Last week I wrote a guest post on Slide Rocket Blog. It is called 'Presenting to Top Management'. In this post I have shared 5 things which you should do when presenting to your Top Management. 1. Present the conclusion at the start 2. Time is money, so be short 3. Use back up slides to present additional information 4. You don't need to 'show' you have worked hard 5. Give a handout This post has become popular on Slide Rocket blog. Do check it out.

This note was stuck on the door of a washroom. What do you do when you see such a note? I saw the note and pondered how can someone write like this. This is what Chip & Dan Heath call the 'Curse of Knowledge'. He knew when he was writing it and to him it was obvious. "It is noon now and by 5 the washroom should be ready to use." But what about us? Think of the notes you write in your office or on the fridge (refrigerator) or laptop or door. Reach out to them and see if we could have done it a bit better. I happen to write notes for my newspaper and milk vendor (who come and door deliver these stuff in the early mornings). The note on the door at this very moment reads "No milk from July 5 to July 24". Wonder if I would have written "No milk for the next 20 days".

This post germinated out of a question asked by an anonymous reader a few days back. Thank you for the question Anonymous. Once we create a hyperlink, the colour of the font changes to blue (with an underline). This tells the viewer that it is a hyperlink and he needs to click it. But this hyperlink creates a lot of problems. Have a look at the slide above. If you have shapes or smartart on which you write text and create a hyperlink, your contrast can go for a toss. Look at the font on the green or the blue shape. Once you click on the link, the colour changes and remains that way after that. But there is a solution to this. We can choose what colour the hyperlink should have and what colour a clicked hyperlink should have. This is how: In PowerPoint 2007 Go to Design Tab -> Colours -> Create New Theme Colours -> Hyperlink & Followed Hyperlink -> Choose the colours of your choice In PowerPoint 2003 Go to Format -> Slide Design -> Colour Schemes -> Edit Colour ...

This is a book review of the new book by John C Maxwell 'Everyone Communicates Few Connect'. John C. Maxwell is an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author of many best sellers. You can read his thoughts on his blog JohnMaxwellOnLeadership.com . 'Everyone Communicates Few Connect' makes a strong case that communication is not complete unless you have connected with your audience. Your audience can be one or many but you need to connect with them in order to achieve your objectives. The book is made up of two parts; Connecting Principles (Part I) & Connecting Practices (Part II). In the paragraphs below I would like to share snippets on what the book talks about. Connecting Principles Why Connect with others? John first talks in detail about why we need to connect with our audience. Why is it so important? What happens if we do not connect? He shares lot of personal stories to illustrate his point. Be it a group or one-on-one, be it wo...

I am happy to share that the reader survey received a great response. Thanks to each and everyone who took out time to answer those 10 questions. I will use the feedback to get more meaningful and relevant content for you. As promised, I have randomly chosen 3 winners from all the entries. The winners will get a free copy of the new book 'Everyone Communicates Few Connect' by John C. Maxwell (Amazon $17.15 Hard Cover). These 3 lucky winners are: 1. Rohit Prakash 2. Sandeep Nayani & 3. Sam Wesley Congratulations to the winners. Your books are already in transit.

The Football world cup just ended. Being from Bengal, a soccer crazy state in India, I have always been fond of Football. Its part of the culture and comes automatically. But this post is not about my passion for the game. While watching one of the matches I was wondering about the Jersey colours of the teams. The jersey colours, as you are aware, are chosen so that players and viewers can easily differentiate between the two sides. Hence Spain is blue and the Netherlands Orange. Image if Spain was Red & the Netherlands Orange, would you be able to figure out easily which team had the ball? If we use the same logic when we choose font and background colour, it would be great. By background colour I mean the colour against which the font will be read. It is not necessarily the slide background colour. The next time you have to choose the font colour, ask yourself this question: "If the background and font were two countries playing football, will I be able to differentiate the...

Recently I attended a 90 minute training in my office. Though no one slept (including yours truly) many came to the edge. It reminded of the numerous times I have seen people sleeping off in such corporate training sessions. There is something which the trainer does wrong. In this post we will understand why this happens and how corporate trainers (be it IT or HR or others) can make sure people are awake while they present. Reason #1 Dark rooms The environment has a role to play. If you keep most of the lights off, then be prepared to see people dozing off. I have realised over many years that keeping lights on makes sure less people sleep off. The dark room and the cozy air conditioning make a great case to sleep. I am already yawning just by the thought of it :-) Reason #2 Too technical If you are training sales & marketing people to use the latest IT system then you have a challenge ahead of you. When you conduct training sessions on technical matters, make sure you prepare ...

These PowerPoint shortcuts work in slideshow mode (when you are presenting your PPT in full screen). Go directly to a particular slide: Type the slide number and press enter. If you want to go to Slide 5 directly, type 5 and press enter. This works when you know the slide number. But most of the times you will not remember the slide number. Hence use the next tip. Go directly to a slide (when you don't remember the slide number): Right click on the slide and choose 'Go to Slide'. You can now choose the slide you want to go to from the list. You can view the headers of each slide here. Go directly to the last slide: Press 'End' on the keyboard. Go directly to the first slide: Press 'Home' on the keyboard. What to read next? 5 Tips to use Colours in presentations [Design secret #1] How to use FONTS to design better presentations? [Design secret #2] Design secret #3 - Everything about Text Alignment in a presentation

There are 2 Methods to copy a table made in MS Excel onto MS PowerPoint . #1 Select the table in Excel -> Copy -> Paste on the slide What you get is a table. You can edit this table; change values etc. but it will not remember formulas of excel. #2 Select the table in Excel -> Copy -> Paste Special as Picture (Enhanced Metafile) The excel table becomes an image on the slide. You can expand/contract the image but you cannot edit any information. This way you can make your tables to be non-editable by others. How to do Paste Special? Copy an object -> Under Home Tab (on your extreme left) -> Paste -> Paste Special. Shortcut: Alt + E + S + V (in 2007) How do you make your excel tables look great on a slide? The best way to make your excel tables look great is to make them look great on excel first. After you have made the table, go ahead and colour the cells. You can make the header dark and the other cells white or some other light background. Now, copy it onto the ...

My Recommendation: Must Buy Made to Stick is a best-selling book by 'Chip & Dan Heath'. This book is for everyone who wants to communicate better in a manner that the audience understands and remembers their message. This book is a must read for people in Marketing, Advertising, Teaching & Public Speaking. It is an outcome of decades of research by the two Heath brothers and it is their first book. Objective of the book: The authors say: "We wrote this book to help you make your ideas stick. By "stick" we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact - they change your audience's opinions or behavior." Yes, we all want to make others understand what we are saying. We all want to make our messages sticky. Companies want their advertisements to be remembered. CEOs want their speeches to be remembered and acted upon by the employees. But how? This book shares 6 principles which you can easily use to make you...

You just have 2 more days to go. Participate in this survey which has just 10 questions. Fill it in 45 seconds and your name will get entered for a contest. Out of all the entries 3 winners will be randomly selected. I will send a free copy of the book 'Everyone Communicates Few Connect' by John C. Maxwell to all the 3 winners. Click here to take the survey. Remember to give your name & email id at the end.

I saw a TV ad today. It talked about how our planet was dying slowly. It closed with the statement; "We should save our planet." This advertisement strikes a chord with all of us. We all know that our planet needs to be saved. We all 'seem to care'. Yet, this ad is a massive failure. Because it does not make even 1% of us to act. We see, we feel bad and we forget. Because we don't know what we need to do. We are too busy with our lives. We are not being told what specific action we can take to save our planet. There is no call for action in this ad. This brings me to Aircel's Save Our Tigers initiative . This initiative is now a few months old and has created a lot of awareness. Aircel is a telecom service provider in India which is running a campaign across India where they are appealing Indians to save Tigers (our national animal). Aircel started the campaign with a bang. They came up with the catchline 'Just 1411 left'. It shocked many when they ...