Let's Present!

Imagine you are the keynote speaker at a major conference hosted by a major multinational corporation. You are speaking in front of an audience of thousands of business professionals. Are you nervous? Are you well positioned? Where are your hands placed? Are you coherent, captivating, and engaging? You might not ever be in such a position, but you a very likely to give oral presentations frequently in your career. Board meetings will include presentations. You are probably going to get up and speak to an audience with a power-point in the background. I hope you prepared your presentation. You need to be well rehearsed and should be prepared in various ways. In rare cases should you read a document in front of everyone. That just shows your lack of skills. You should be extemporaneous, i.e. you talk at length without a script. Sometimes your manager will have you report on a certain subject on the spot. Then you'll have to go impromptu. Gestures and hand movements are very important while speaking. Make sure they aren't just being folded by your waist, tucked in your pocket, or twirling in your hair. Stand up with a good posture. Don't have your hips or your legs dangling around. Analyze your tone of voice. Make sure your pitch isn't ridiculously high, nasal, or monotone. Have variation in your pitch to captivate the audience. But don't go so wild that they will make you a running joke. Like all other presentations, the oral presentation needs to have a solid opening, a strong purpose, a clear agenda, and a powerful body. Oral presentations have the ability to inspire, influence, inform, and captivate. I hope you will be able to harness these influences in your career as a powerful advantage.

The Importance of Visual Aids

No matter how good our message is, it will take work to make it visually appetizing. We can have an extremely sound and logically appealing argument that may be brushed aside because of bad ascetics. Humans are very visual beings. If something looks unappealing then of course it will be unappealing. This visual aids have the purpose to capture our minds to a particular product or proposal. We use various layouts, shapes, and colors to enhance our message. Appropriate visual aids are based on a number of ascetic principles. While creating a visual document like a slide, a handout, or just a simple print document, please consider contrast, alignment, repetition, balance, and spacing (CARBS). These aspects can even make a weak argument captivating to its viewers. Humans in general like symmetry and patterns based off odd numbers. The spacing is also very important. As such, we should not attempt to fill a document with as much information as possible. A text overdose would be visually unappealing. Therefore it is crucial to have spacing between pictures and text boxes. A variety of aspects achieves the strongest appeal. We look towards color to show contrasts. Colors are interesting while black and white is boring. Color sells. As such, all of these various points can be applied to power-points and all other visual presentations. Visual presentations need selling points, story lines, colors, contrasts, and balancing ascetics. We don't want interested investors backing off because of a boring slide. Nevertheless, bombarding a document with images could be just as harmful. As we create captivating visual aids in business we will be a valuable resource to whoever we work with. So make sure you captivate with powerful visual aids and ascetics.

Business Research

Businesses must conduct research. Research and development is crucial to the growth of any business. Every firm and organization must learn to adapt to increasingly changing times. The world is not a steady place. Circumstances change. Consumer habits, needs, and wants change. Economies and governments change. People must adapt in order to survive. New ideas need to be grown on fertile soil. That soil is R&D. We should distinguish between two types of research. They include secondary research and primary research. Secondary research comes from studies that have already been done. Companies, governments, schools, and other institutions have made done surveys, field research, and product development since their inception. Often their research can be found online and is free. Some times large databases can be accessed with a small fee. Doesn't it sound extremely convenient? It does. But unfortunately, sometimes other groups are not willing to share their private findings. Sometimes research has never been done on a particular subject. This is where primary research becomes a relief. Primary research is often costly and time consuming, but primary research provides the specific data that the organization needs to know. It is tailored fit like $400 dollar suit. Research is crucial. While we research it is very important that we cite credible and reliable sources. This boosts our credibility. It is important that while we do the research ourselves the samples are fair and random. Biased research isn't really research at all. We must be open to change and corrections. If we don't the business we work for won't survive.

If only everyone could write proposals and solve problems

Imagine what our world would be like if everyone had mastered the skill of writing proposals and was an expert problem solver. We could have world peace. We could have never ending stock market growth. We could all be living the high life. But alas, our world is not like that, and even experienced writers need to learn how to better their proposals. Proposals can be written down in a document or can be presented orally. They can be solicited from the managers above or can be unsolicited messages from the employees below. They can be direct or even indirect. We make proposals in order to provide different solutions to various problems. Solutions may often be effective when they are produced collaboratively. We live in the day and age of Wikipedia, Google Drive, Dropbox, and this ever ethereal cloud. We work on projects collectively therefore we can brainstorm collectively. In order to develop a solution we do personal brainstorming and then we offer our personal ideas. Those ideas merge with the collective into a group idea. We evaluate alternatives, consider what the best possible option may be, and then we proceed to implement the solution. I honestly believe if everyone could effectively communicate collaboratively we could have a better world, a world filled with peace, progress, and posterity. If you are reading this, make sure you understand that communicating effectively is one of the most important life skills that can be learned.

The Hiring Process

Preparing employment communications is an integral part of the searching and hiring process for every firm and organization. The basics of hiring ultimately go down to the resume and the interview. The resume must be pristine if it is to be competitive. While employers look through dozens of applications they cannot afford to spend their time looking at anything else besides the best. The resume must be formatted correctly with attractive details that promote the employee. This is self marketing. Every prospective employee must look attractive as possible. The formatting, grammar, spelling, and spacing must be perfect. The content should be revised and updated. The newest information should be at the top along with other work experience. In general, it should only have things past high school. An attractive resume will lead to an well sought after interview. During the interview prospective employees must dress conservatively and professionally. They must have a strong appearance and give a strong impression. The interviewee must be ready to answer quickly and decisively. Some questions will be close ended while others will be open ended. The interviewee must be ready to explain how he or she has solved previous problems in the work place. The actions will speak louder than words. In this case, the employer wants to know what the employee can do, not necessarily what the employee knows. A successful interview will be a wholesome experience that will allow the employee to network. As such, the prospective employee should write a follow up letter to offer thanks. Cordial relationships and goodwill will always provide strong ties in the world of business.

The Importance of Business Correspondence.

Writing in Business naturally requires us to correspond to a variety of people through different platforms. Each vertical has its own crucial importance. Even though there are numerous methods of writing each message should maintain similar features. We strive to be persuasive. We strive to be effective. We strive to be clear. And sometimes repetition and other techniques are important as well. As we have seen before, the persuasiveness of writing is tied to its logos, pathos, or ethos. The logos is the logic of the argument. It will focus on causes and effects, statistics, and other reason based arguments. The pathos dwells on our emotions. It tries to stir up our pride, enhance our humor, connect with our sentimentality, or ignite our fears. The pathos of an argument will often sway people who would not otherwise be drawn to a black and white logic based argument.  Finally we have the ethos, or ethical nature of an argument. Are we calling others to do something morally right? Are we drawing upon some moral authority? These features should be used while writing emails, memos, and other letters. Are we networking? How are we to make an emotional appeal to our customers? How are we supposed to convince our superiors? Does the memo draw upon plain statistics or does it also motivate us to action? We need to be people writing these documents with thoughts and passions. Nevertheless, we must show that we are logical beings who can effectively get things done. To be effective we need to make sure we use a variety of these methods.

Editing is Elementary Watson

I could just picture Sherlock Homes explaining to Watson how vital it is to revise and edit your documents. Even the writing masters don't just produce a perfect creation on the first shot. Writing is an excruciating process. It is a skill that takes a lifetime to develop. Sequoia trees don't just become giants over night. Sequoia's take centuries to become those sages of the forest. Growth in writing needs the right nutrients to develop; the right design, a coherent organization, an appealing content, and grammatically correct sentences. The previous posting discussed the design of a document in detail. It is necessary we have the right headings, art, visuals, typography, and spacing. The organization also needs the right opening followed by a clear agenda. Then we need a body and closing that reflects that particular agenda. Afterward we examine the content. We must ask ourselves if it is clear, complete, correct, and compelling. If this is already been thoroughly examined we can focus on the paragraphs. We focus on the organization, coherence, length, unity, and development or the paragraph. Finally we must review the sentences and the sentence structures contained in the document. It is clear that revising can be a tedious process with all of these necessary steps. But the value of it far exceeds the work involved. Compelling documents will launch your career to new heights and places. You might even learn to be more impressive than Sherlock himself.