Meetings

by Phil Waknell — Friday 24 April 2020

A virtual meeting without a facilitator is like an orchestra without a conductor: the result is usually an unpleasant cacophony. Before, during and after the meeting, the facilitator’s role is key to ensure harmony, allow each participant to contribute, and achieve the meeting’s objectives. The role will depend on the type of meeting. For a webinar, the facilitator will need to focus on sound quality, ensuring those not speaking have muted their microphones (or doing it for them), and handling the text chat.

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by Phil Waknell — Friday 10 April 2020

It’s no secret that most slide presentations are boring, ineffective wastes of time. PowerPoint isn’t the problem - it’s how people (mis)use it. In fact most business meetings would do well to avoid slides - and presentations - altogether. Meetings should be for discussion, connection, decisions… not for information-sharing. Using a wonderfully-crafted PowerPoint deck to share information is like using an iPad Pro as a frisbee: sure, it’s well-designed and better than most other tablets, but it’s still the wrong tool for the job.

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by Phil Waknell — Monday 7 January 2019

Too many presentations aim only to inform, yet this is one thing oral presentations are particularly bad at – we forget most of what we hear within 30 seconds. If you want people to remember information, give them a document and a coffee, and time to read. Then you can answer their questions, discuss, agree on the next steps, and leave. This is what happens in meetings at companies like Amazon and LinkedIn, where not only do meetings never have slides - they never have presentations.

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