Thinking before talking

Have we become presentations producing machines?

Judging by the working agenda of employees, the corporations seem to be factories for producing the trash of useless presentations nobody needs. Who knows, maybe there is a compensation model or KPIs based on the number of PowerPoint files one produces :-)

If it were possible, I would like to check how much time is spent on presentation against other work-related activities. The presentation is regarded as a standard task any employee should be able to do. To produce nothing saying presentation consisted of few slides is not so difficult. However, of one wants to create something meaningful, it takes time to think the topic over to come to a clear idea to be shared.

Typical time allocations during in preparation phase look like this:

To help people get what you want to tell them, the idea is the same way important as its package. So, there should be also a balance in time allocation during preparation phase. It takes time to reflect the broad context of my topic to come up with something having of some value for people to receive your message. So, the time allocation should reflect the importance both the reflection and packaging phase.

I can understand that under time pressure this model seems too unrealistic but over time you can make small improvement to get closer that model step by step.

Our society and quick life doesn't provide a lot of time to stop, think, analyze and critically think. In order to make it happen, one needs to change a working routine. Without such change we will end up running at always increasing speed generating no or low added-value and resulting in burnout or health-related problems.

The key is to select and learn to say “no” to reserve a time for thinking and doing better job. The obsession to do more and more leads to actually accomplishing less and less. The best way to get out of this trap is to stop behaving automatically and mindlessly like machines and start working as human beings: as creatures blessed with the power to able to do amazing things.

The ”fast-food-like” presentations is the only the symptom of the bigger challenge and that is extremly fast working style preventing us from doing a quality job. Today is more than ever true the saying: LESS BUT BETTER.