Wendy Powell, author of Management Experience Acquired
Wendy Powell on the StrategyDriven Podcast
Earlier this month, we were privileged to talk with Wendy about her new book, Management Experience Acquired
“To improve communications, work not on the utterer, but the recipient.”
Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005)
‘Father of Modern Management’ and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2002
Have you ever listened to a presentation and thought, “What does this have to do with me?” If you have, the chances are the presenter didn’t spend enough time thinking about you, the audience member, as he created his message. It’s the responsibility of the presenter to make the message clear to the audience. Therefore, one of the very first things you should do when you’re crafting your presentation is to analyze your audience.
[wcm_restrict]To motivate, persuade, sell, get buy-in, receive feedback, insure understanding, or impact an audience in any way, you need their attention. And you can’t get it without understanding something about who they are, what they need, and how they might react to the message. The more you know about them, the more effectively you can position your information. Don’t make the common mistake of presenting your information the way you’d like to receive it if you were the audience.
The audience characteristics that might impact your presentation include age, gender, cultural background, language – the demographics of your group. They’ll help you determine the different examples or different words you might choose for the presentation. For example, you might speak differently to senior citizens than to a group of teenagers. For business presentations, level in the organization, decision-making authority, prior knowledge of the topic, and anything you know or can find out about your audience’s attention span can be critical.
For example, let’s say you’re making a presentation to your senior executives to get funding for a project. Do your key decision makers want you to net it out, give the big picture, and then give the details? Or would they prefer that you build your case, starting with specifics, and then give the conclusion? Sometimes you can infer the way someone will process the information based on his or her job function. A group of HR professionals will likely view most subjects differently than a group of accountants will. The thought process of HR professionals often will focus on people, while the accountants may focus more on quantitative information – the what, as opposed to the who.
If you know that the person you’re presenting to has a short attention span, you want to get to your point as soon as possible. If you know that your audience has prior knowledge of the topic, you want to avoid rehashing that information and risk losing their attention. Remember, you’re looking for anything that will give you insight into how the audience may think about your message. That insight will help you structure your information for maximum impact.
How do you get the needed information? Start with what you know about the audience members and write it down. What prior interactions have you had with the members? If so, what’s their communication style? The smaller your group the more information you should be able to get.
If you know your audience well enough, you can get very accurate information by simply asking them. If you don’t know them personally, do a little research. If they are within your organization or in client companies, can you gain any insights from someone else who knows them? Once you know what’s most critical to them about your topic, you can really target your information to what they need and what it is they want to know.
If you’re presenting to a group of strangers, there’s still a lot you can learn. Why are they coming together? Whom do you know who can give you any information? Let’s say you’re presenting to a professional association or other type of large gathering. Can the organizers of the meeting give you some insight into the group? The most important thing is to actively think about your audience as you start planning your presentation.
Now that you have all this great information about your audience, how do you use it? The information you gather can and should be used in several different ways.
It can help you organize your topics and determine in what order you should cover your points. You can plan your strategy around what the audience knows and how they think. You can use what you learn to grab the audience’s attention by opening with something that you know is critical to them or will startle them, or something that reflects their viewpoint in some way.
Every aspect of your message should target your audience. Analyzing your audience and then using that information to target your message is your key to making your presentation memorable.
Additional Information
This is the first of a series of articles, developed exclusively for StrategyDriven, that highlights the breadth and depth of Communispond’s LearnTO Library. This on-line, on-demand library includes an ever-growing set of modules that provide concise, easy-listening instructions for meeting a wide range of business communications challenges. LearnTO Library materials come in a wide range of formats and are available for organization-wide access on an annual subscription basis. Click here to learn more about Communispond’s LearnTo Library.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
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About the Author
Bill Rosenthal is the Chief Executive Officer of Communispond Inc., an organization that has taught business communications skills to more than 600,000 persons. Bill is responsible all aspects of the business including sales, marketing, content development, and the delivery of Communispond courses by certified faculty. Prior to joining Communispond, Bill was CEO of Digi-Block Inc., a K-12 education publisher focusing on mathematics. He also served as President of Kaplan College, a division of Kaplan Inc., the well-known test preparation company, where he developed and launched the online college that offers Associates and Bachelors degrees and certificates in Business, Information Technology, Nursing, and Law. In a previous role as President of Ziff-Davis Education (now called Element K), Bill oversaw the leading supplier of computer training products worldwide and supervised the operations of ZD University, the leading web-based computer skills site.
StrategyDriven Podcasts focus on the tools and techniques executives and managers can use to improve their organization’s alignment and accountability to ultimately achieve superior results. These podcasts elaborate on the best practice and warning flag articles on the StrategyDriven website.
Special Edition 52a – An Interview with Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus, part 1 of 2 explores methods for effectively capturing, retaining, and transferring the knowledge of departing workers thereby enabling those who remain to continue to use this hard-won information to the benefit of the organization. During our discussion, Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill, co-authors of Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees
the defining characteristics of Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and MillennialsAdditional Information
Ken and Gina’s book, Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus: Capturing Knowledge for Gen X and Y Employees
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About the Author
Ken Ball is a Baby Boomer and has been tracking issues relating to aging in the workplace for several years. At TechProse, he drives business development for the consulting firm that specializes in knowledge/content management, training, and documentation for major U.S. clients. He has more than 30 years of experience in corporate sales and marketing, including years in book publishing business, working for IDG Books, publishers of the …For Dummies computer and general reference books. He has a marketing communications degree from Bradley University.
Gina Gotsill is a Gen X writer who has studied journalism at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley. She is also a fellow of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gina has covered a wide range of business topics that include keeping Boomer skills in the workplace, teaching finance to non-finance professionals, and growth and change in urban and suburban business clients.
For more information about Ken Ball and Gina Gotsill and Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus
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Now that you’ve looked at your workforce (in The Boomers are Leaving! – How to Create and Implement a Knowledge Transfer Program, part 1), you’re ready to design and develop a program that retains Baby Boomers’ knowledge. But your program should do more than just capture and transfer valuable knowledge – it should also sow the seeds of a knowledge culture in the organization. More on that later. For now, let’s look at the four phases that will follow the organizational analysis you read about in Part 1. Like rungs on a ladder, each phase builds on the next, so it’s important that you consider each step as you create your knowledge retention program.
Design: During the design phase, you’ll use the workforce data you collected and focus on who holds the knowledge, the recipient, the knowledge you want to capture, and the method you want to use. Some knowledge transfer methods to consider are mentoring, social networks, Communities of Practice, After Action Reviews, and storytelling programs. From this point on, it is critical that you follow the needs of your audience. Regularly ask yourself these questions:
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During the design phase you will also establish the goals and objectives of your program. An example of a goal for a mentoring program could be that mentees will be more confident and knowledgeable when interacting with clients. An objective, on the other hand, should be measurable. An example of an objective for your mentoring program could be that after the first three months, a mentee will be able to complete a critical task in half as much time as they did before being mentored.
Development: During development, you will create all the materials you’ll use for your program, which could include sign-in sheets, handouts, check lists, templates, and websites. Before you launch the program in a big way, we recommend you test drive it with a small group of representative users first. While many organizations roll out their programs without a pilot, our experience has shown that this can backfire. Pilots give you the opportunity to test – and tweak – elements of your program while it’s early. This increases your chance of meeting the goals and objectives you noted during the design phase. We recommend you pilot each element of your program, from the sign-in sheet to the evaluation form to the website where participants enroll in the program.
Implementation: You’ve designed your program, tested it, and now it’s ready for prime time. Make sure you have a project manager in place to mind the details and ensure the program doesn’t veer off course. While it may be tempting to launch your program and move on to other tasks, remember that successful programs require maintenance and attention.
Evaluation: Managers who skip the evaluation phase may discover their program loses relevance if they don’t check in from time to time. To keep your program humming along, look at it from many different angles at regular intervals. Quantitative measures, such as attrition data, employee performance data, and program attendance rates give you the numbers you may need to defend your program to executives. And qualitative data, such as customer comments and user surveys, provide anecdotal information that helps you paint a more complete picture.
Now what? Your knowledge retention program has helped you prepare for the inevitable day when experienced Boomer workers begin to step away. But you’ve also set the foundation of a knowledge culture, where every member of the team contributes what they know for the benefit of the organization. Now that your program is off the ground, you must nurture this new culture – experienced workers, whether Boomer or Gen X or Y, leave the organization every day. Nurturing a culture that is more collaborative can help make knowledge transfer a part of how your organization runs. This is a good thing! All you need is a plan…[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember]
Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:
[reveal_quick_checkout id=”25489″ checkout_text=”Subscribing to the Self Guided Program – It’s Free!”]
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About the Authors
Ken Ball is a Baby Boomer and has been tracking issues relating to aging in the workplace for several years. At TechProse, he drives business development for the consulting firm that specializes in knowledge/content management, training, and documentation for major U.S. clients. He has more than 30 years of experience in corporate sales and marketing, including years in book publishing business, working for IDG Books, publishers of the… For Dummies computer and general reference books. He has a marketing communications degree from Bradley University.
Gina Gotsill is a Gen X writer who has studied journalism at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley. She is also a fellow of the Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gina has covered a wide range of business topics that include keeping Boomer skills in the workplace, teaching finance to non-finance professionals, and growth and change in urban and suburban business clients.
For more information about Ball and Gotsill and Surviving the Baby Boomer Exodus