One of the regular routines of any IT delivery team is to have meetings and presentations. There are meetings to discuss about projects, plans, blockers and almost all aspects of delivery life cycle. In fact we seem to be so fond of having meetings that sometimes we arrange meeting to decide what future meetings we should arrange. But do these meetings really serve any purpose?
The answer to the question cannot be categorised as either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Some meetings or some parts of the meetings turn out to be really fruitful in deciding the future course of actions with identified action owners and due dates whereas sometimes or some parts of meetings just prove to be a lengthy rhapsody of good sounding but practically meaningless technical jargons. Haven’t you ever come across a meeting wherein the presenter just seemed to be blabbering about some weird stuff and you were thinking about your upcoming vacation plans while you pretended to smile and look interested? You even make an effort to pick on some real fancy jargon and make a note of it to pose a question during the Q&A section of the meeting, just to provide a re-assuring affirmation to all that you were listening. If this has ever happened to you, then there is no need to feel bad about yourself. There is no problem with your attentiveness; rather the fault lies with the focus area and presentation skill of the presenter.
It is often taken as a joke when people say ‘Oh, making PowerPoint presentation is a real skill’, but to be honest, it really is. Not only in terms of making the presentation presentable, but it is also a skill when it comes to the core content and how the information is transferred from one mind to a set of minds. An idea in itself could be real genius, but it would serve no purpose at all unless it is shared across easily and simplistically with those who are supposed to be working on materialising that idea.
Look at the Google homepage interface, how simple, easy to use and intuitive it is, and then just think about what goes in the background when you make a simple search. Even the most complex of things could be presented in a way that it is grasped by a good majority, if not all. Our meetings, technical meetings specially, are not the platforms for us to showcase our linguistic skills and boast about our own knowledge set. That fact has been established by the very fact that we have been bestowed with the responsibility of putting up a presentation together for that subject matter. The very basic underlying requirement of any technical meeting is to spread and share information with all relevant parties. Think of it as a simple ETL job. Extract, Transform and Load, 3 simple steps and an interface has been created between 2 non-communicating systems.
When you are working on the first part i.e. Extract, you can put your idea on paper in any manner you like or feel comfortable with. You can bullet your points; you can draw diagrams or simply make sketches. You are free to follow your own instincts at this stage as it is your information just for you. No other party has yet been involved.
The next part i.e. Transform is the key. Once you have gathered every piece of information in your most comfortable format, you have a universal set which you want to convey. Now all you need to do is to translate/transform that information in a way so that it makes sense for all or most of your target audience. So that binary tree you drew looks so fun and simple to you, but guess what, it means just gibberish drawing to someone you might be presenting it to. It doesn’t always come down to representing your thoughts in tangible ways. Sometimes you might find yourself restricted due to certain constraints you just can’t overcome. But even in such situations, a basic thought should be given to the process of making things as simple as they can possibly get. Basically avoid using α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-fructofuranoside where the word ‘Sugar’ could be used, or if it is absolutely necessary to use the difficult technical language then at least make an effort to provide less complex understandable substitutes as well.
The next step i.e. Load primarily stresses on your creative abilities. So once you have your information documented and transformed, it is time for you to make it as presentable and easy to look at. It is a combination of what you write on your slides and what notes you prepare to talk about that slide. I can draw an elephant on a slide and either say ‘It is an elephant’ or can provide the reasoning behind putting that elephant on that slide. The intention should be to load the information in the minds of your target audience.
It might look uncanny, but good presentation relates quite well to the concept of the ETL. If you are willing to give it a try to the basics of preparing a pack for your meetings, you might end up seeing some observable positive results in terms of your audience attention and retention.
