One day I was in an internal meeting reviewing the draft of an upcoming client deliverable with a team of 7 or 8 people. At one point the highest ranking person in the room, whom I'll call the Admiral, shut down an argument by saying, "The client wants it like this." And we moved on.

A few minutes later the Admiral argued (and won) a battle by saying, "Sometime we [our company] can get get fired for doing exactly what the client asks."

Now both of these ideas have merit. Yes, we must give the client what they ask for. The customer is always right, right? But sometimes we have to see past what they WANT to what they NEED. The customer lacks vision; that's why they hire us, right?

Yup I accept that these contradictory ideas can exist at the same time. Though I can't say I have ever heard them uttered about the SAME client project in the SAME meeting and by the SAME mouth.

Now if I did not know the Admiral as well as I do, I would assume this was just a case of a high ranking exec justifying inconsistent ideas and shutting down any challenges with pithy phrases.

OK. That might have been a teeny bit of this situation.

But in general the Admiral is a brilliant, if tangential, thinker with an innate sense of business strategy. In other words, I couldn't dismiss the contradiction solely as executive ego on parade.

In this case the client had asked for a survey of competitors with recommendations for improvement. A valuable exercise to be sure. Emulating others and making incremental improvements can close gaps, but it will never lead to innovation. You can't become a market leader by "following better".

The client wants to understand and beat their competitors. But simply closing any gaps is not enough.

How to reconcile what they want with what they really need? In my opinion the key is to find a way to answer both the want and the need in sequence. Personally I feel like the answers are stronger separated into two deliverables, but at minimum they should be presented in discrete bites.

You can't ignore the ask, even if you "know" better. If you agreed to a gap analysis, you need to provide one. Package the answer in the cleanest and clearest way you can. Provide a realistic diagnostic of the gaps to competitors and the improvement needed to reach parity.

Only then, after the ask is complete, can you expand to larger ideas, ideas that challenge the status quo and may not even be possible today. This type of "no rules" thinking is the way innovation happens.

Here is the kicker... Even if you KNOW you need to go there, presenting the second step without the first is a big mistake, IMHO. It not only disregards the clients request, but it also "cheats" by ignoring the constraints of the client's reality. Any of us can design a flying car, if we start the the assumption that gravity does not exist!

Ambiguity is not my favorite thing. But the more I thought about the apparent contradiction of "do what the client wants" and "sometimes we fail if we do exactly what the client wants," the more I realized they can live in harmony by answering both in sequence.

In my experience, most people do not like to outline.  It's right up there with Brussels sprouts or flossing: things we know we SHOULD do, yet rarely do.  

That's probably because outlining, when it is taught at all, is taught in a very specific and didactic way.  There is little room for personality when you're following the teacher's rules for outlines.  Like little Stepford Students, we learned that a passing grade came when we described the prescribed Intro, Three points (with at least three supporting points each!), and Conclusion.  Yippee.

So, I'm guessing the minute you didn't HAVE to outline, you didn't.

But now, three years or three decades after you suffered through your last outline in English class you may wonder if there is something missing.  Something in your approach to writing that's a bit willy-nilly.  You might even sketch out an outline from time to time, but I'm guessing it doesn't get you where you want to go. An intro, three points, and a conclusion might get a B+ in high school, but it probably won't lead to a compelling sales piece or presentation.

So is there another answer? Something between the chaos (and occasional genius) of unplanned seat-of-the-pants writing and the rigid barriers of the perfect outline?  Yup.  Storyboarding.

You might wonder, isn't a storyboard an awful lot like an outline? Sure; the storyboard is the unruly cousin of an outline.

Where an outline tends to be very linear, a storyboard is organic. An outline has a standard path  (Well, if you're feeling frisky you can reorient your outline so that the AAABBBCCC structure becomes ABC ABC ABC, ooh, fancy). A storyboard has no required flow. An outline, in its perfect form, is extremely uniform and parallel.  If you have four supporting points for one idea, it looks naked to have only one sub-point on the next.

A storyboard is tactic, a process. You a play with your ideas, move them around, and see what works. Go digital and create the big blocks of your message in traditional tools like PowerPoint or newer apps such Trello, Scrivener, or Paper. Go low-tech by jotting your ideas on sticky-notes, and then use a whiteboard or empty table to see everything at once.  Combine text, graphics, photos and your best caveman drawings to express your ideas.  Invite others to contribute and play.  Whatever your preferred method, as you group, sequence, and re-group, you find the heart of the story you need to tell.  You become aware of the flow of the story, not just the logic-tree of individual topics of an outline.

An outline tends to suck the creativity out of the process of creation; a storyboard lets you bring fresh eyes and a fresh spirit to your business writing.   A storyboard focuses on the story, not the structure.  Where the outline invites convention, the storyboard invites invention. 

I wrote a book.
I wrote a book!
I. Wrote. A. Book.

Ahem. Sorry.

The path from idea to manuscript to book can be a winding one. I first had the idea that became Centered Presentation on an airplane several year ago.  The idea would roll around in my mind then move to the front, like a wayward cough drop, and I'd savor it for a minute then stick back between my teeth and cheek for a while. 

About a year ago, I thought it might make a good ebook and actually sat down and wrote a short 40 page PDF.  I thought it could be good marketing for the consulting work I do.  

I shared it with a friend and trusted adviser, Tom Searcy, who suggested it deserved a longer treatment. I wrote in my journal "could be a "real" book - we'll see."

Funny how the physical book is still much more real to me.  Maybe the Millennials don't feel this way.  I do have a Kindle, and I enjoy reading eBooks - but still.... the feel and smell of an actual book.  Nothing like it. This project became much more REAL when I held the physical proof in my hand. 

I used Amazon's CreateSpace to publish the book. This is an amazing site.  It would have been called a "vanity press" 20 years ago.  But the rules of publishing are changing so fast, I think the choice of self-publishing has a completely different flavor in 2013.  

I don't expect this book to make me rich or a household name.  
But I am richer for having written it. 
(I wrote a book.)

Like most freelance consultants, I often encounter the divide between companies who will invest in consulting services and those who will not.  But there is an equally important distinction between clients who are open to inviting a consultant into their world to assess and improve their situation and those who limp from one external guru to the next-- ever in search of "the" answer.

These companies seem to practice serial monogamy with consulting theories and practitioners.  They fall too hard with each new "love" -- rejecting the old ways (that were "new" only 12 weeks before) and bringing in the new and improved -- only to repeat the cycle with the next big idea.

After they move on, they disconnect from the theories of the past, regardless of how intently they followed them at the time.  The people on their team suffer from business theory whiplash, and tend to fall into two camps: the disciples of the latest gem and the resistant, who play along to keep their jobs but refuse to rework their sales presentation yet again.

 One clue that you may be dealing with a serial consulting monogamist  is that they disparage the previous work or consulting personalities as having failed them.  Whereas a thoughtful approach to external experts  enables a company to "borrow from the best" in a variety of complementary ways, the starry-eyed serial monogamist feels they must reject all that has come before.

Doesn't it remind you of that person you meet at a party: Always talking about her recent string of failed romances? Always sure the failure was beyond her control? Always sure the next one will be THE one?

The truth is, consultants and the latest business theories can do wonders for your team. But they merely the vehicle to LIFT you to the next level. A consultant will NOT create a better situation; they can help you find your own path there.  

If you are looking for an outside expert to be an outside answer -- you will be looking for a long, long time.  One consultant after another. Serial monogamy.
 

Airplane travel disorients me.  The sameness of the clouds or the ocean or tiny towns, roads, and rivers shifting beneath the plane makes time stretch and bend.  Hours some times fly by in the blink of an eye, and on other flights, each minute seems to last forever.

Some planes are outfitted with video screens that show you a flight path and a tiny plane icon moving along - just like the ones in old movies or Indiana Jones!  This addition made long flights much more palatable to me.  There is magic in knowing "you are here."


Strong presenters know that the audience craves that sense of an overall plan and current position.  

Right off the bat, let me acknowledge there is a HUGE exception to this rule: master storytellers frequently employ an element of surprise or suspense and a few unexpected turns to hold their audience in the palm of their hands.  Think Steven Jobs.  He had the charisma and control to hold an audiences' attention as well as content that had us all literally reaching for our wallets before he finished speaking.  If you are in that rarefied class, congratulations!

The rest of us need to help our audience be a good audience, and one effective way to do that is to provide presentation GPS: that is, a map of our destination, our current location, and our route.

Some presenters choose to rely on their voice-over to guide the audience through the presentation, but here's the Catch22: if you know your presentation inside-out (and you really should!) it's hard to identify points of potential confusion. The flow makes perfect sense to you, but the first-time viewer may not follow your logic or, perhaps more likely,  they may make assumptions that muddle your stellar approach.   

A better solution it to incorporate presentation GPS elements into every presentation. There a many ways to do this, including:

• Agenda  - the simplest and most overlooked tool you can use to set expectations... and meet them
• Break Slides -  highlight upcoming topics and indicate the current section
  
• Headlines - combine primary and secondary to  tell them overtly "you are here"
  e.g., this is the Finance section and we're still discussing Seasonal Discounts
  
• Iconography - create icons that corresponds to each topic and repeat them on content pages to orient the audience to the larger outline and flow
  
• Color - select your background, border or headline color to subtlety communicate a change in sections
  

There's an old, yet accurate piece of presentation advice: Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em.  Tell 'em what you told 'em.  I would add one more element: Tell 'em where they are.  

Why the newsroom matters in the boardroom.

Today's news is delivered with a fractured focus that can completely distract the viewer.   A talking head remains the center of any TV newscast, and he or she usually has a still image over one shoulder to provide a visual clue to the story.  

But that simple set up has erupted into a veritable three ring circus, all designed to stop us from changing the channel.

• A line of text (or sometimes more than one) scrolls across the bottom to offer information on other stories, scores, or stock markets.  
• A bullet list of the next few stories hovers to one side, just in case the current "breaking news" is not of interest to us.  
• A headline and pithy sub-headline offer context to the story if we happen to have the sound muted.  
• A single frame of news footage could be studied for an hour - yet the a new visual assault appears mere seconds later.
  

They do this because, sadly, it works.  Like a car wreck on the highway, we are unable to look away. We, the viewers, have taught them that the only way to hold our attention is to bombard our senses with information.  And it might hold our attention, or at least pause our remote controls, but attention is not comprehension or engagement.  This approach washes over our senses; it doesn't draw us in.  The next time you are watching the news, try to notice if you are spending more attention listening or reading the screen.  Does the presenter become an annoying hum in the background? Do you find yourself turning down the sound to "read the TV" like you would a website?

Go back fifty years and you'd see a presenter, almost always a man, sitting at a desk, holding papers, filling the lens with nothing more than his own gravitas.  And telling the story of the news.  Now you may argue with only 3 channels, they didn't have to worry about keeping eyeballs glued their broadcast.  Yet, if you watch the news from, say, the BBC, you'll see a very simple set-up, more in depth discussions of current events, and you will probably find the stories suck you in.

How does this apply to sales artifacts?  Let's look specifically at presentations.  I would argue that the slides should augment your message, not replace it.  Think of the images-over-the-shoulder on a newscast.  The images - a fire, a politician, a police car - do not tell you the story, but they offer context.  They support the spoken story.  A good slide does that, too.   

You can take the other option - fill the slide with everything you plan to say, plus background information, plus graphics and charts, plus conclusions.  You can choose to make your slide the star of your presentation, and many do.  But is that what you want? 

An audience can either read or listen - we literally cannot do both at once.  We might switch between them very quickly, but one sense must "grab the controls."  Overfill your slides and you are asking the audience to stop listening.  

Your slides are not your presentation; you are the presentation.  The slides should complement your spoken word: offering clarity on complex issues, providing reinforcement for the visual-learners in the group (many people have to *see* something to understand it), and sketching the arc of your story.   Remember that Walter Cronkite and his peers could hold a nation's attention with a desk and a stack of notes.

Start from the story, not the slides.

I knew a sales person who was completely focused on how to open.  Whether she was planning a presentation, a meeting, or an email, she wanted to grab her audiences attention.  She want to make sure they were on the edge of their seat.  She believed that people only respond to flamboyant, extravagant claims ("Company XYZ earned $2million in one week and you can too").  She like loud - volume, colors, ideas, anything.  

The trouble was, she was trying to sell a service based on expertise and trust. She was trying to show corporate prospects that her firm would add value, but she was behaving like a huckster. 

After a few conversations, I learned she had only recently been moved into a sales role. Further, I realized her entire frame of reference for "marketing" was infomercials and email blasts. In her mind, that's what worked, and that's what marketing was.  

The funny (or sad) thing was that when she was actually working with her clients, she was entirely different.  She conveyed authority and expertise; she challenged their thinking respectfully and profoundly.  She was the elusive "trusted adviser."  

She was greatly valued by her clients, so her company wanted to put her in front of potential clients.  And to everyone's chagrin, she morphed into a frenetic combination of  Ron Popeil, Billy Mays, and Jerry Lewis.  Well, perhaps I exaggerate.  

But her focus on how to OPEN made it unnecessary to consider how to CLOSE.  She never got that far.  She did grab their attention - in the worst possible way.  

What about you? Do you try to grab the audience by the throat or take them by the hand?  Do you get a better response when you shout or when you whisper?  What is the right balance of sizzle and steak?