Have you heard about IT? Have you seen IT?  Do you even know what IT is?  I came across the IT method at EffectiveMeetings.com.  IT is a simple checklist process that neatly summarizes a five-step process for planning and developing your presentation.  Here IT is in its simplicity:

1. Brain IT!
2. Group IT!
3. Trim IT!
4. Spice IT!
5. Do IT!

The first step, Brain IT, is a freeform brainstorming session—group or solo.  This is where you write down everything you think of, or may want to say.  And we do mean EVERYTHING.  Don’t edit the ideas or your thought process, just get it all out.  A particularly good suggestion they say is to use post-it notes to free yourself from the borders of a normal sheet of paper.

Next is Group IT where you put all the ideas into categories—this is where the post-it note idea really shines.  Naturally group your ideas; don’t try to artificially pigeonhole them.  If a category has more than ten ideas, it might actually be two categories.  Now order your groups by what will be delivered first, second, etc.  Three is a good number of groups to use, but just keep it simple.  Save the unused groups for support or Q&A.

Trim IT organizes the ideas in each group by importance or pertinence.  Remove extra or duplicate ideas and put them with the unused groups.  Again, in each group three ideas are ideal, but not mandatory.

When you Spice IT, you’re adding the stories, quotes, props, slides, audio, handouts, and whatever else will punch up your presentation.  Don’t leave out the beginning or ending!

The planning is done, all the words are there and in order, and the spicy extras are chosen.  All that’s left is to run it together seamlessly—and “edit, edit, edit!”  Now Do IT!

Man, the ancient Greeks could do it all!  They created the founding principles of modern mathematics and philosophy.  They held off hundreds of thousands of Persians with just 300 warriors.  And they developed the powerful presentation formula that our best speakers use to this day.  

As Steve Kaufmann points out on PickTheBrain.com, the Ancient Greek presentation formula has five main parts: exordium, narration, partitio, refutation, and peroration.  Let’s take a look at each!

Exordium, or the Opening - This is where you get listeners to like you--or at least be sympathetic to what you have to say—and establish your credibility.  Humility, friendliness, and directness will help you achieve both.

Narratio or the Purpose – What are you going to talk about?  What supporting points will you cover?  This is an agenda of sorts, or at least an orientation for your audience to easily follow you through your presentation.

Partitio or the Value – Going hand in hand with the narration, this part tells the audience why they should listen, why they should care.  In other words, you’ve told them the issue, now tell them why it’s their issue.

Refutatio or the Devil’s Advocate – Now is the time to address what naysayer’s would bring up, or point out where your logic might be weak.  Of course you’re bringing up “bad” points so you can talk about your “good” counter-points.

Peroratio or the Big Finish – like any decent fireworks display, you’ve got to end with a grand finale.  This is where you pull out your best arguments, your flashiest logic.  You’ve lead your participants and set them up, now knock ‘em out with a dazzling finish.

I loved this article on the ancient Greeks because I see their presentation formula in pretty much every great speech or lecture I’ve seen.  Over two thousand years have passed, but their methods still are the best.  

How cool is that?

Meetings are a fantastic use of time in which to collaborate, disseminate information, build a team, and be productive… except that is, when they aren’t.  I’ll bet that most of us have been in more useless meetings than useful ones, and not to point fingers, but a lot of times the leader is to blame.

Or are they?  Ca n they be blamed for a blather-mouth employee, or an over-bearing one?  No, but when a leader lets them ruin a meeting then yes, the leader is to blame.  Here are some of the strong directives from the Corner Office blog on controlling highly charged meetings.

“The Setup” – This is a great tip to set the tone for the meeting, as well as putting us in a strong position.  At the beginning we should explicitly explain what the meeting will cover, what we expect from the participants, and what we don’t want to happen.  As the Corner Office blog explains:

“We’re going to determine our product’s value proposition to customers, but we’re not going to sit here and wordsmith it to death; we’ll do that offline.”

“Channel Useful Debate” – Debate is good, but only as long as it stays useful.  If we sense that a debate is going off-topic or getting bogged down, we need to speak up and bring the discussion to a halt.  Then when we have the floor, we summarize both sides, and get a consensus.  Once things are back on track, we can move on to the next item, or if more debate is needed, at least now it’s focused.

“Table Useless Debate” – This is a point we hammer on a lot in this blog.  Tangents, divergent points, useless debates are meeting killers and time wasters.  However, if we’ve clearly stated the point of the meeting, we can dismiss a runaway topic, or if it’s a good tangent point, record it and schedule another meeting for it later.

How do you corral a runaway meeting?  Do you use a heavy hand or a light touch?  Tell us about your methods in a comment.

Five months ago Heineken got bosses, university professors, and girlfriends in Italy to convince their employees, students, and boyfriends to miss one of the biggest soccer matches of the year… to attend a poetry/orchestra event instead.  The 1000+ victims didn’t know it was an event organized by Heineken, they just knew that life was full of heart-wrenching decisions.  

Watch what happens after the curtain goes up! 

Even though the actual Heineken event was small, it’s become enormously huge worldwide—as was planned I’m sure.  I wanted to share this with you just for fun, but I also think that we could do something similar with a video conference and some sideways thinking.

I had a great idea based on the Heineken experiment, but it requires a company with employees in at least two locations—branches, divisions, etc--in different cities, with extra points if the cities have rival football teams.  We schedule a serious, mandatory, “three hour” video conference meeting between the two locations on a Sunday —preferably when the football teams are playing each other--with a start time of fifteen minutes before kickoff.  

Of course at a minute before kickoff, the meeting is interrupted in both locations with food, drink, and the game on TV.  Not only does everyone get to watch the game, but the two groups of employees get to bond by watching the rival game “together!”

That’s just one video conference “experiment.”  Let’s come up with some more!  They could be for friends, family, employees, customers, or whoever.  Just put your ideas here as comments and we’ll build on the best ones.  I can’t wait to see what we come up with!

One… two… three!  (go)  There are many “rule of three” type guides out there, and for good reason.  Three is simple, uncluttered, easy to manage, and easy to remember.  Three is a handful, a few, and something that can be accomplished in “a bit.”  Following the rule of three in our conference calls and web conferences will improve our success in reaching our participants.

You know who pretty much always follows the rule of three in their presentations?  Steve Jobs, the leader and visionary of Apple.  His presentations are dynamic, fun, informative, and to be honest, they change the world.  Check out this slideshow about Steve Jobs by Carmine Gallo for more details on Steve’s presentations.

The point of a presentation is not to have a presentation, or have thoughts or ideas presented.  No, the point is to have those thoughts and ideas go into our participants’ heads and conscious minds.  If we get too enthusiastic, try to saturate them, the end result is they retain little to nothing.  Our efforts are wasted.

Instead, a zen approach—minimalistic attitude and design—is far more effective; hence the rule of three.  We should divide our presentations, meetings, and lectures into three sections.  If applicable, we should only have three main points per section.  If we have a product with tons of features, it would be better to follow Steve Job’s lead and talk about only the top three--as he did in his MacBook Air and iPhone unveiling presentations.

Yes, I realize that the focus of many presentations is not simple enough to be fully covered in three points, but which is the better alternative?  That we cover everything and they retain little to nothing, or simplify for greater impact, and they retain the top three main points?

In 1995, I was in college with a clunky desktop, dial-up access, and my own email address—a big deal back then.  The internet was there, occasionally used, but was only a little part of my life.  Do you remember those days?  

We’ll here’s a wsweek-1995-buy-books-newspapers-straight-intenet-uh/">blast from the past I think you’ll enjoy.  It’s an article Newsweek published in 1995 by Cliff Stoll that talks about the relative uselessness of the internet, and how its predicted grandiose future will never come to pass.  The article was recently posted on TheNextWeb.com and most of the best parts were highlighted.  Let’s take a look at a couple of Stoll’s predictions:

• “Baloney”: there will be telecommuting workers, interactive libraries, and multimedia classrooms.
• “The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper…”
• “Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.”
• Won’t happen: “We’re promised instant catalog shopping–just point and click for great deals. We’ll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts.”

Isn’t that incredible?  Instead of laughing at poor Mr. Stoll, I’m amazed at how detailed and bang-on correct his vision of the future was… that he said wouldn’t happen.  Well, guessing the color of a playing card and getting all 52 wrong is as spectacular as getting them all right.

I wanted to share this article because of all the progress made in just 15 years.  We telecommute, have virtual meetings with people around the globe, and well, at least I don’t get an actual newspaper.

Can you imagine how things will be in another 15 years?  Leave a comment and give me some predictions!