Lesson Learned #13
We are well known by our clients for very large wall map presentations. Before the digital revolution these maps were extremely cumbersome to put together. Newly minted MBAs brought on board, eager to flex their management acumen, would be taught how to cut and paste charts and images on large strips of bristol board. A few understandably questioned why this wasn’t mentioned in the interview process.
As the digital world took hold, PowerPoint presentations became very popular and even clients started to question whether these massive wall charts were not a little out of step with modern capabilities. So we adapted and tried doing our presentations with cutting edge slide shows. In the process we learned a couple of interesting things:
- too much color and fancy slide transitions may look great but they are distracting to the message
- 3 dimensional charts are clever but difficult to read and understand
The most important thing we learned, however, was that once a slide is presented it disappears. Then another slide is presented and it too disappears. After a while people forget what was presented before hand and the continuity of the message disappears. The real power of the giant wall map was that it kept all the key points front and center and people could easily scan back to previous points. This allowed people to make the connections that are often so important to fully understanding how you get from A to B. It also stopped the endless debate of whether or not to hand out the slide deck before the presentation. If you handed it out people would invariably jump ahead and pay less attention to what you were saying. If you didn’t hand it out, people would get slightly irritated that you were holding back information and sometimes felt they were being manipulated. With the wall map, everything was already in full view, you just needed to explain it.
In a change management process, understanding the connections between what you are going to change (process), how you are going to manage the new processes (management systems) and what you need to do differently (behavior) are critical. So we went back to using the wall maps, although they are now digital and we get fewer complaints from our new hires. We learned to use digital technology to support the method, rather than change the method to fit the technology.
