The100: Internal presentations, problem solving and orange peel

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At the first signs of smoke

As First Mate in the House of Vince during these lockdowns (the real boots are not on my feet) recent advice from the gang at Farnham Street held particular relevance for both home and office life. The maritime approach to solving problems before they happen:

If a leader can’t rely on their subordinates to take action when they see a potential problem, everything will collapse […] On a ship, everyone is in it together. If something goes wrong, they’re all at risk. And it may not be easy or even possible to patch up a serious problem in the middle of the sea. As a result, everyone needs to pay attention and act on anything that seems amiss.

(“Who left that cake in the oven?!”)

Slide-Crime

Step forth, Sir Tom of Critchlow and unsheath your 5 tips for more effective internal presentations. In a steel clad, teeth cracking nutshell: Keep them simple. 

The biggest slide-crime I see is generic slide titles […] Why is the most prominent part of the slide saying something generic? Instead, always make your slide title say the key point – make sure the slide title says something, even if the exec doesn’t look at anything else.

Joining Tom in the case for simplicity is Citibank and their recent $500 million lesson in UI design. Jeepers.

Go your own Waze

A startup having to transition into the fold of a corporate behemoth sounds about as pleasant as sliding down a saguaro cactus. 

Noam Bardin, former CEO of Waze, has done little to change that perception. 8 years after being acquired by Google, this is why he left. Although I can’t say that I agree with everything he says (work life balance, offending people etc.). 

Permission to be an insight

That lexical pied piper, Martin Weigel, is back with a long and, dare I say, insightful read on how we can only find a way into the lives of others if we find a way out of our own:

We are disconnected from the mainstream, alienated from the lived experience of other people’s realities […] Simply resorting to our ‘intuition’ and extrapolating from our own personal experiences cannot bridge that gap.

What about going to the library? 

You can learn a lot from observing people there. For those of you that didn’t know (all of you), I used to work in a library, but I bet you can just imagine how pleasing I found the Dewey Decimal System.

A person that will understand and want to help

A friend of mine, James Pickles, used to work in the research world.  Used to. He took the brave step of doing an interview entitled from breakdown to breakthrough in the hope that it will help others. I include it in humbleness:

It’s ironic for an industry that prides itself on its curiosity and insight into consumers’ thoughts and behaviours that we don’t seem terribly good at asking each other questions and making time to really listen to the answers.

His only tools were sticks, eyes, feet and brains 

One to file under Deadline 1 hour. Need inspiration. Send help:  rare videos of the greatest intellectual voices. 

And how about this for data visualisation? Chris Whong used orange peel to show the distortion of maps. 

But how did we figure out the earth was round in the first place? Flat earthers look away to your nearest edge now.