Culture of Presentation Management

Change is hard, especially in a large organization. People are afraid of the unknown. The familiar is our security blanket. Knowing where we will be and what we will be doing tomorrow makes us feel safe. Any effort to change that, especially in our jobs — our livelihoods — will be resisted.

Over the years, as we’ve worked with clients to launch their new presentation strategy, we’ve found that there are a few steps you can take to help your team embrace presentation management. Some of them are concrete, like training, and others are more psychological, like how to change someone’s predisposition toward doing things a certain way. In this chapter, we will discuss the approaches you can take to lead your team into a presentation management culture. And it will also help you jump-start your presentation initiative.

Presentation management has two core tenants, and every step you take in your presentation management initiative should ultimately lead to those objectives. Revisit these tenants from time to time to make sure you stay on track.

1. Transform your presentations from one-and-done tactical files to enterprise assets.
2. Balance the long-term enterprise objectives and the individual needs of everyday employees.

Director of Presentation Management

Presentation management is a disciplined approach to executing that strategy. The strategy guides who in your organization can present what message, to whom and when. It balances the objectives of the enterprise with the individual’s needs. The approach is similar to any other marketing communications discipline, like advertising, public relations and event marketing. It has a similar process: define objectives, plan, execute, measure and then revise.

The director of presentation management, with the help of strategists, should spearhead your company’s presentation management effort.

This person, or task force depending on the size and complexity of your company, should have an understanding of your company’s messaging and branding. This role ensures that the presentation material is consistent with the company’s mission. He should also have an understanding of the company’s product and service lines to determine what kind of content to include in the library. Your presentation director should be a relatively senior executive who understands the business, its sub-divisions and has a sense of what the team members need to succeed in their roles. This is a role that probably already exists in your company.

Someone or group, usually in marketing, has taken on this task by default because it’s important.

Think of a museum curator who assembles the best collection of art. The presentation director is going to curate the best collection of your company’s slides. He may source corporate communications to get the high-level content about the company. Then, to address the day-to-day presentation needs of individuals, the director can source content about specific products and services. In bigger companies, the presentation director usually delegates this task to managers from each division.

Cooper Standard, a global enterprise with over 100 locations across four continents, sourced content from each product line and region to create a comprehensive library. Get the content from the subject matter experts, wherever they are.

Once the content is collected, the director can organize the high-level corporate content with the detailed product content into one central cloud location. A presentation director is the curator of presentation content.

Promote the Benefits – It’s PM for Them

Appeal to your employees’ self-interest. Let your team know how presentation management will make their presentations better and easier.U.S. Bank surveyed its team members to understand their presentation pain points before choosing a solution. The bank found that, above all else, users really needed an easier way to find approved slides, so they wouldn’t be forced to create their own. When the bank was ready to launch presentation management, management was able to communicate that this new presentation initiative would standardize content, push out slide updates and save time when preparing decks. That’s what the users needed, so management led with their needs.

Show Them It’s Familiar: “You Already Know How to Do This”

Once employees understand how presentation management makes their work-lives better, show them that it’s already familiar. If you want your child to eat more fish, you don’t serve her steamed sea bass with capers and onions in a spicy tomato sauce. You start with fish sticks, because fish sticks are pretty close to chicken fingers. And all kids like chicken fingers.

Draw similarities to what employees already know and do. For example, presenting in interactive mode, where they are pulling up slides on the fly, might seem intimidating. They lose the familiarity and structure of their linear PowerPoint. But they already tell stories through interactive presentation every day in their personal lives, especially if they’re Millennials. Here’s a familiar scenario that shows what we mean:

Suzanne and John are best buddies, but they haven’t seen each other in a while. After rescheduling multiple times, they’ve finally caught up for dinner and drinks.

Standing at the bar, while waiting for their table John asks Suzanne, “How was your vacation?”

“Amazing!” Suzanne responds with delight. “We took the kids to Disney World. Funniest thing, my 4-year-old, Eric, has a huge crush on all of the Disney Princesses.” She takes out her phone and starts scrolling through pictures. “Look at him blushing with Cinderella. Too cute! He’s going to be mortified by this when he’s older. And then we left the kids at my folks and hit the beach for few days to reboot.” Suzanne shows a few more pictures of her and her husband enjoying a romantic dinner.

“How about you?” “I have a job interview in two days at Acme Company. It would be a promotion and raise. I’m so sick of my current job right now. I need to nail this.”

“My friend used to work at Acme. Who are you meeting with?”

“Mike Whatshisface, he’s the SVP of marketing,” John replies. Suzanne starts the recon. She sends an inquiring text to her friend and does a Google search to get some more info on Mike Whatshisface. They both look at Suzanne’s phone.

They pull up his LinkedIn profile and see that he started out in sales.

Suzanne advises John, “The guy has a sales background. Better talk about your experience in terms of results. You know, focus more on the results you’ve achieved and less about the process and details.”

Then they go to Google images and find a picture of Mike Whatshisface and his wife at a charity event.

Meanwhile, Suzanne’s friend replies to her text with a bitmoji of her running in fear, “Mike Whatshisface is a total jerk. Tell John … Run awaaaay!”

They both break out in laughter and order another round of drinks.

That’s an interactive story, using a mobile phone to present “slides” as the conversation unfolds. The content on your phone is formatted to present. Your phone is essentially a slide deck with the presentation following the conversation. When discussing interactive presentations, draw comparisons to what’s already familiar.

Other aspects of presentation management should be familiar to most people, too. Your team already knows how to search and shop for stuff on Amazon, put pictures of items into a shopping cart and buy with oneclick. Well, with a new presentation management initiative, employees are going to be able do the same thing, except with slides instead of items, which users will save into a new deck instead of to a shopping cart.

Training Starts the Conversation

Training provides a two-fold opportunity. First, it teaches the users how to use the new platform – click here, drag and drop there, etc. Second, training provides an opportunity to help your team embrace this new communication strategy called presentation management.

Cooper Standard is a world leader in automotive and aviation parts with over 30,000 employees. We developed a training program with them that covered the “how” and the “why” for presentation management, and included multiple touch points to reach such a diverse and geographically dispersed group.

Chris Andrews, the Director of Digital and Marketing Communications for Corporate Communications, and her marketing team of writers and designers created a library of branded, compliant presentations. For their presentation management launch, Andrews served as the presentation director and her team acted as the presentation task force. They started their slide library with high-level information about product lines, including sealing systems, fuel- and brake-delivery systems and fluidtransfer systems. They also included a slide about each facility. And then, the team started talking with their division and regional leaders about presentation management.

Here’s how Andrews’ team approached the task:

1. Training the influencers – Once Andrews and her team had a foundation for their library, they scheduled sessions with the regional leaders in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. Since the attendees were joining from four continents, Andrews’ team conducted the sessions via web meeting. We showed them Shufflrr’s features and functions, but more importantly, Andrews discussed why Cooper Standard was moving toward a presentation management platform, and how this new platform was going to make it easier and better for employees and partners to distribute and share accurate and branded slides all over the world. While the products may be the same, business protocols and cultures are very different from country to country. So, Andrews asked each attendee how he or she thought it would affect that region and how the system should be rolled out. For example, Asia required a different language and alphabet. So, we worked specifically with that director to tailor a separate training program for the Asia region. The meetings were less how-to tutorial and more conversation.Everyone participated.
2. Training the users – With such a dispersed group, our team at Shufflrr collaborated with Cooper Standard and created several means of training with different touch points. The first and, we believe, most impactful was in-person classroom training. We hosted several training sessions in different offices around Michigan, where Cooper Standard is headquartered. Those who could not physically attend could log in in through Webex. Andrews began these sessions with the reasons Cooper Standard launched a presentation management initiative. She explained to her colleagues that presentation management would make it much easier for them to assemble a presentation. She started each session by showing off all of the new content that her team had created, the library of polished, professional product and facility slides, the videos and other materials that were now so easy to find and use. She also emphasized that the slides in the library coincide with Cooper Standard’s larger brand initiative. Users could get their jobs done and build the company’s image. It balanced the enterprise marketing goals with the daily needs of employees. We then showed them how the system works. However, with every feature demonstration we gave a reason why that feature was important. We showed them how to receive a slide update, but we also explained that slide updating would ensure that they had the latest, branded version of that slide. Since Cooper Standard is continually innovating, slide updating is a feature users will want so they can keep up.
3. More web training – It’s impossible to get everyone in the same room or on the same webinar. This is also true for smaller companies. We scheduled multiple sessions across several months to give everyone an opportunity to participate.
4. Ask for feedback – Andrews understood that training doesn’t end with the session. It’s easy to lose people’s attention once they leave a meeting. Her team sent out a survey asking for feedback and suggestions on the presentation management program and the training sessions so we could improve as we continued. The request for feedback is a means to keep the conversation going.
5. Make it fun and rewarding — Adoption is usage, and the marketing team needed to get their colleagues to embrace and start using the new presentation management solution. So, marketing created a contest. The game consisted of a series of exercises to complete in Shufflrr, using features and functions highlighted during training sessions. The catch is that they hid a slide in the library, the Golden Slide. As part of the game, aka practice exercises, users were asked to create a new presentation that included the Golden Slide and send it back to Andrews using Shufflrr’s share feature. To play the game, they had to search, preview, drag and drop, save a new presentation and share. They had to use and learn their tool’s features. Those who completed the task got a prize. While playing the game, employees were learning how to use their new slide library. And they could win cool stuff.
6. Training materials – With the understanding that you will never get everyone with one program, Andrews provided her colleagues with how-to videos, long-form recording of live training, and cheat sheets. The idea is that anyone can reference any of these materials within their presentation management system when it’s convenient for them.

Andrews and her team at Cooper Standard understood that training is an ongoing conversation. She did not expect a global team to change their habits and thinking around presentations after one 45-minute session.

She also understood that it’s not a one-way lecture. She engaged her colleagues, each group at their own level, and step-by-step, encouraged them to think differently about the role of Cooper Standard presentations within the company.

Launch in Phases

If your company is a large enterprise with 1,000-plus users dispersed over several different divisions, start small. Pick a subset — one division and its content. First off, it makes content collection easier. You only have to collect and organize content for one product instead of 15.Second, a pilot team of 50 instead of 500 is much easier to manage. It gives you an opportunity to work out the kinks before going live to the entire organization.

When U.S. Bank started deploying presentation management, its objective was to implement the solution across the organization, for 1,000 users. But it started small, with 100 users, and progressively added content and users every month. The bank hosted regular training sessions for new users, and was able to accept feedback and make changes as it went along. Management created a cycle of add content, train, get feedback, adjust, add more content, train another group, get feedback, adjust, and keep going. It was a step-by-step process of managed growth.Through that process, the bank onboarded its goal of 1,000 users, and then got 500 additional requests to join the system. Word got out, and presentation management spread throughout the bank.

Collect Content

Your presentation management strategy is only as good as the content provided.

Systems, protocols, features, functions, cutting-edge technology and good intentions are all great. But content is king! Both U.S. Bank and Cooper Standard introduced slide libraries with the best content branded, up to date, accurate, well-designed, well-written content. When word got out at U.S. Bank that there was a library that had all the good content, and all you had to do was drag and drop, requests for access increased and the presentation management mentality started to spread.

Content is how you balance the enterprise with the individual – the strategic with the tactical.

You can start from scratch and create all-new content. Luckily, that’s not a requirement. Most of this content, enterprise and tactical, already exists. It’s already saved on your network somewhere, embedded in other presentations, brochures, videos, etc. So it’s a matter of identifying it and then including it in your presentation management initiative. The trick is to make sure that your presentation cloud includes both aspects of your business, the enterprise files and the tactical files, that can then be broken down into pieces where individuals can select and organize a new presentation for their own meeting.

Now you might be thinking something like, “You want me to parse through all of those files on our mess of network? Ugh!” Content collection may seem like a daunting task, arguably worse than spring cleaning. There are probably thousands offiles on your network, so where do you start? It’s really not as bad as it sounds. Big tasks are easier to accomplish when broken down into manageable chunks. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to content, but there are a couple of practical approaches we suggest when helping our own clients execute their presentation management strategy.

Users need slides and files to do their job. The goal of presentation management is to provide that tactical content to them in an easy, effective way. When your team sees compliant, productive content that they need to do their job within their presentation management solution, they will not just warm up to the new solution, they will embrace it.

Remember when we talked about starting with “what’s familiar.” Well, your team is very familiar with the content they need to succeed in their job. Give them what they want.

Chapter 4 – Takeaways

1. Assign someone or group to own and direct your company’s presentation management initiative.
2. Launch in phases. Add content in phases. And train in phases.
3. Start with what’s familiar.
4. Training is like an ongoing conversation. Provide a range of training options and opportunities for your team to learn about and adapt presentation management.
5. Content is king! Give your team the content they need, formatted and ready to present, and they will embrace your new presentation management solution.