How do you measure your projects? How do you measure your presentations? How do you measure your success? Metrics are the clear demonstrable units that are published. How often do you express your numbers as On-time (3 weeks ahead of schedule)/Under-budget (3% savings) /ROI increased to 12%? Success!!
How about how many forehead prints on the glass? When the new retractable glass skybox "The Ledge" was introduced at the renovated Willis Tower (formally the Sears Tower), the general manager knew the 103rd floor overlook was a success by the number of forehead prints plastered on the transparent glass in the floor. (PMI Network Magazine Oct09). Wouldn't that make a great story for the project status report?
Embrace personalized measurements of your projects with unique metrics. Play with "the number of new lunch sandwiches tried" as the group works hard through lunches; use "quantity of Twitter comments" as an ongoing metric; count the number of smiles during a typical project day and present that as an update; deliver a bowl of candy bars to the status meeting, one for each birthday celebrated during the project.
To see how the converse of a metric can be used - using a metric as the definer of the product, take a read of a great article by Michael Schrage that informs us that using non-traditional metric numerology may literally define success. What exactly is a horsepower anyway, and why was it created?
Ref:
PMI: http://www.pmi.org
Schrage: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/08413?gko=18b68&tid=27782251&pg=all
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
the power of time
...or the power of time segmentation.
How many times are we conflicted with the segmentation of time in our activities?
The essence of an hour, a half hour, three hours...
How do we internally segment these and what are effective within ourselves and our audiences? Is your presentation/discussion worthy of a half-hour sitcom serial, potentially an hour long show, or possibly a two hour movie? Should you allow commercials?
Traditional thought is that we have some internal sense for segments of time and periods of an hour (or a half-hour) are adequate structures to base our meetings and conversations on. However the real driver for any effective presentation and human memory tends to be precise events that occur (ref) and not the content length. Using the commercial TV analogy, the writers know that they have a certain timeframe to fill and usually have to pad or sequence the critical events throughout the timeframe. When you present, you however have time as an available degree of freedom. The events that you want to present can be driven by your desired timeline, unencumbered by a clock, by an artificial timekeeper, by any needed commercial requirements.
When you deliver a meeting/discussion, feel free to deviate from the one (half) hour intervals. Act on what feels right. Schedule it for an hour but stop it at 33 minutes allowing a few minutes for direct interaction, questioning, or simply a commercial. Then extinguish it at 41 minutes, allowing the simple act of stopping the meeting to act as an 'event' in peoples mind so that it can be etched as a memory.
And for those who are thinking this to the next step, this is absolutely NOT an argument against storyline presentations, a future topic ... stay tuned.
How many times are we conflicted with the segmentation of time in our activities?
The essence of an hour, a half hour, three hours...
How do we internally segment these and what are effective within ourselves and our audiences? Is your presentation/discussion worthy of a half-hour sitcom serial, potentially an hour long show, or possibly a two hour movie? Should you allow commercials?
Traditional thought is that we have some internal sense for segments of time and periods of an hour (or a half-hour) are adequate structures to base our meetings and conversations on. However the real driver for any effective presentation and human memory tends to be precise events that occur (ref) and not the content length. Using the commercial TV analogy, the writers know that they have a certain timeframe to fill and usually have to pad or sequence the critical events throughout the timeframe. When you present, you however have time as an available degree of freedom. The events that you want to present can be driven by your desired timeline, unencumbered by a clock, by an artificial timekeeper, by any needed commercial requirements.
When you deliver a meeting/discussion, feel free to deviate from the one (half) hour intervals. Act on what feels right. Schedule it for an hour but stop it at 33 minutes allowing a few minutes for direct interaction, questioning, or simply a commercial. Then extinguish it at 41 minutes, allowing the simple act of stopping the meeting to act as an 'event' in peoples mind so that it can be etched as a memory.
And for those who are thinking this to the next step, this is absolutely NOT an argument against storyline presentations, a future topic ... stay tuned.
Segmentation in the perception and memory of events
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2263140
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
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