Dateline: Frankfurt, Germany
Event: Global Leadership Council Meeting for 200 top partners

Room Set Up: Six people to a round table with electricity run to every table and a computer hub run to every table to enable each of the attending partners to have access to the internet throughout the meeting.

Challenge: Enter the Keynote Speaker, Benjamin Zander. He surveys the room set up and says to the client, I will need theater-style seating for my presentation. There is a 15-minute break between the content presentations that afternoon and his keynote address. The client and the hotel perceive the challenge as unhooking all 33 tables, taking them out of the room and resetting 200 chairs. (They further envision the nightmare associated with resetting the room for the following day.)

This is where possibility thinking kicks in. There was an open space between the first row of tables and the stage that would accommodate approximately 90 chairs. There was a space in the back of the room that would accommodate the remaining 110. Pushing all of the 33 tables to the back of the room would require a massive effort. But disconnecting just the first row of tables—six in total—lifting them over the intervening tables and setting them down in the back of the room in the open space would take coordination, but a minimum of effort. Then the chairs could be walked forward and set.

The break ran 15 minutes as scheduled and the keynote address on “Creativity--Thinking Outside the Box” began on time.

Click here for more information on how Quicksilver can enhance your next meeting.

Kathy Morris has spent the last 10 of her 35 years in the communications business with Quicksilver. Her unique ability to rapidly ramp up on a client’s business, then present targeted information through the creative efforts of the production team she manages have been key contributors to the growth of Quicksilver’s live meeting and webcasting offerings.

If PowerPointless is trance-inducing in person, imagine how much less compelling it is when the presenter resides on the opposite end of a phone line and the viewer is alone in a cubicle or office with two days worth of work on the desktop and needy colleagues hovering about the entrance. Rallying geographically distributed management team members around your company’s mission and vision under the heading of “Quarterly Financial Update,” can be a challenge, but with careful agenda preparation and dynamic presentation, you can turn make these anticipated rather than dreaded events.

There are five keys to developing an effective webcast agenda.

• Present unique information – If all you are going to do is read the audience a published report – send them a link to the pdf and let them peruse it over lunch.
• Provide context – If the information that needs to be presented is quarterly financial results, distribute the numbers in advance and use the webcast event to provide context that helps members of the team understand the why behind the what.
• Reiterate common goals and give examples of how seemingly disconnected departments have contributed to achieving those goals. What recruiting and/or training successes has HR had that have contributed to the ability of R&D to develop or sales to sell the latest version of the product? What market intelligence did sales provide that enabled manufacturing to deliver a more successful product?
• Involve multiple presenters in the storytelling – Rehearsal is mandatory, but when the team hears the same message from multiple voices in their own words, it more quickly becomes the company’s story.
• Celebrate success – Share both corporate and personal achievements to connect geographically distributed team members.

The delivery format is equally important. Make technology work for you by choosing a delivery platform that enables you to keep the presentation moving without having to wait for files to load or awkward hand-off of presenter control. Allow the audience to see the presenters. Add pictures and video to demonstrate your points. Solicit opinions from the audience in the form of polling and invite questions through email or phone submission. Practice.

With compelling content and dynamic presentation, your management team will not only be informed, they will be energized.

Click here to learn more about Quicksilver's webcasting experience.

Kathy Morris has spent the last 10 of her 35 years in the communications business with Quicksilver. Her unique ability to rapidly ramp up on a client’s business, then present targeted information through the creative efforts of the production team she manages have been key contributors to the growth of Quicksilver’s live meeting and webcasting offerings.

I hate to be a myth buster, but we are all creative.

I define creativity as the assembly of experiences and observations that result in a unique point-of-view. Since none of us has seen exactly the same television shows; read the same magazine articles; watched the same sunrises; fed the same baby at 2:00 am; watched the same front left tire go bouncing down the expressway in front of us during rush hour; I feel safe in suggesting that each of us is one of a kind and our thoughts and ideas are distinctive and worth considering.

Perhaps it is the expression of creativity that we confuse with being creative.  Here are three techniques you might consider applying the next time you want to express your creativity.

• Juxtaposition. Take two unrelated ideas and overlay them. I learned this in seventh grade. The assignment was, “Write a paragraph about spring.” I was watching television and saw a car commercial describing the creation of the next Ford model. I “repurposed” the narrative of the commercial. “Spring. It was formed in God’s mind and it promised to be beautiful.  It was landscaped in roses and dew and the promise was fulfilled.” Thank God nuns don’t watch television, or I’m not sure I would have been gotten an A+.

• Turn left instead of right. Use spaghetti squash instead of pasta under your marinara sauce. Take a different route home. Pull over and watch the sunset.  Replace the pictures on your desk. Take a walk at lunch. Actually take a lunch. Ask a team member to do something completely unrelated to what they normally do. Randomly pick a letter and read through that letter in the dictionary. Switch back and forth between American Idol and the hockey game.

• Collect ideas. Tear pictures and ads out of magazines. Take pictures of billboards. Think about why some ideas engage you and others repel you.

We are all creative and we should take every opportunity to express it.

Click here to learn more about how Quicksilver Associates can enhance the creative development of your next project.

Kathy Morris is Vice President and Executive Producer for Quicksilver Associates. Her creative talents are a combination of getting the best out of others, then stringing the ideas together to deliver a coherent message.