A couple weeks ago I wrote an article called “The Big Presentation.” It was in response to this question.
“Our company is really struggling. I have to give a presentation to upper management about new ideas or new ways to try to help grow our business. I’m afraid if it doesn’t go well, our department will face serious cuts and people will lose their jobs. Any suggestions?”
Having sat through hundreds, if not thousands of business presentations, I offered a different approach to the questioner’s presentation. An approach based not upon technical presentation skills. One not based upon showing how many facts, statistics, and upward pointing trending arrows or bullet points you could force on a PPT. slide. But one that ended with a challenge – to everyone in the room- to try to think different. Act different. Be different. Not your typical presentation.
SO EASY
It’s really easy to give gutsy advice. Especially if you don’t have to do it yourself. Then, a short time later (as these things mockingly go), I had the opportunity to make the same type of presentation myself. To a budget committee. Budget=$$$$$$. Important in any business.
TO BE A HYPOCRITE
I was going to be a hypocrite and whip up the same old boring corporate PPT gobbledygook-crapola that’s expected. But I went back and revisited my answer. Pondered it. Pondering is not my strong suit so … I decided to take my own advice.
Taking your own advice is always scary. I mean really, the last person I want to take advice from is me.
HERE’S THE MARKETING & PR KILLER
But there was one major catch. I had to review an entire year’s worth of work and accomplishments of the department in … FIVE minutes (my allotted time). FIVE MINUTES. If you’re in Marketing or PR you know the new media and social media developments over the last year have exploded at supraluminal speed. You have to go 186,000 MPH just to do an even barely adequate job. So, I compiled the facts and stats. The work on Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Blogs, Social Media News Room, E-Zines, Widgets, Blidgets, Idgets, etc. When I laid it all out on slides I ended up with 110 of them. That’s right. 110 slides. FIVE MINUTES. Even Einstein, relativistically speaking, couldn’t make that math work using the same old approach.
WHAT TO DO?
There was only one answer. Experiment. With the very same new media tools and thinking that have exploded over the last year.
THE PRESENTATION BEGINS
Then – the day was upon me. I started out by informing the budget committee that I could not possibly finish the presentation in five minutes because — I had 110 slides. They took it stoically (if you don’t count the gasps of horror, tears or heads down on the table). “But,” I went on, “I could do it 5:06.” (Five minutes and six seconds.)
CLICK & GO
The presentation below is best viewed in Full Screen mode (click on bottom right of screen) and with the sound on.
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning.
We will remember them.”
“For the Fallen” by Laurence Binyon
70 YEARS AGO TODAY AN EVIL BEAST WITH A SILVER TONGUE …
… started the deadliest conflict in human history. A charismatic, hypnotically mesmerizing megalomaniac. An evil human beast whose oratory powers seduced the masses until they gave up their liberties – then their lives, their souls – to this Anti-Christ wannabe.
KILLED 100 MILLION SOULS
When it was all over approximately;
22,000,000 to 25,000,000 (million) military personnel were killed
60,000,000 to 80,000,000 (million) innocent civilians were dead (I know I could have shortened those numbers with abbreviations — but it wouldn’t be respectful)
5,700,000 Jews, (78% of the Jewish population in Europe at that time) were murdered.
Six years of raging war, blood, guts and inhumanities piled high in death and destruction.
THE AMERICAN SACRIFICE
Approximately 418,000 Americans lost their lives.But they are not gone. Not forgotten. They laid down their lives …
AT THE ALTAR OF LIBERTY
How costly a sacrifice war brings. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. 70 years ago today it was. But it …
IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO
For liberty. For justice. For human dignity. Securing the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity is, and will always be, perilous and fraught with danger. But ultimately, fate has shown it to be purposeful. Meaningful. Essential to our survival.
The right thing to do.
IT’S SIMPLE
“Secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.” The meaning of that statement has never been summed up better than this short, heartfelt letter, to a grieving mother from a plain-spoken man. A self-educated and deeply moral man. One who shortly thereafter would pay the ultimate sacrifice himself.
Dear Madam Bixby,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln — Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
So Costly a Sacrifice
A step ahead. A step behind. A look left, instead of right. Right, instead of left.
Up instead of down. Down instead of up.
A blink of the eye at the wrong time.
And … it’s over.
BUT WHAT IS LIFE ANYWAY – REALLY?
“It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.
It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.”
– Crowfoot, Native American Blackfoot warrior and orator
A FIREFLY IN THE NIGHT
The fleeting flash of a firefly in the night … then gone.
But not – not for them. Ever.
THEIR UNDIMINISHABLE ETHEREAL ESSENCE …
… echoes eternally throughout the music of the spheres like heavenly bagpipes playing Amazing Grace … across the unfathomable unknowable on their way toTheir Last Post.
LIGHTS THE SHADOWS
Their shadows run across the grass riding a Sonata of Moonlight on an Ode to Joy – to living, giving and life. Outshining, outshining, the sun from deep within the eternal embrace of the arms of
Angels
HONOR
To honor the fallen, with their lifeblood splattered on the altar of liberty — a respectful duty remains.
VIGILANCE
To be forever vigilant against another charismatic, hypnotically mesmerizing megalomaniac, silver-tongued evil human beast – that could, with our current technology and weaponry, make 100 million souls look like a piddling pittance. A trifling travesty.
REQUIRED
Of you. Look. Think. Question. Speak up.
FIGHT
Fight to secure the blessings of liberty – for ourselves and our posterity.
Recent Comments
Lessons Learned from Hollywood STORY Guru Robert McKee