it is to make numerous PowerPoint slides so that you end up with a situation in which the audience is 'hypnotised' by the passage of similarly looking content without engaging with the content. It is unsurprising that watching a procession of very similarly looking objects, pretty much like a herd of sheep going through a gateway leads the audience to fall asleep. My principle is that you should have half as many slides as you have minutes for a presentation, so if you are presenting for 30 minutes you should have no more than 15 slides; saying that 30 slides in 60 minutes seems excessive and perhaps there is a sliding scale with the ratio falling to a third by the time you reach the hour mark. However, this view is unpopular. A colleague severely criticised me when I put forward this principle saying that he found a presentation of 10 minutes which used 98 slides to be acceptable, a rate of one slide every 6.1 seconds. He said many contained a sequence of single images and I said, well, then do not try to make a 'flick book' on screen these days it is simpler and less distracting to have a looping animation of what you are showing. It is ironic that PowerPoint facilities such as animation are, in most cases, just used as decoration (and a distraction) rather than actually communicating a point in a more appropriate way.
People read about 70 words per minute at a relaxed pace for content more sophisticated than 'simple', it rises to 100 words for simple content, though I know some business schools who expect 250 words per minute from their students. Now, this means that for an average slide, at 70 words per minute you would expect it to take about 45 seconds to read it given the amount of content there. However, these reading rates are derived from books where the idea is often continued on for a number of sentences. PowerPoint is renowned to providing a whole series of different ideas or factors quickly in succession. Thus, while your eye can look over the content in 45 seconds the brain may take longer, especially as there is recent evidence that such mental faculties begin deteriorating from the age of 45 so encompassing much a business audience.
Demands for the audience further diffuse their ability to concentrate on content. Many audiences become indignant if you do not provide handouts of the content you are parading on the slides. However, if you do that you add a third form of input into their minds on top of your voice and whatever is on the screen. PowerPoint has increasingly enabled the use of audio and video resources so how do you put them on to a handout, print them out as a 'flick book'? In addition, anyone who asks for handouts is effectively saying that they are not actually going to engage with what you are saying, they will flick through it later. I accept that people with particular disabilities benefit from handouts but then they are using them instead of what is on the screen not in addition to that content. There have long been slide presentations, dating back to magic lantern shows of the 19th century and many of them were very tedious. What the difference has been with PowerPoint is the ability to add words on to them so duplicating visual and aural communication of the same message, especially as so many presenters simply read from the slide. I always feel that this suggests the audience is illiterate and the presenter is filling the role of the mice who read the headings in the movie 'Babe' (1995) the director knowing that the reading age of much of the audience was pretty low (it is a children's movie).
Due to these difficulties, PowerPoint presentations often become a ritual rather than any form of communication. It is like watching holy communion and brings similar benefits to you. As yet I have not heard of any priests using PowerPoint for their sermons though I may be mistaken. Religious officers have a history of knowing how to present, it is something that they have been doing for centuries. Of course, some people feel that they can brighten up their content with unrelated images or even random sounds.
I am fascinated with the industry of creating 'business images' often surreal portrayals of 'business people' faking a meeting or bellowing at each other through megaphones or wandering around a desert pulling something like a ball and chain. I wonder what the working conditions are like for these people who have to model strange activities in these deserts. If the image whether a random shape or one of these photographs is of use, why not simply have it to represent the idea you are trying to communicate? Why have the words and the picture too? Of course, in international business images can be culturally confusing though I also note having worked with Americans and South Africans that words even in the same language can obfuscate more than they can clarify.
Back in the 2000s I found such any different approaches to the slog through numerous slides was challenged and I was told that it showed I lacked ability in using PowerPoint, apparently a necessary minimum requirement. There was no discussion of the intellectual engagement, purely a focus on the cosmetic aspect. It was more acceptable to have an excessive quantity of slides for the time allotted than to try a different approach which stepped away from the ingrained expectations of PowerPoint. I certainly believe that 'less is more' in terms of PowerPoint. Often you can put questions up which you then answer orally for the audience. You can use it to present diagrams of illustrations that provoke discussion. Ironically, Bill Bailey in his 'Dandelion Mind' tour does this surprisingly well when discussing 'Doubting' Thomas in art. Part of the problem of these approaches are that they are dependent on using PowerPoint in the way it was designed to be used, i.e. as an aid to an oral presentation. Now, however, you have to prepare slides for different purposes. I am now habitually asked to put my slides on to websites or email them to people. Thus, I need to have enough words on them that someone who does not have me standing beside them talking about the content can still understand them.
Increasingly I make two versions for these different audiences so reducing the benefit of the time saving offered by PowerPoint. However, someone looking for the content to read online or be emailed to them would far better receiving a piece of prose, a report going into the details in some detail or simply summarising them. There is no point in having slides if you are simply going to print them out or read them on your own computer screen, you might as well simply have a body of text including appropriate illustrations. You would not expect to put pages of a Word document up at a presentation so why do you expect to give presentation slides to someone as if they were a report? PowerPoint has become so fetishised that it is difficult for many people in business to think about communicating without using it even when it is not an appropriate medium for what you are saying.
Perhaps my views are beginning to take root in some isolated places. Whilst I am being pressured to write more and more wordy texts so that I can go through the ritual of twisting round so I can read my own words from an inappropriate way of presenting them, i.e. vast and close to my face, a young colleague has listened to my views. I have now attended two presentations in which he has eschewed PowerPoint except to introduce the fact that he is not going to use it. At the last presentation he pointed out to the audience that, whilst they were apparently not aware of it they actually knew all the points he was about to raise about customer demands already. He gave them three questions and in the space of fifteen minutes the audience of fourteen came up with all the findings that he would have presented. Perhaps they felt cheated of their ritual of slide watching, but I have a feeling that they gained the message more effectively. We need to keep reminding ourselves that it is the effectiveness of what we are doing in terms of communicating what we have to say that must be the starting point. Otherwise it is like picking up a hammer or a saw and struggling to think what we could build with them rather than planning to build something and then taking the appropriate tool out of the box. Trying to defy the dogmatic, orthodox PowerPoint approach, however, may expose you to being treated like a heretic of old.
Showing posts with label presentations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label presentations. Show all posts
Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Tuesday, 7 September 2010
Managing Time at Work: The Challenge of Presentations
As regular readers will know, I have recently been applying for jobs. Having been made redundant twice in a year, I have been able to consider how the economy has deteriorated in the 12 months of Summer 2009 to Summer 2010. One thing that is immediately apparent is that the job situation has worsened. It is not only that the number of unemployed people has continued to rise steadily, but also that the return of the 'whip' of unemployment seems to be encouraging employers to depress pay and demand longer working hours. I noted back in July 2008 how employers were feeling that the workforce was becoming lazy because it was not fearful enough of losing jobs. See: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/07/unemployment-as-whip.html In my last job I encountered a manager who loved to respond to any request from the workers that they were lucky to have a job and encouraged all the managers around and below her to do the same.
Compared to a year ago almost every managerial position I have seen advertised is paying below the national average UK annual salary of £31,300 (€37,663; US$45,547) though it varies across the country from £21,550 in South Wales to £46,462 in London. The bulk of these managerial jobs are offering £18,000-£23,000 per year (€21,659-€27,675; US$26,193-US$33,469) despite being located in the South-East England region where the average salary is £32,819. In addition, in contrast to last year there seems to be a sudden upswing in jobs demanding 'unsocial' hours or evening and weekend working. This implies that the companies are short staffed or that the bosses somehow want to squeeze more out of their managers (and Heaven help the non-managerial staff) effectively reducing the hourly pay rate by simply imposing longer working hours. Of course, all of this smacks of the 1980s. The employers have got back the 'whip' and are cracking it with force.
Saying all this, I guess readers from across the USA may be wondering what I am complaining about. There unemployment is nationally 20% meaning around 60 million people are without work, almost the same number as the entire population (including children) of the UK. Of these two-thirds have no unemployment insurance and ironically in the land supposedly of entrepreneurialism and the small business person it is often the self-employed who are most vulnerable. I must say that throughout my life I have been a strong advocate of democracy, but have come to believe now, that there is no democracy in the UK or the USA. Even when politicians want to combat the greed of the ultra-rich they find they are unable to do so. Then under President Bush in the USA and now under David Cameron in the UK, we have policy makers who strive to further benefit the wealthy at the expense of the ordinary person. I always looked on those who sought the overthrow of the state as foolhardy but as I age and see how the ordinary person is not even allowed to keep the meagre gains made in recent years, there seems no other solution that will give a chance to more than a small elite, however capable you might be. It was interesting to read that the Walton family behind the Wal-Mart chain in the USA (they own Asda in the UK) alone has as much wealth as the poorest 40% of the US population, i.e., around 120 million people. It shows you how petty your own savings and even the funds of governments are compared to those of the ultra-rich on this planet.
Anyway, my despair at the smashing of the UK economy driven by pigheaded, discriminatory economics, is distracting me from the focus on today's posting. I am glad to note, that whilst job specifications seem to have reduced the number of requirements they set out, dropping in many cases below 15-18 requirements (compared to the 20-36 range I had last year; the peak being 36 essential and 10 desirable requirements for one post), they still seem to include many of the same sort of things. Perhaps the detail has decreased, for one job I applied for recently the final essential requirement was summed up by a single word 'Flexibility' ('yes, I can touch my toes!'). However, new, pretty discriminatory, stuff seems to be slipping in: 'Must have the health to be able to cope with the rigours of this job'; it was not a vacancy as a mountaineering trainer simply an office manager, which does raise questions about working conditions in the company. A perennial is 'time management' and that is the one I am going to focus on today.
Time management constantly seems to be something that bosses demand but seem incapable of doing themselves. In many ways it is another coded signal that their company is under-staffed and they will be expecting you to work beyond the stipulated working hours. I must say I have noticed that all reference to 'family friendly' employers has evaporated entirely. Of course, employers want people who do not prevaricate and complete by the deadlines, but there is something more in British working culture which contrasts, say, with that of Scandinavian countries. It is the assumption that if you are not working long hours you are not working hard enough. I was warned once that in Sweden it is seen differently, that someone who is working after normal hours is inefficient because they cannot get their work done in the allotted time. As a manager I see it this way. I accept that there may be occasions of special demand when people need to work longer, but if I see them doing this day-after-day then I am concerned either that they have been allocated too much work or that they are out of their depth with the work and may need to be substituted, have more training or be allocated stuff that is within their capabilities. I know from my previous job that such views are heresy and instead as a manager I am expected to see workers as inherently lazy, always trying to get out of working and having no pride in their work.
Of course, with social networking sites, email and even online poker, it is easy to while away your time appearing to work and yet not doing anything constructive. Yet, all managers are alert to these things and any with an gramme of experience knows what to look out for. My last two teams were so utterly terrified of appearing not to be working hard enough they dared not even speak to their colleagues and their relief when I encouraged them to talk to one another was visible. In fact it quickly revealed duplications and different methodologies which could be standardised which had not come to light because the workers had been afraid of talking with each other for fear of seeming to slack. There are lazy workers but they are not hard to spot. Workers who are working in fear do not work well, but that is not from laziness, it is because a well-trained worker who has clear instructions and the ability to raise questions is always going to be more confident and in fact far more productive.
When I talk of Aesop's Fable of the Wind and the Sun, no-one seems to understand it. Aesop lived around 620-564 BCE and if he could get a handle on principles that are still applicable to today's workplace then managers of today can. In the analoguos story the Wind bets the Sun that he can make a traveller remove his coat. The Wind blows and blows but the traveller hugs his cloak ever more tightly to his body. Then the Sun takes his turn and shines brightly on the traveller who immediately removes his cloak, so the Sun wins. Having had enough management books based on the works of Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' (probably written at the same time as Aesop was working, perhaps some decades later) maybe it is time to produce one based on the work of Aesop.
Of course, time management does not simply apply to day-to-day work and it is in connection with presentations that I have seen it fail the worst. I seemed to go through a spate of colleagues in the early 2000s who seemed to have no control over their timing when making presentations. In that era, Powerpoint was at its zenith (released in 1987, certainly in the UK it do really rise to its height of usage until the mid-1990s), though despite it having been in popular usage in business for many years few people seemed to know how to use it conceptually though they could so technically. Perhaps I will do a posting on the worst Powerpoint presentations I have ever seen, but for now will refer to it as an element of poor time management in presentations.
I had a manager who had no idea of how long anything took. Unfortunately she was responsible for scheduling a number of conferences in a year. In her scheduling there was no room for anything to go wrong. There was no slack for technical faults or a person over-running with what they said (which, of course, happened regularly, because like her, they were poor at managing their time). Every year the schedule would be sliding after the first speaker and by the mid-morning break it could already be 30 minutes off target. Such a slide leads to things being dropped from the programme and from questions (usually the most useful part of any business presentation) being suppressed.
One problem was that this manager had no idea how long her own presentation was going to take and generally as she opened the conferences, this meant that they were already behind schedule after she had made her introductory speech. Usually she scheduled 10 minutes for herself and speak for 20 minutes. Having sat on interview panels with this woman, I know that she believed that a question about time management was to ask specifically what piece of software the candidate used to manage their time. She asked this obsessively, providing no benefit to the interviewing process. Software dates quickly and just because a person uses a piece of software does not mean they are using it correctly or in fact has engaged with the mental principles behind more than just superficial use of it. She never made any efforts to find out how much she could say in the time she allocated herself. I know that I speak 5000 words in 60 minutes at a steady but not rushed pace, with time to point to things on the screen. So, if I am allocated 20 minutes, I know I can say 1600 words and probably need to be looking at 1200 if I want a couple of questions asked.
Very few people in business, despite the fact that most of us have sat through tens, possibly hundreds of presentations in our careers, seems to remember that the change over between speakers is never lie a baton exchange in a relay race. There has to be applause for the previous speaker, they have to move at least aside if not off stage and their successor needs to step up. Even if their presentation is ready to go the moment they reach the lecturn (something I have never witnessed in my entire career) they need some time to get their head in gear. Many times they or the assistants will struggle to get the presentation going. This is why there seems no point in allocating anyone a 10-minute slot, easily a third of that time can be eaten up with just the human things of getting in place to speak and getting the graphics we seem to insist on, running. (Saying this, the era of Powerpoint seems to be passing and I have had two interviews this year which have insisted that it was not used; in contrast to 2004 when I failed to get one job purely on the grounds that I had not used Powerpoint in the interview).
Another classic example was from a colleague of mine. She worked in a department which had a very poor concept of time management on a day-to-day basis. Deadlines would be set which had no bearing on reality. This colleague would regularly fly from Luton airport to Edinburgh airport, returning the same day. The time in the air was 1 hour each way, plus an additional 1 hour at each end for check-in, security check, boarding, etc. So even if the travel went smoothly she would be travelling for 4 hours out of the day. In addition she lived 40 minutes' drive from the airport, adding 1 hour 20 minutes to the journey. Whilst in Edinburgh she would be in meetings all day, usually 09.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. or 5 p.m., so almost a working day. Thus, in total, even if everything went smoothly, she would 'work' 11 hours 20 minutes (assuming she took 1 hour for lunch; often it was just 30 minutes or a 'working' lunch instead). Any time away from the office is seen as a 'junket' and a treat whereas of course it can be tiring and I certainly witnessed her not breaking from work on the aeroplane or in the terminals. Part of the reason for this soon became apparent because she was expected to deliver a report and make a presentation at 11 a.m. on the morning after each visit.
This rule even applied the day that the flight out of Edinburgh was delayed by 4 hours due to a fault in the aeroplane's rudder (or whatever the technical name is). It was a noticeable incident because the aircraft had taxied out only to find it could not turn and had to be hauled back tail first. In addition, we came back through Arrivals despite not having been any further than on to part of the runway. A young man who complained, not particularly loudly was dragged off by security staff and we did not see him again. Another interesting thing was that having got back into Arrivals having spent an hour on the runway loads of people's mobile phones went off, they were being called by irate taxi drivers at Luton booked to collect them, demanding why they were not there. The passengers had to explain that they had not been permitted to use their mobiles while on the aircraft and it was clear that no-one at Luton had informed anyone about the delay. Anyway, we reached Luton sometime after 10 p.m. and my colleague drove home and managed to finish her report at 2 a.m. for presenting at 11 a.m. Of course, for some reason one of her managers could not make it in so it was postponed. The detachment between the working norms and what happens in reality, plus the amount of sleep people needed, fostered an environment that was going to lead to disgruntled, exhausted employees and probably a far less good quality report than if the travelling colleague had been given, say 48 hours, to produce the report.
Anyway, despite working for this very time demanding department, my colleague seemed to have little inkling of the implications of not paying attention to what can be realistically covered in the time scheduled. She and I were asked to do a presentation about our project. We were given 20 minutes between us and agreed to split this equally. Very foolishly, I went second. My colleague put up 38 slides which she would had to have covered in less than 16 seconds each if she had wanted to fit them in and, even then, that would not allow any time for questions. Through rushing and skipping over some she managed to get through 19 slides in 19 minutes, leaving me a single minute for my section. I had prepared 5 slides but did not even bother pulling these up. I walked on and said simply 'the project worked well; people liked the software it created' which had been the nub of my section of the presentation, then stepped down. The disconnection between the amount of data to be covered and the time needed to cover it, is astoundingly common. Years later a senior colleague who even trained people in making presentations argued that more than a slide per minute was fine, even then not allowing any time for questions, which she generally expected.
I have run training on making presentations and right since I started my career I have been complimented on my ability to speak to time. I am not smug about this and go back to first principles each time I prepare something. However, with practice you get to know yourself and your material well enough to change pacing and content 'on the hoof', for example, if you realise people are not comprehending what you are saying or know less about it than you believed. However, being good at these things can often work against you. At one presentation I had 10 minutes to speak. I produced 4 slides. The first was the title of my talk and the fourth were my contact details. This meant that I had 2 slides with the meat of the presentation each with 4 items on, allowing me about 1 minute per item (not per slide as is usually the case). I delivered it in 8 minutes allowing some time for questions, but the audience simply sat there, seemingly stunned. They had expected the spinning images and sound effects that had filled the presentations and clearly had not expected me to finish on time. The half-embarrassed over-run with an excessive amount of data and slides has become such the norm that audiences now do not seem to be able to cope with anything actually done to time. The same applies to audiences who want slides on the screen and also to have them replicated on paper in front of them. The lecture worked for at least 3000 years before the invention of Powerpoint but it seems that business people have been seduced into requiring overload which actually communicates only a fraction of the message the presenter is seeking to deliver and often in a confused and harrassed manner.
Time mangement is a vital skill for business. However, what is termed time management is really overworking and in fact real management of the time spent on tasks, and, in particular, the proper matching up of the time scheduled for an activity and the work which is to be done in it, is very poorly understood right across British business. Pointing this out, though, is not going to win you any fans and, in fact, you will be looked upon as being peculiar. Instead you will be compelled to adhere to the norms that expect over-running and incomplete presentation of the information.
Compared to a year ago almost every managerial position I have seen advertised is paying below the national average UK annual salary of £31,300 (€37,663; US$45,547) though it varies across the country from £21,550 in South Wales to £46,462 in London. The bulk of these managerial jobs are offering £18,000-£23,000 per year (€21,659-€27,675; US$26,193-US$33,469) despite being located in the South-East England region where the average salary is £32,819. In addition, in contrast to last year there seems to be a sudden upswing in jobs demanding 'unsocial' hours or evening and weekend working. This implies that the companies are short staffed or that the bosses somehow want to squeeze more out of their managers (and Heaven help the non-managerial staff) effectively reducing the hourly pay rate by simply imposing longer working hours. Of course, all of this smacks of the 1980s. The employers have got back the 'whip' and are cracking it with force.
Saying all this, I guess readers from across the USA may be wondering what I am complaining about. There unemployment is nationally 20% meaning around 60 million people are without work, almost the same number as the entire population (including children) of the UK. Of these two-thirds have no unemployment insurance and ironically in the land supposedly of entrepreneurialism and the small business person it is often the self-employed who are most vulnerable. I must say that throughout my life I have been a strong advocate of democracy, but have come to believe now, that there is no democracy in the UK or the USA. Even when politicians want to combat the greed of the ultra-rich they find they are unable to do so. Then under President Bush in the USA and now under David Cameron in the UK, we have policy makers who strive to further benefit the wealthy at the expense of the ordinary person. I always looked on those who sought the overthrow of the state as foolhardy but as I age and see how the ordinary person is not even allowed to keep the meagre gains made in recent years, there seems no other solution that will give a chance to more than a small elite, however capable you might be. It was interesting to read that the Walton family behind the Wal-Mart chain in the USA (they own Asda in the UK) alone has as much wealth as the poorest 40% of the US population, i.e., around 120 million people. It shows you how petty your own savings and even the funds of governments are compared to those of the ultra-rich on this planet.
Anyway, my despair at the smashing of the UK economy driven by pigheaded, discriminatory economics, is distracting me from the focus on today's posting. I am glad to note, that whilst job specifications seem to have reduced the number of requirements they set out, dropping in many cases below 15-18 requirements (compared to the 20-36 range I had last year; the peak being 36 essential and 10 desirable requirements for one post), they still seem to include many of the same sort of things. Perhaps the detail has decreased, for one job I applied for recently the final essential requirement was summed up by a single word 'Flexibility' ('yes, I can touch my toes!'). However, new, pretty discriminatory, stuff seems to be slipping in: 'Must have the health to be able to cope with the rigours of this job'; it was not a vacancy as a mountaineering trainer simply an office manager, which does raise questions about working conditions in the company. A perennial is 'time management' and that is the one I am going to focus on today.
Time management constantly seems to be something that bosses demand but seem incapable of doing themselves. In many ways it is another coded signal that their company is under-staffed and they will be expecting you to work beyond the stipulated working hours. I must say I have noticed that all reference to 'family friendly' employers has evaporated entirely. Of course, employers want people who do not prevaricate and complete by the deadlines, but there is something more in British working culture which contrasts, say, with that of Scandinavian countries. It is the assumption that if you are not working long hours you are not working hard enough. I was warned once that in Sweden it is seen differently, that someone who is working after normal hours is inefficient because they cannot get their work done in the allotted time. As a manager I see it this way. I accept that there may be occasions of special demand when people need to work longer, but if I see them doing this day-after-day then I am concerned either that they have been allocated too much work or that they are out of their depth with the work and may need to be substituted, have more training or be allocated stuff that is within their capabilities. I know from my previous job that such views are heresy and instead as a manager I am expected to see workers as inherently lazy, always trying to get out of working and having no pride in their work.
Of course, with social networking sites, email and even online poker, it is easy to while away your time appearing to work and yet not doing anything constructive. Yet, all managers are alert to these things and any with an gramme of experience knows what to look out for. My last two teams were so utterly terrified of appearing not to be working hard enough they dared not even speak to their colleagues and their relief when I encouraged them to talk to one another was visible. In fact it quickly revealed duplications and different methodologies which could be standardised which had not come to light because the workers had been afraid of talking with each other for fear of seeming to slack. There are lazy workers but they are not hard to spot. Workers who are working in fear do not work well, but that is not from laziness, it is because a well-trained worker who has clear instructions and the ability to raise questions is always going to be more confident and in fact far more productive.
When I talk of Aesop's Fable of the Wind and the Sun, no-one seems to understand it. Aesop lived around 620-564 BCE and if he could get a handle on principles that are still applicable to today's workplace then managers of today can. In the analoguos story the Wind bets the Sun that he can make a traveller remove his coat. The Wind blows and blows but the traveller hugs his cloak ever more tightly to his body. Then the Sun takes his turn and shines brightly on the traveller who immediately removes his cloak, so the Sun wins. Having had enough management books based on the works of Sun Tzu's 'The Art of War' (probably written at the same time as Aesop was working, perhaps some decades later) maybe it is time to produce one based on the work of Aesop.
Of course, time management does not simply apply to day-to-day work and it is in connection with presentations that I have seen it fail the worst. I seemed to go through a spate of colleagues in the early 2000s who seemed to have no control over their timing when making presentations. In that era, Powerpoint was at its zenith (released in 1987, certainly in the UK it do really rise to its height of usage until the mid-1990s), though despite it having been in popular usage in business for many years few people seemed to know how to use it conceptually though they could so technically. Perhaps I will do a posting on the worst Powerpoint presentations I have ever seen, but for now will refer to it as an element of poor time management in presentations.
I had a manager who had no idea of how long anything took. Unfortunately she was responsible for scheduling a number of conferences in a year. In her scheduling there was no room for anything to go wrong. There was no slack for technical faults or a person over-running with what they said (which, of course, happened regularly, because like her, they were poor at managing their time). Every year the schedule would be sliding after the first speaker and by the mid-morning break it could already be 30 minutes off target. Such a slide leads to things being dropped from the programme and from questions (usually the most useful part of any business presentation) being suppressed.
One problem was that this manager had no idea how long her own presentation was going to take and generally as she opened the conferences, this meant that they were already behind schedule after she had made her introductory speech. Usually she scheduled 10 minutes for herself and speak for 20 minutes. Having sat on interview panels with this woman, I know that she believed that a question about time management was to ask specifically what piece of software the candidate used to manage their time. She asked this obsessively, providing no benefit to the interviewing process. Software dates quickly and just because a person uses a piece of software does not mean they are using it correctly or in fact has engaged with the mental principles behind more than just superficial use of it. She never made any efforts to find out how much she could say in the time she allocated herself. I know that I speak 5000 words in 60 minutes at a steady but not rushed pace, with time to point to things on the screen. So, if I am allocated 20 minutes, I know I can say 1600 words and probably need to be looking at 1200 if I want a couple of questions asked.
Very few people in business, despite the fact that most of us have sat through tens, possibly hundreds of presentations in our careers, seems to remember that the change over between speakers is never lie a baton exchange in a relay race. There has to be applause for the previous speaker, they have to move at least aside if not off stage and their successor needs to step up. Even if their presentation is ready to go the moment they reach the lecturn (something I have never witnessed in my entire career) they need some time to get their head in gear. Many times they or the assistants will struggle to get the presentation going. This is why there seems no point in allocating anyone a 10-minute slot, easily a third of that time can be eaten up with just the human things of getting in place to speak and getting the graphics we seem to insist on, running. (Saying this, the era of Powerpoint seems to be passing and I have had two interviews this year which have insisted that it was not used; in contrast to 2004 when I failed to get one job purely on the grounds that I had not used Powerpoint in the interview).
Another classic example was from a colleague of mine. She worked in a department which had a very poor concept of time management on a day-to-day basis. Deadlines would be set which had no bearing on reality. This colleague would regularly fly from Luton airport to Edinburgh airport, returning the same day. The time in the air was 1 hour each way, plus an additional 1 hour at each end for check-in, security check, boarding, etc. So even if the travel went smoothly she would be travelling for 4 hours out of the day. In addition she lived 40 minutes' drive from the airport, adding 1 hour 20 minutes to the journey. Whilst in Edinburgh she would be in meetings all day, usually 09.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. or 5 p.m., so almost a working day. Thus, in total, even if everything went smoothly, she would 'work' 11 hours 20 minutes (assuming she took 1 hour for lunch; often it was just 30 minutes or a 'working' lunch instead). Any time away from the office is seen as a 'junket' and a treat whereas of course it can be tiring and I certainly witnessed her not breaking from work on the aeroplane or in the terminals. Part of the reason for this soon became apparent because she was expected to deliver a report and make a presentation at 11 a.m. on the morning after each visit.
This rule even applied the day that the flight out of Edinburgh was delayed by 4 hours due to a fault in the aeroplane's rudder (or whatever the technical name is). It was a noticeable incident because the aircraft had taxied out only to find it could not turn and had to be hauled back tail first. In addition, we came back through Arrivals despite not having been any further than on to part of the runway. A young man who complained, not particularly loudly was dragged off by security staff and we did not see him again. Another interesting thing was that having got back into Arrivals having spent an hour on the runway loads of people's mobile phones went off, they were being called by irate taxi drivers at Luton booked to collect them, demanding why they were not there. The passengers had to explain that they had not been permitted to use their mobiles while on the aircraft and it was clear that no-one at Luton had informed anyone about the delay. Anyway, we reached Luton sometime after 10 p.m. and my colleague drove home and managed to finish her report at 2 a.m. for presenting at 11 a.m. Of course, for some reason one of her managers could not make it in so it was postponed. The detachment between the working norms and what happens in reality, plus the amount of sleep people needed, fostered an environment that was going to lead to disgruntled, exhausted employees and probably a far less good quality report than if the travelling colleague had been given, say 48 hours, to produce the report.
Anyway, despite working for this very time demanding department, my colleague seemed to have little inkling of the implications of not paying attention to what can be realistically covered in the time scheduled. She and I were asked to do a presentation about our project. We were given 20 minutes between us and agreed to split this equally. Very foolishly, I went second. My colleague put up 38 slides which she would had to have covered in less than 16 seconds each if she had wanted to fit them in and, even then, that would not allow any time for questions. Through rushing and skipping over some she managed to get through 19 slides in 19 minutes, leaving me a single minute for my section. I had prepared 5 slides but did not even bother pulling these up. I walked on and said simply 'the project worked well; people liked the software it created' which had been the nub of my section of the presentation, then stepped down. The disconnection between the amount of data to be covered and the time needed to cover it, is astoundingly common. Years later a senior colleague who even trained people in making presentations argued that more than a slide per minute was fine, even then not allowing any time for questions, which she generally expected.
I have run training on making presentations and right since I started my career I have been complimented on my ability to speak to time. I am not smug about this and go back to first principles each time I prepare something. However, with practice you get to know yourself and your material well enough to change pacing and content 'on the hoof', for example, if you realise people are not comprehending what you are saying or know less about it than you believed. However, being good at these things can often work against you. At one presentation I had 10 minutes to speak. I produced 4 slides. The first was the title of my talk and the fourth were my contact details. This meant that I had 2 slides with the meat of the presentation each with 4 items on, allowing me about 1 minute per item (not per slide as is usually the case). I delivered it in 8 minutes allowing some time for questions, but the audience simply sat there, seemingly stunned. They had expected the spinning images and sound effects that had filled the presentations and clearly had not expected me to finish on time. The half-embarrassed over-run with an excessive amount of data and slides has become such the norm that audiences now do not seem to be able to cope with anything actually done to time. The same applies to audiences who want slides on the screen and also to have them replicated on paper in front of them. The lecture worked for at least 3000 years before the invention of Powerpoint but it seems that business people have been seduced into requiring overload which actually communicates only a fraction of the message the presenter is seeking to deliver and often in a confused and harrassed manner.
Time mangement is a vital skill for business. However, what is termed time management is really overworking and in fact real management of the time spent on tasks, and, in particular, the proper matching up of the time scheduled for an activity and the work which is to be done in it, is very poorly understood right across British business. Pointing this out, though, is not going to win you any fans and, in fact, you will be looked upon as being peculiar. Instead you will be compelled to adhere to the norms that expect over-running and incomplete presentation of the information.
Tuesday, 28 July 2009
Interviews: A Real Song And Dance
It seems apparent that with rising unemployment, companies are looking for new ways to sift out candidates for their vacancies. Having been applying actively for jobs since February of this year, I have had seven interviews and have just been invited to my eighth, so the fashions in interviewing are of concern to me. However much employers deny it, there are fashions in the style of CVs and how interviews are done. Often the interviewers themselves cannot articulate what the fashion entails, just that they, and even more often the human resources staff who advise them, 'know' that there is a 'right' and a 'wrong' way, which may be very different from what was prevailing two years earlier. Of course, as I have outlined here, in many companies, no-one knows how the human resources department recruits people and interview panels often show clear surprise at the nature of the application forms they are given to consider.
I have never been a fan of television programmes in which people are voted off. However, they straddle so much of popular culture these days ranging from those dealing with the public such as 'The X Factor' and 'Britain's Got Talent', through the fate of 'celebrities' in 'Strictly Come Dancing' and 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' to less entertainment orientated ones, notably 'The Apprentice' and 'Dragons' Den' in which individuals pitch themselves or their products in front of a panel of 'experts' to receive their approval or dismissal. Even in the programmes with a popular vote, the panel often leads the way. Of course, there have been game shows going back to 'Fifteen to One' in which contestants selected who among them would be asked the next question, evolving into more aggressive and deceptive behaviour for programmes like 'Golden Balls' and the short-lived 'Shafted'. Of course, the one that has been most enduring has been 'The Weakest Link' in which contestants get to vote off others usually on a tactical basis to make their path to the end easiest. The dismissal is delivered as cruelly as possible by an intentionally austere presenter. People, this is a game show not real life. Recruitment should not be debased this way; I am not an actor or musician.
As I say, I do not enjoy these programmes and bar a couple of programmes of 'The Weakest Link' and 'Golden Balls' have never watched any of them. However, I am aware of them and how the tactics operate as well as any ardent fan. They have so penetrated British society that knowledge of the methods and the tactics is commonplace. To my alarm, it now seems to be creeping into the corporate world and shaping how recruitment is run. For my next interview I have to appear before a panel of 15, some of whom will not be knowledgeable about the topic I have to speak about. I have 10 minutes to present on a detailed topic and then there are 5 minutes of questions. The use of presentations before an interview is very common for interviews these days, however, in every other case, they are used as a springboard for questions in the interview, not as a method to sift out candidates without really getting to know them. I suppose I would have been happier if they had said they would let us know if we were through to Stage 2 an hour later, but they emphasised the immediacy of the decision.
It is interesting to note that this is my second interview this year for which I have been told there will be no data projector for Powerpoint slides nor an overhead projector. This is a vast change from back in the early 2000s when I was rejected immediately at an interview because I did not use Powerpoint slides in my presentation. Partly it comes from the ignorance of how this technology works. One interview I attended last month was delayed an hour because no-one on the panel could operate the projector equipment or laptop to deliver Powerpoint slides. Partly it is because it is now seem as hip and bullish to put aside the 'crutch' of the Powerpoint slides. Ironically, that puts people like me, in the business when there was one terminal in an office, in an advantageous position over applicants who have been doing multi-media presentations since primary school.
What is jarring about this upcoming interview is that after my 15 minutes in the spotlight I will be told if I have got through to the next stage, i.e. the interview. Quite easily I could have driven 240Km and stayed overnight simply to have 15 minutes of performance and then come home. Of course, I cannot travel by train as I have no idea whether I will have to leave sometime in the middle of the morning or hang around for an interview at 5pm. The interview schedule will only be outlined after the performance stage. This clashes with the expectations of most companies that you book train tickets well in advance and at the cheapest price, and in the UK today, that means sticking to a set scheduled train. I have no idea what the interviewers can learn in 15 minutes, especially if the bulk of the audience are not knowledgeable about the areas the job covers. I can understand you have to make a good show to customers and prospective clients, but this system seems to be more beauty contest than even talent show. I can envisage the audience holding up scoring cards or simply a tick or a cross to say whether you go through to the next stage.
Interviews, as I have noted before, are getting shorter. They are about 60% the duration of what they were when I was looking for work in the early 2000s but the specifications are increasingly complex and often straddle many different roles. Perhaps I am too old to respond to the type of interviewing which demands that you snatch the attention of the 'audience' in an instant and somehow communicate vast areas of knowledge in a handful of minutes. If I was not so desperate for work, I would consider turning down this call for interview. I am not keen to encourage this methodology to spread, however often it is used in popular culture. I think it will do a disservice to the companies who use this methodology and I wonder how many companies will still be employing any person they recruited this way, 12 months down the line. Recruitment is a slow process and needs to be thorough. Adopting flashy approaches will not secure you the ideal candidate and it simply encourages behaviour and methods that get us even further away from the type of skills necessary for most business. I accept that for sales and even marketing it might be appropriate, but who ever insisted that the stock controller or the quality manager had to be able to sing karaoke well to work effectively in those posts?
P.P. 29/07/2009: I was persuaded by friends to withdraw from the process. As they pointed out I would be travelling 480Km with a good chance that I would not even be interviewed. I would have had to prepare for Stage 2 even if I did not reach it. Even if I got through to Stage 2 there was no indication at this stage of the schedule, making booking train tickets impossible. I wrote a strongly worded email to the company saying I was not going to go through their version of 'The X Factor' and will spend my time applying for jobs with companies who do not indulge in this kind of false machismo. I have reached a certain level in my career and expect some degree of respect, but I hope that they stop treating any candidates this way. Just because there is high unemployment should not mean we have to be performing monkeys to get a job.
Another thing that the company seems to have forgotten is that these days interviews are strictly based on criteria and if they refuse to give someone a job on spurious grounds they can be called to account for it. There is no indication what criteria they are using to judge people at this presentation, but given the immediacy of the response it must be on first impressions. They have to be careful here, because first impressions is the basis on which disabled people and other minorities will lose out to average interview panel and these people rejected on wishy-washy reasons will come down heavily and with legal backing on employers.
I just hope this employer is an aberration and that from now on I will encounter only rigorous and rational interview processes. However, I fear the approaches of entertainment have now contaminated what is a far more serious activity.
I have never been a fan of television programmes in which people are voted off. However, they straddle so much of popular culture these days ranging from those dealing with the public such as 'The X Factor' and 'Britain's Got Talent', through the fate of 'celebrities' in 'Strictly Come Dancing' and 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here' to less entertainment orientated ones, notably 'The Apprentice' and 'Dragons' Den' in which individuals pitch themselves or their products in front of a panel of 'experts' to receive their approval or dismissal. Even in the programmes with a popular vote, the panel often leads the way. Of course, there have been game shows going back to 'Fifteen to One' in which contestants selected who among them would be asked the next question, evolving into more aggressive and deceptive behaviour for programmes like 'Golden Balls' and the short-lived 'Shafted'. Of course, the one that has been most enduring has been 'The Weakest Link' in which contestants get to vote off others usually on a tactical basis to make their path to the end easiest. The dismissal is delivered as cruelly as possible by an intentionally austere presenter. People, this is a game show not real life. Recruitment should not be debased this way; I am not an actor or musician.
As I say, I do not enjoy these programmes and bar a couple of programmes of 'The Weakest Link' and 'Golden Balls' have never watched any of them. However, I am aware of them and how the tactics operate as well as any ardent fan. They have so penetrated British society that knowledge of the methods and the tactics is commonplace. To my alarm, it now seems to be creeping into the corporate world and shaping how recruitment is run. For my next interview I have to appear before a panel of 15, some of whom will not be knowledgeable about the topic I have to speak about. I have 10 minutes to present on a detailed topic and then there are 5 minutes of questions. The use of presentations before an interview is very common for interviews these days, however, in every other case, they are used as a springboard for questions in the interview, not as a method to sift out candidates without really getting to know them. I suppose I would have been happier if they had said they would let us know if we were through to Stage 2 an hour later, but they emphasised the immediacy of the decision.
It is interesting to note that this is my second interview this year for which I have been told there will be no data projector for Powerpoint slides nor an overhead projector. This is a vast change from back in the early 2000s when I was rejected immediately at an interview because I did not use Powerpoint slides in my presentation. Partly it comes from the ignorance of how this technology works. One interview I attended last month was delayed an hour because no-one on the panel could operate the projector equipment or laptop to deliver Powerpoint slides. Partly it is because it is now seem as hip and bullish to put aside the 'crutch' of the Powerpoint slides. Ironically, that puts people like me, in the business when there was one terminal in an office, in an advantageous position over applicants who have been doing multi-media presentations since primary school.
What is jarring about this upcoming interview is that after my 15 minutes in the spotlight I will be told if I have got through to the next stage, i.e. the interview. Quite easily I could have driven 240Km and stayed overnight simply to have 15 minutes of performance and then come home. Of course, I cannot travel by train as I have no idea whether I will have to leave sometime in the middle of the morning or hang around for an interview at 5pm. The interview schedule will only be outlined after the performance stage. This clashes with the expectations of most companies that you book train tickets well in advance and at the cheapest price, and in the UK today, that means sticking to a set scheduled train. I have no idea what the interviewers can learn in 15 minutes, especially if the bulk of the audience are not knowledgeable about the areas the job covers. I can understand you have to make a good show to customers and prospective clients, but this system seems to be more beauty contest than even talent show. I can envisage the audience holding up scoring cards or simply a tick or a cross to say whether you go through to the next stage.
Interviews, as I have noted before, are getting shorter. They are about 60% the duration of what they were when I was looking for work in the early 2000s but the specifications are increasingly complex and often straddle many different roles. Perhaps I am too old to respond to the type of interviewing which demands that you snatch the attention of the 'audience' in an instant and somehow communicate vast areas of knowledge in a handful of minutes. If I was not so desperate for work, I would consider turning down this call for interview. I am not keen to encourage this methodology to spread, however often it is used in popular culture. I think it will do a disservice to the companies who use this methodology and I wonder how many companies will still be employing any person they recruited this way, 12 months down the line. Recruitment is a slow process and needs to be thorough. Adopting flashy approaches will not secure you the ideal candidate and it simply encourages behaviour and methods that get us even further away from the type of skills necessary for most business. I accept that for sales and even marketing it might be appropriate, but who ever insisted that the stock controller or the quality manager had to be able to sing karaoke well to work effectively in those posts?
P.P. 29/07/2009: I was persuaded by friends to withdraw from the process. As they pointed out I would be travelling 480Km with a good chance that I would not even be interviewed. I would have had to prepare for Stage 2 even if I did not reach it. Even if I got through to Stage 2 there was no indication at this stage of the schedule, making booking train tickets impossible. I wrote a strongly worded email to the company saying I was not going to go through their version of 'The X Factor' and will spend my time applying for jobs with companies who do not indulge in this kind of false machismo. I have reached a certain level in my career and expect some degree of respect, but I hope that they stop treating any candidates this way. Just because there is high unemployment should not mean we have to be performing monkeys to get a job.
Another thing that the company seems to have forgotten is that these days interviews are strictly based on criteria and if they refuse to give someone a job on spurious grounds they can be called to account for it. There is no indication what criteria they are using to judge people at this presentation, but given the immediacy of the response it must be on first impressions. They have to be careful here, because first impressions is the basis on which disabled people and other minorities will lose out to average interview panel and these people rejected on wishy-washy reasons will come down heavily and with legal backing on employers.
I just hope this employer is an aberration and that from now on I will encounter only rigorous and rational interview processes. However, I fear the approaches of entertainment have now contaminated what is a far more serious activity.
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