Playing Pays Dividends on Profits

Easter is just around the corner and the sun is shining - time for some fun and games. Whatever your age, child-like qualities such as a sense of fun and a vivid imagination can not only make your life more enjoyable, they can make your business more profitable too!

Take laughter - adults laugh on average 15 times a day - children do that before breakfast, laughing on average 20 times more often than adults. Laughter is indeed magical - it creates an instant feelgood boost, but has hidden benefits to your health: it strengthens your immune system, lowers blood pressure, stimulates blood flow and boosts cardiovascular fitness.

Whilst laughter and work don't often seem to go hand in hand, perhaps they should....

The Proven Benefits of a Lighter Workplace:

Research has shown that humour and play in the workplace can have a dramatic impact on both people and profits:

* Improved morale
* Improved relationships
* Increased creativity (up to 50% at science giant Monsanto)
* Breakthroughs in productivity
* Increased job satisfaction (and thus reduced staff turnover)
* Better and faster decision-making
* Reduced customer complaints

So today, over Easter and then, hey let's go for it, for the rest of your life, your mission if to be light hearted at work.

To laugh. To share jokes. To dance and sing in the corridor (try it in the loos, it really freaks people out!). To instigate a 'worst holiday photo ever' competition. To have a 3pm dance-off in the elevator. To skip to your next meeting - preferably arm in arm with someone else. To have an impromtu picnic in the park and play frisbee. To go out and buy a round of ice-creams for your team. To prefix everyone's names with King, Queen, Prince or Princess next week in honour of the Royal Wedding.

To find a steep grassy hill and roll down it - it'll take your breath away! To see how giddy you can get on a roundabout looking up at the sky. To stop calling it 'work' and start calling it 'paid-play' - and watch the expressions as you tell people you're off to "paid play" in the morning!

Not enough suggestions? Get out your crayons, sit on the floor and brainstorm some more... or if you're really stuck in the mud visit this website which lists 101 of them...

The question is this - how old would you be, if you didn't know how old you are? Me? Somewhere around 12 and three quarters, going on 21!!!

Vivid Visuals Bring Words to Life

A vivid visual is one of the most powerful and universal means of communicating with impact. Whether it's sharing a photograph of a special event, or explaining how to assemble your flatpack furniture, nothing beats great a picture (or frustrates as much as a bad one!). But instead of just telling you about them, let me help you experience it for yourself....

Think of an elephant.

No, not one like that.

An especially vivid one: a tiny, purple and silver striped elephant, shiny and crinkly, about 2 inches tall and standing in the palm of your hand right now. She's called Betsy and is trumpeting, pa-pah pa-pah as she stomps around in a circle, which kind of tickles your palm a little bit and makes you smile. She keeps looking at your for reassurance - with her deep black eyes and soft eyelashes, and her big ears billowing. How cute is she? Did the image of her make you smile? Did you (almost) hold your hand out to look at her more closely (I did!).

How real is this elephant to you now? When it comes to your brain, the purple Betsy elephant you have imagined is just as real as if she had really been in your hand - you used the same bits of your brain to imagine her as you do to see her for real.

And will you remember her? You bet!

Imagine then, how a few simple words, specifically designed to create clear and vivid pictures can transform the impact you have when you communicate with other people. A few words can literally bring something alive inside their minds.

So before you start crafting a letter, an email, a presentation, decide on the image you want to create in the minds of your audience. And if you can link a number of images to make a story, or movie, even better.

The Story of Stuff

Amazing facts that blew me away:
* 99% of things purchased in the USA are trash within 6 months.... 99% !!!!
* it takes 70 dustbins of waste to produce 1 dustbin of household waste....

Watch how some simple graphics, mind-blowing facts and a clear story with action steps create a powerful "story of stuff"....

Hmmm, I feel some decluttering (via freecycle) coming on...

Dear Santa..... My Christmas List for 2010

This year I have been generally good, with a few episodes of overindulgence all to report on the bad girl front. Whilst I know this is the season for giving, could you do some taking instead? If you take a few features in PowerPoint away, you will be giving back thousands, if not millions of hours of life to those who might otherwise suffer from Death by PowerPoint next year. I know they are big asks, but if anyone can do this, you can.

Please, please delete the Word Art function - it's about as clever as writing your name using an etch-a-sketch.

Ditto clipart - those bean men might have seemed clever in the days when an electronic typewriter was the height of fashion, but honestly, have you seen technology nowadays? Would the iPad have clipart?

Please delete the function that lets people print out their PowerPoint slides as handouts - it only panders to lazy presenters and bores us all with prose-ridden slides (when did the "visual" part of a presentation become a page of a book?)

Please also delete all the hideous PowerPoint design templates - which I think is pretty much all of them - a blank white screen is preferable in many cases, especially that one with the annoying ball that moves across the screen for every single bleeding slide.

Please also delete the following functions:
* adding sound effects - unless operated by a skilled sound effects guru
* animating words so that they spiral in front of our eyes - unless part of a Derren Brown hypnosis
* and finally bullet points - nuff said

Thank you very much in anticipation of a much more inspiring year of Presentations.
Yours humbly
Sparkie

I am sure I will think of a few more, but these would make me very happy in 2011.

The Story Develops for Pecha Kucha Night

Last time I had decided to present on the topic of communication - it's history etc. Pecha Kucha is too fast for a "this is the history of communication" presentation. In putting ideas onto post-it notes, I counted dozens before I have even reached cave paintings.

Tip #1 - Pick a topic small enough to fit into 6 minutes (+) yet with enough substance to satisy your audience

Playing with various ideas involved intense and active pondering - despite outward appearances!

Tip #2 - Try talking off the cuff about your chosen topic and see how much you have to say - time yourself and then work out what to cut out.

After much editing, revising and some practices that helped me learn just how little I can say in 20 seconds (without a machine-gun delivery), I came down to using the Seven Deadly Sins of Presentations.

Tip #3 - Practice the timing after you've done your slides - does the story flow?

For each sin, there is a virtue, so without effort I had 14 topics/ slides at my fingertips. I searched the net and found images of slides, and presenters and some random images to suit the presentation. With a few more hours refining and altering the build-up and finale, it was done (phew!).

Tip #4 - Practice the story - do you stumble over any of your ideas or phrases?

As I did a dry run, the actual names of the sins and virtues was causing me too much anxiety, so after creating the slideshow, I ditched the Sins and changed the title to "Presenter Heroes and Zeroes". Perhaps another night to think would have improved that one!

Tip #5 - Remember, it is only Pecha Kucha night!

Today is the day that I present at Huddersfield Pecha Kucha night #2. Wish me luck!

The Art of "Chit Chat" - Pecha Kucha

Pecha Kucha is a time limited format for presentations, with a similar twin in Ignite - each allows just 20 slides, with either 20 (for PK) or 15 (for Ignite) seconds per slide. The talks are therefore either 6min 40 seconds, or 5 minutes dead.

It is fast paced, and fun (I hope!)

And instead of going along to one to see what it's about and gradually building up, I launched myself into the deep end by volunteering to present at the second Huddersfield Pecha Kucha night next week.

This is the one time that I can present on anything. It is not a sales pitch, but an evening of discussion, enlightenment, enjoyment......So I am blessed (or cursed) with total freedom.

Reading up on some advice I came across these nuggets: "it should be about passion" and that if I don't have "too much to say" I had chosen the wrong topic. In clarifying that, this Pecha Kucha presenter suggested that I talk about something I have stayed up late at night arguing or discussing with friends etc.

That got me thinking - learning (which I love)? presentations (my life's work to save the world from Death by PPT)?

Then I thought, let's get back to the real issue - this is all about communication - from cave paintings to PowerPoint, this is all about our desire to understand and be understood.

Now to create a story about that that will take my listeners on an enjoyable and potentially thought-provoking journey.....

Watch this space for how things develop....

How Enjoyable Should Learning Be?

Watch any episode of Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (where the celebrated chef spends time with a failing restaurant to help them out) and you will observe some of the following stages of learning:

* Unconscious incompetence - the moments before Gordon arrives, when the owner/ chef is looking forward to Gordon "helping them out"
* Conscious incompetence - just after Gordon has sampled their food, when Gordon subtly informs the cook/ manager of how poor their restaurant is (watch their faces as they learn)
* Conscious competence - after days of changing the menu, redecorating as the team puts new ideas/ menus etc into practice successfully (if they get that far)

The final stage is unconscious incompetence, which will happen after Gordon has left (sometimes) - the sort of "do it in your sleep" capability that experts exhibit.

Now any of you who have watched this programme (or others like it) will recognise that few owners find this process either enjoyable or easy in the short term. As Gordon bluntly explains just how bad things are, they quickly reject the painful process of going from where they were to their new level of understanding (going from unconscious to conscious incompetence).

This is the real heart of the programme - the people reject suggestions, they argue that Gordon doesn't know what he is doing, they blame everyone else but their own incompetence. There is anger, tears, trantrums, you name it. What you are watching is the the painful process of learning how much you don't know. They demonstrate just how difficult transformatory learning can actually be.

It is very tempting as a facilitator to ensure that your learners enjoy themselves throughout your workshops/ presentations. Learning can be, and should be in many instances fun. But fun rarely gets your learners leaving their comfort zones (which by definition would be uncomfortable), nor will it transform their attitudes, knowledge or skills.

If you really want to create change, then you have to be prepared for your learners to be uncomfortable, to be challenged, to hear things that are difficult to hear.

If what you design leaves them enjoying their learning too much, they might learn nothing at all.

As William James once said "A great many people think they are thinking when they are just rearranging their prejudices". To me, the word thinking can be replaced with learning to describe that lovely safe learning experience where nothing much changes.

So go on, I dare you.
I dare you to create discomfort in your learners and move them into conscious incompetence.....