209. Davina Stanley: Elevate Your Decision-Making Reports and Presentations

Davina Stanley loves the ‘Ah, got it’ that comes when a client finds the breakthrough idea lurking beneath all the fluff. She draws on more than 25 years’ experience when helping leaders and teams to clarify their thinking so they can communicate complex ideas. Davina is author of the books “Elevate” and “Engage.” Elevate Your Decision-Making Reports and Presentations Davina helps executives prepare decision-making reports. These might be any kind of report or PowerPoint that goes to leadership groups. Most executives find this process to be pretty awful, and many view it as a waste of time. This is for many reasons, one of which is that they end up ‘fixing’ other people’s drafts. Common mistakes presenters make when writing reports * Lack of structure. * Leader not briefing the team. * Mixing the thinking process with writing. The Elevate framework From the leaders’ perspective, the framework has four steps (R.I.S.E.): Ready your team. Before they write anything, help them understand what you need to communicate to whom and what outcome you are aiming for. Do you need them to agree, decide or perhaps do something? Iterate your message map. Ask the team to prepare a one-pager that includes a short introduction, one main message, and 2-5 supporting points. Make it visual. Get the messaging right here before preparing the full document. It’s easier and faster and cuts the risk that leaders will rework whole documents late at night themselves. Settle the document. Ask the team to flip the messaging into a report, paper or PowerPoint that you can then quickly review for minor tweaks. Embed the learning. After the communication has been delivered take a hearbeat to reflect on what you learned. Did you learn more about the stakeholders? Could you have improved the collaboration? Could the messaging have been tighter. Related:  Transform Presentation Slides Into Your Best Business Assets Favorite quotation “PowerPoint is easy for the author and hard for the audiencce” — Jeff Bezos Recommended book Making Time For Strategy by Richard Medc...