With “Shaping an Ethical Workplace Culture”, Steven Olson has written much more than an article. He has put together a handbook. Written for an audience of Human Resources professionals, “Shaping…” provides these professionals with a clear set of instructions for creating, maintaining and sustaining an ethical workplace culture.
I immediately noticed Olson’s frequent use of graphs, charts and other graphics. One of the things I was taught early in my career was that the higher up in the organization your audience is, the fewer words you should use to make. your point. PowerPoint decks which include graphs, charts, etc. which are well designed, requiring little explanation, are consistently proven to be most effective in driving the conversation, while still prompting the questions you’d expect to hear.
In this case, Olson isn’t going to be receiving real time feedback from his readers, but he is thinking of his audience when he includes those images. In so doing, he’s mitigating the risk of the reader only skimming the text, by re-phrasing it as a graph, chart or table.
I really enjoyed reading “Shaping…”. Olson inspires his readers by breaking what is admittedly a huge undertaking into manageable chunks. With the focus areas and steps clearly defined, HR professionals can take action armed with a proven method, and examples of other successful organizations to emulate.
I can’t believe I’m about to type this, but I think I’m going to create a PowerPoint presentation about the power of consumer activism. I tend to get a bit anxious when creating slides when I know they will be shared with executives, who are the audience I think I’d most like to address in this exercise. Given my topic, I want to use the data and learnings I’ve gathered in an attempt to influence corporate behavior.
Knowing my audience will be made up of executives, it’s best to keep the deck short. I’ll be lucky to get thirty minutes of their time. I’m thinking that ten slides should do the trick. The text and graphics on each slide should reinforce one another. Citing the resources via quote boxes, etc. should be particularly effective. The text can feature links to sources where appropriate, but I think adding an Appendix featuring a full list of citations would be best.
I wrote about “Shaping an Ethical Workplace Culture”, and immediately noticed the graphs and charts used as well. I think that they are very important because they provide the reader with a different way to understand the main point of the article. I also think that a powerpoint presentation would be a great way to inform executives. Taking only a short amount of their time is also a good idea because it will make them remember you; your presentation will not bore them, but will be informative and short.
Glad to see you thinking in specific and practical terms about the expectations of this audience you want to reach–that’s essential to crafting an effective text. And as you’ve highlighted the key role that graphic representations of information play for this particular readership, I look forward to seeing what you locate and develop.
A PowerPoint sounds like a good fit for the audience of your paper. Although, I suggest you make sure you know what you are talking about, and maybe even write a page long paper to base the PowerPoint off. Because of a slideshows conciseness, it can go two ways: helpful and eye-opening, or a waste of time. Make sure your information builds off each other, so it’s not just a list of small facts. and create a thoughtful flow throughout all the slides. And since this is not going to be done in person, Id keep in mind a good PowerPoint presentation should work without someone there to explain it.
Isaac – You’re totally right. The text should be enough to get the audience thinking on their own. However, when I get my few minutes in front of the execs, I’m coming in as someone who knows the subject matter. I should be prepared to add additional points that weren’t in the material and help them better understand what it is I want them to take away from our time together.
Yes, indeed–you should know way more as presenter than what your presentation actually reflects.
When we’re presenting face-to-face, we expect that–we want our speaker to add commentary and do more than just read from the slides. You’ve got a couple of options for incorporating this sort of ‘speaker notes’ into the presentation–using the Notes function in Ppt or recording narration right into the file. In either case, you can give us more than just the visuals; you can let us feel like we’re in the room as you present to these execs and talk beyond your slides.