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.