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Introducing the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation

The Harvard Business Review’s mission is to improve the practice of management and its impact on a changing world. So when we were first contacted about a possible collaboration by the Management Innovation eXchange (MIX), which sees its role as “creating organizations that are fundamentally fit for the future — and genuinely fit for human beings,” we were immediately excited by the possibilities. Led by Gary Hamel and supported by McKinsey & Company (along with a handful of like-minded organizations), the MIX is a web-based open innovation project aimed at reinventing management for the 21st century.

Today, Polly LaBarre, the Editorial Director of MIX (and the coauthor of this post), and I (Eric Hellweg, the Editor of HBR.org) are happy to announce the Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize for Management Innovation. The Harvard Business Review/McKinsey M-Prize will unfold over the course of a year and include three separate phases focused on leveraging technology, reinventing strategy, and rethinking organizations. The first leg is The Management 2.0 Challenge, which launches right now.

With the Management 2.0 Challenge, we’re seeking the most progressive practices and disruptive ideas when it comes to how the governing principles and tools of the web can make our organizations more adaptable, innovative, inspiring, and accountable. Specifically, how can the values that undergird the web (such as transparency, collaboration, meritocracy, openness, and community) and the approaches that contribute to its power (social technologies and architectures of participation including wikis, blogs, social networks, crowdsourcing initiatives, prediction markets, and online games) be unleashed to overcome the design limits of Management 1.0 — and help to create Management 2.0?

Do you have a STORY (a real-world case study of a single practice, an initiative, or a broad-based transformation that you led or were involved in) or a HACK (a disruptive idea, radical fix or experimental design) that illustrates how the principles and tools of the Web can help create Management 2.0? Share it with us — and with the world.

We know that people are experimenting with radical management practices all over the world in every kind of organization at every level. Management innovation is not the exclusive province of brand-name companies or the executive suite. You don’t have to be a guru or a CEO — or even a “manager” by title — to be a management innovator. You just have to be frustrated by the status quo and willing to ask a courageous “What if?” (And, to participate in the M-Prize, you just have to register for the MIX. You can find more details on the rules of play here.)

If you do, you earn the opportunity to have your ideas considered by a stellar roster of judges, including Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Clay Shirky, an original thinker on the Internet and decentralized technologies (and author of Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age), Gary Hamel, thought leader and author of The Future of Management, Eric Hellweg, editor of Harvard Business Review online, Umair Haque, Director of the Havas Media Lab and author, The New Capitalist Manifesto, Lynda Gratton, a professor of management at London Business School and author of The Shift: The Future of Work is Already Here, James Manyika, director at McKinsey & Co, and Mark McDonald, Group Vice President, Gartner.

What’s more, the winners will receive significant recognition as management innovators on the MIX and in the various channels of Harvard Business Review and the McKinsey Quarterly. Winners will also earn the chance to appear and tell their story at the MIX Live gathering scheduled for late spring 2012.

Of course you can’t win if you don’t play — and if you play, we all win. The more progressive management ideas and practices we unearth and advance, the more effective all of our organizations will be — and the more engaging, productive and rewarding work will be for the people inside them.

For inspiration, you might also want to review the stories and hacks that have already begun to populate the Management 2.0 Challenge pipeline. And watch this space for regular highlights and analysis of the best contributions and more as the M-Prize unfolds.

Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback about the contest. And good luck!

Collaboration Is a Team Sport, and You Need to Warm Up

This post is part of the HBR Insight Center Making Collaboration Work.

Jimmy Guterman wrote about Nokia’s culture of purposefully fostering a collaborative mindset as soon as someone started at the company or moves into a new role. I want to build on this by looking at how collaboration needs to be seen as a process that happens over time, and that the crucial groundwork for successful collaboration needs to be laid before the “actual” collaborative work happens.

First, let’s ask why collaboration is so important today. The main reason is that the problems we have to solve — whether deciding company strategy or bringing an innovative offering to market — are more complex than they have ever been. They require a variety of skillsets, perspectives, and approaches to solve them, and need a lot of pieces to come together smoothly to be successful. Bringing an innovation to market especially needs a mix of left- and right-brain people — visionaries and ditch-diggers, stubborn idealists and open-minded pragmatists. All this requires collaboration.

But there are barriers to collaboration, many of which exist even before somebody arrives for their first day of work. In the US, our education system is largely focused on individual efforts, and team work is not actively taught in the classroom even at the graduate level. How students and teachers at the K-12 level are incentivized tends to focus on clear goals met through individual knowledge and expertise, neither of which are realistic for the contemporary workplace.

Further, if this study cited by David Rock in his piece on collaboration is to be believed, then college students moving into the workforce are even less well prepared for good collaborative experiences since collaboration requires empathy, being able to look at a problem from other peoples’ perspectives.

So collaboration is not necessarily a “natural” leaning, or, to paraphrase Sir Ken Robinson, we have been educated out of collaborative habits.

Collaboration is a Process, Not an Event

To go back to the Nokia story, the first thing to recognize about collaboration is that it is something that best happens over a period of time, with a “warm-up” period before critical work happens. Just like a runner, you don’t want to do a 10K cold. You need to get things loosened up first.

Unless you are going for a “Team of Rivals” approach, sustainable collaboration is best when the people know and trust each other. Ideally they have met in person, know a bit about each other personally as well as professionally, have a sense of communication and work styles, and what the individual strengths, weaknesses and points of view are.

Companies need to consciously and actively help people get to know each other in these ways as much as possible before they are put together on projects. Many projects start quite abruptly and happen intensively and quickly, so if there is some level of familiarity and trust beforehand, it will make the work much more efficient when the team does come together.

Helping People Warm Up for Collaboration

Some ways to purposefully help people prepare for successful collaborations:

* Give people public forums to introduce themselves, and talk about their professional and personal backgrounds (prior companies and hobbies are both fruitful ways of understanding someone). True trust and empathy starts to happen when there is the even a slight emotional bond, not just a professional one. I’m not saying you have to turn your workplace into one giant therapy session. But militaries around the world understand this deeply — the bond between soldiers is consciously built up to be very strong, because they have to collaborate and trust each other under the most difficult circumstances. How can you create camaraderie?

* In-person familiarity should be the default, but in large organizations this is hard to scale. Make use of social networking tools to faciliate the process.

* Find the people who are networking hubs in the organization, and introduce newcomers to them. Think of your organization as a party. Who can you introduce a new person to who will help them get to know the rest of the group the quickest?

* For more prolonged relationship building, have a mentoring program where a newcomer is paired up with someone who’s been around a while. You may even have a “networking” mentor who is different from the usual expertise mentor.

* Mix up disciplines. Don’t segregate engineering from marketing, HR from finance, and so on. Make it easy for people to absorb others’ perspectives just by walking around. Mix levels of seniority together for the same reason. (At frog we have completely open workspaces with no cubicles, and all the disciplines are mingled together, as we want teams, who might only work together in that specific combination of people for a few weeks, to be able to hit the ground running. The warm-up should have already happened.)

* Provide project spaces where teams can work continuously, all sitting together. If you just have individual workspaces (e.g. cubicles) and group meeting rooms (e.g. conference rooms that must be booked far in advance and vacated after an hour), then you are missing a key tool for facilitating collaboration, team-, and trust-building.

* Celebrate wins publicly by crediting the whole team, not just individuals. Get teams to talk about what worked and didn’t work with their collaboration, so that others may learn. Get people into a mindset of thinking consciously about how and why a collaboration is working (or not). Don’t let it seem like a magic black box process that gets chalked up to luck. Take a step back and analyze it just as you would any other process.

What’s Good for Collaboration is Also Good for Innovation

The great thing is that all these methods to aid collaboration also build a company’s effectiveness at innovation. Why? Because:

* Innovation comes from putting ideas and perspectives that have never been combined before. Good collaboration makes this happen more efficiently.

* Innovation involves risk-taking, and that doesn’t happen if there’s no trust that others will cover you when there is the inevitable stumble. The methods for building trust for collaboration help people more readily take risks as a result.

* Most innovations can’t be accomplished by individuals toiling away, or even by single organizations working in isolation. We need people around us to fill in the skills and knowledge gaps, and to tell us when we’re full of crap. Collaboration is a critical skill for any organization wanting to do actually bring innovations to market.

Adam Richardson, Assistant VP of Strategy and Marketing at global innovation firm frog design, is the author of Innovation X: Why a Company’s Toughest Problems are its Greatest Advantage. He can be found on Twitter at @Richardsona.

Taming the Tiger Boss

Christine was a smart and driven Chinese senior executive, a self-declared perfectionist, she set the bar as high for those around her as she did for herself. It was, of course, a recipe for frustration, as this complaint about a subordinate clearly showed:

“If I’m willing to put in the hours to get it perfect, why can’t she? I tell her what is wrong and when she gives it back to me it’s still not the way I want it so I end up doing it myself. Oh, and it’s not just her,” she sighed in exasperation, “it’s the whole team.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t just the whole team, it was pretty much her whole world: “And my children are satisfied with being average as well! Every Saturday afternoon I have to sit all day with them to be sure they are doing their best.”

She was a Tiger Boss and a Tiger Mom to boot.

I had been asked to work with Christine because she was in line for a promotion to CFO. The China-based multinational she worked for had put her name forward to a number of their business units but she wasn’t getting any takers. “Christine has the skills, the experience, the desire, and the drive but she comes across as too demanding and negative”, was the word from HR. “She doesn’t suffer fools gladly and it comes across more as if she gladly makes them suffer. She’s just too critical.”

I’m not a therapist — my coaching work draws on my experience in theater — but you don’t need a degree in psychology to know that the problems we have communicating with colleagues and staff are often reflected in challenges we face interacting with friends and family. We learn to navigate through life in ways that works for us. Christine’s compass was set to look for what is not working perfectly and this set her, and those around her, up for endless frustration and stress.

Over a number of sessions we struggled unsuccessfully to find ways to help her manage this stress. It was only in our final session that I remembered a beautifully simple concept that a fellow improv pal shared with me. Stress, he explained, is the gap between our ideal situation and reality. In order to reduce stress, we need to be aware of our expectations, accept the realities of the situation and then take action to close the gap.

Christine’s problem had been that she was putting all the emphasis on shifting reality to meet her expectations of perfection. So I shared with her my own a-ha moment about perfectionism. Years ago on a show with improv theatre guru and author Keith Johnstone I was having trouble entering a scene with more experienced improvisers. I wanted to be wonderful. As I dithered on the sidelines, he leaned in and whispered in my ear, “Don’t do your best.” With expectations lowered and stress reduced, I fairly leapt onstage. By lowering the bar he freed me to just get on with it.

Christine, by the way, has been working as CFO for one of her company’s business units the past two years. HR did find a taker. Is she a perfect leader? I certainly hope not.

Teresa Norton (www.nortonassociates.hk/) is an executive coach based in Hong Kong.

Human nature is a moving target

I just caught up with a fascinating discussion on ABC Radio’s Future Tense on what artificial intelligence showdowns like the Turing Test tell us about the evolution of human nature.

It sounds like a bit of clichéd subject but the interview with author Brian Christian is full of novel, thoughtful insights into how human nature is evolving in response to technological innovations.

This is one of many fascinating bits, about the effect of mobile phone technology on the dynamics of conversation.

One of the comments that we’ve heard several times on our program in the past is that people are now starting to interact with each other like computers. That computers aren’t just learning from us, we’re learning from computers…

…I would also say that the shift in telephone technology from landlines to cellphones has had a kind of unforeseen trade-off, which is that we’re now much more accessible geographically, but the cost is that the lag on the connection is six times greater. So it’s about half of a second instead of a little bit less than a tenth of a second.

And it may not seem like much, but in fact it is enough to disrupt a lot of the subtle dynamics of timing and pauses, and yielding to other people, and it’s turning communication much more into a kind of peer data exchange, you know, pure content.

The Value of Being Active in Social Media

Originally posted on LeadSwag, co-Authored by Ron_Marshall. In today’s job market, one must be seen in order to be heard. The most consistent, reputation-building method to be seen is by using social media. The FLinT (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter) media stack and other current media platforms like Quora and YouTube are used to perpetuate one’s personal brand. Personal brand [Read on...]

Lead Change Group – Leaders Growing Leaders

…
Excerpt:

A recent CareerBuilder survey found that 45% of employers are utilizing social media to find job candidates. And the number is rising at a rapid rate.

Why Employers Disregarded Candidates After Online Screening

Candidate posted provocative or inappropriate photographs or information – 53%
Candidate posted content about them drinking or using drugs – 44%
Candidate bad-mouthed their previous employer, co-workers or clients – 35%
Candidate showed poor communication skills – 29%
Candidate made discriminatory comments – 26%
Candidate lied about qualifications – 24%
Candidate shared confidential information from previous employer – 20%

….
Why Employers Hired Candidates After Online Screening Personal Branding:

Profile provided a good feel for the candidate’s personality and fit – 50%
Profile supported candidate’s professional qualifications – 39%
Candidate was creative – 38%
Candidate showed solid communication skills – 35%
Candidate was well-rounded – 33%
Other people posted good references about the candidate – 19%
Candidate received awards and accolades – 15%

(Source: www.thehiringsite.careerbuilder.com)

Little BIG Video #63Strategy:Pay Attention to Boomers

The latest video at YouTube is #63 in The Little BIG Things Video Series. Though young people are important to marketers in these times, Tom argues, marketers had better keep an eye on boomers, also.

You can find the video in the right column of the front page of tompeters.com or you can watch the video on YouTube. [Time: 2 minutes 52 seconds] You can also download a PDF transcript of the video’s content: Strategy: Pay Attention to Boomers.

Getting Past a Communication Impasse

What do you do when you have a communication impasse with someone you care about?

Jim* is a friend and colleague whom I hadn’t seen for a year. It’s been a hard year for Jim and I called him frequently as he navigated his business through tough times.

When I last saw him, Jim asked me to meet with a client of his, Ed, for a few minutes as a favor. I agreed. But when I arrived at Ed’s office a few days later, the receptionist told me he was out of the country. He had been expecting me a day earlier, she said, and was disappointed when I hadn’t shown up. I apologized and left.

I immediately called Jim, who checked his email and discovered that he had given Ed the wrong day. I told him I was embarrassed and asked him to send a handwritten note to the client apologizing and explaining the error. He promised he would.

We hadn’t talked about the missed meeting since it happened. Jim’s troubled business had been the focus of our conversations. But I was speaking at a conference in a week and I expected Ed to be there; I wanted to know how things had resolved.

So, recently, when I saw Jim, I asked him whether he had written the letter. He got angry and snapped at me. “I didn’t write the letter. Peter, I’m broke. I haven’t had a minute to do anything. Can’t you understand that?”

I was taken aback, hurt. I mumbled something and walked away. But I couldn’t get it out of my head. Why was he snapping at me?

I’ve always believed that if I simply talk things through with someone I can resolve any issue. So I walked back to him.

“Jim,” I said, “I know it’s been a hard year, but why are you lashing out at me? I asked about the letter because I might see Ed at a conference. The letter isn’t such a big deal to me, but your response really bothers me.”

“Well,” he answered, “I’m sorry my response bothers you.”

Sorry my response bothers you. He didn’t apologize for asking me for a favor and then putting me in an embarrassing situation. He didn’t apologize for not writing the letter. He didn’t even apologize for his response. All he did was acknowledge that his response bothered me. Which bothered me even more.

Intellectually, I understand what was going on. Having a business crash is highly emotional, very strained, and extremely difficult. In that light, my question about the letter seemed trivial and out of place. Add to that his own shame about not having followed through on his commitment and the result was misplaced anger towards me. I get it.

But emotionally it felt like a betrayal of all I had done to support him over the past year. And it left me wondering: Now what?

I could try to talk with him about it again. But I was pretty sure it would go the same way and I would leave feeling more hurt.

I could go around talking to other people about him, getting their perspective, complaining. But that’s not who I want to be.

I could write him off completely. But we travel in the same circles and it’s unlikely we could avoid each other. I didn’t want to get that rush of negative adrenaline every time we were in the same room. And anyway, do I really want to write off everyone whose actions hurt me? I’m sensitive; I might end up alone. Finally, and perhaps most important, I really like Jim. He’s been a good friend for 20 years and I enjoy his company. He’s funny, interesting, and often warm. I don’t want the friendship to end.

The rest of the party was awkward and I left with a bad feeling, not knowing what to do. Eventually, I called my smartest advisor.

My mother is surrounded by people who love her. Recently she told me she was going out with someone who had, quite literally, betrayed her; he went behind her back to buy a rare item that had been promised to her. The seller maintained his commitment to my mother and my mother maintained her relationship with both the seller and the betrayer. How was she able to get over it?

“I know what to expect from him,” she told me of her betrayer. “That’s the kind of person he is.”

“Did you ever talk to him about it?” I asked her.

“No,” she said, “Why should I? It wouldn’t make a difference. I’m not going to change him. And talking about it won’t change the situation.”

“But how can you still spend time with him? Don’t you get angry when you see him?”

“I’m too tired to be angry every time someone does something I don’t like. And I don’t want to be alienated from everyone. I enjoy him for his other attributes. But I know what to expect from him.”

My mother’s insight is profound. Her advice?

Live with it.

Jim’s response isn’t about me, it’s about Jim, and I’m living in the space between never speaking to him again and trying to fix things by speaking to him. That space is called accepting people as they are.

Jim’s response informs me about Jim. He has a reputation for snapping at people and for using anger to intimidate and avoid. It’s just that he never directed it towards me before. It’s a part of his character. He may change but I’m not counting on it. My interaction with him offered me data. Data that tells me more about what I should expect from Jim in the future.

But snapping at me isn’t all I should expect from him. And knowing that lets me appreciate the parts of Jim I like without becoming distracted by the parts I don’t. It lets me accept him fully for who he is, without illusion. And it keeps me safe in our relationship when he acts in ways I don’t like.

In retrospect, I would still ask Jim if he had written the letter. But when he snapped at me, I would have said, “I know this year has been hard for you and I’m sorry you’ve had to go through that. I understand you didn’t write the note. That’s good to know in case I see Ed at the conference next week.” And leave it at that. No hurt. No anger. No avoidance. No passive-aggressive comeback. Just acceptance of the situation and of Jim.

Will my relationship with Jim be more superficial from now on? At first, I was sure it would. But I’m going to try hard not to let it. People are imperfect. That includes my mother’s betrayer, it includes Jim, and it also includes me.

Which makes it all the more important not to write off Jim. If I did, then I’d end up writing myself off too. Accepting Jim’s imperfection and limitations enables me to accept my own.

Which now includes the realization that no matter how good I think I am at communicating, there are some situations I can’t resolve with more communication.

*Names and some details changed

In Pursuit of a Better Boss

Would you like a better boss? A boss who helps you obtain valuable information, win needed resources, and secure important support for your group and for you personally — in short, a boss who’s a real ally and partner?

If your boss provides these benefits, you’re lucky. We hear far more complaints than praise from people about their bosses. If you’re unlucky, this blog is for you, and its message is simple — your relationship with your boss is less a matter of luck than you think.

When we talk to managers with complaints, we find they usually assume the relationship rests entirely in the hands of the boss. It is what the boss makes it, and there’s little they can do to change it.

Do you assume that it’s your boss who sets the tone in your relationship? If so, test that assumption. Almost certainly, you have more ability than you think to shape how you work together. After all, it’s a relationship of mutual dependence. You each need the other to succeed. Unless your boss is a psychopath or truly irrational, this interdependence is a foundation on which you can take steps to build something mutually beneficial.

Start by taking some responsibility for the relationship and asking yourself some basic questions:

Are you meeting expectations?
If your group isn’t performing, you obviously cannot expect a great relationship. By underperforming, you’re making your boss look bad. Hit your targets, work out a plan for hitting them, or re-negotiate the targets. If you don’t, nothing else is likely to go right between you. Remember, too, that her expectations extend beyond simple numbers and include things like sharing key information, inclusion in certain key decisions, and even personal support and loyalty.

Do you see your boss as your coach or your judge?
In fact, every boss is both and you need to figure out when and where he tends to be one or the other. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking he’s only a judge. That hyper-critical assumption will prepare you for the worst because it puts you always on your guard. But it rarely reflects reality — most bosses can and will play both roles — and it will keep you from reaching out to him and obtaining the benefits of a good relationship. Better to see his dual roles as extremes between which he moves back and forth, depending on the situation. At first, in small, low-risk ways, test when and how he’s willing to provide support, and move forward based on what you learn.

Does your boss trust you?
Have you demonstrated to her satisfaction your competence and character, the two pillars of trust? Does she believe you know what to do and how to do it? Does she believe in your values, standards, and intentions? Have you communicated them in your behavior and words? Any influence you have on her will begin with her trust in you.

Do the two of you see the current situation in the same way?
Do you see the problems you both face in the same way and do you agree about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there? Do you even understand the problems your boss faces? If you don’t, he will inevitably wonder if you’re helping him deal with them.

Are you able to see your boss as a person, not just an authority figure?
Behind your boss’s title, there’s an imperfect person just like you. She has hopes, aspirations, frustrations, strengths, weaknesses, and fears, and she’s the product of her unique background, training, and experience. Do you know enough about her that you can begin to see the world through her eyes? If you do, can you use that knowledge to adapt how you deal with her, just as you use such insights to shape how you deal with anyone else?

Can you identify your boss’s strengths and weaknesses?
Perhaps you can only see the weaknesses, but identify his strengths too — again, just as you would with anyone else. Have you thought about how to build on his strengths and work around or compensate for his weaknesses? You’ll never have a boss without weakness of some kind. Be generous in your judgment of him, just as you hope your people will judge you generously.

Are you unknowingly bringing your own emotional baggage into this relationship?
Through years of growing up and dealing with authority figures, starting with our parents, many of us learn to dislike and distrust anyone who claims authority over us. Are your attitudes about your boss shaped by your own feelings and attitudes that are based not on experience with her personally but with others from your past?

Take responsibility for this crucial relationship. Test and probe to find what’s possible. There are bad bosses with whom you will have little ability to shape the way you work together, but most bosses are just people like you, with likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses. It will never be a relationship of equals — that’s not how the world works — but it can be mutually supportive, and even mutually rewarding.

A Presenter’s Guide to Remembering What to Say

Moonwalking With Einstein, the current bestselling book by Joshua Foer, deals with a subject close to the pounding hearts and minds of every public speaker or presenter: how to remember what to say. Speakers and presenters rely on a number of devices — from low-end three-by-five index cards to expensive high-end teleprompters — to aid their memories. Foer offers an even higher-end but lower-cost technique: visual imagery, or associating a diverse list of subjects with a series of related physical objects.

Foer’s take on mnemonics is only the latest variation of a method that goes all the way back to Cicero, the first century Roman philosopher, statesman, and orator. In Rome today, the tour guides at the ruins of the Roman Forum tell of how Cicero and his contemporaries spoke for hours on end without any notes. Paper — which would not be invented until two hundred years later in China — was not available to the Romans orators, so they used the marble columns of the forum as memory triggers. Each column represented a single subject and its related ideas. As the orators delivered their speeches, they strode from column to column and subject to subject, using the visual prompts to remind them of a group of related ideas.

Over the years, this technique has morphed into the popular “Roman Room” memory method, in which physical objects inside a room serve the same associative purpose as the open air columns of the ancient Roman Forum.

Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, inspired by Foer’s book, remarks on two other writers with intriguing memory aids:

• Mark Twain, who “once wrote the first letter of topics that he wanted to cover in a lecture on his fingernails.”

• England’s Ed Cooke, the author of Remember, Remember and a Roman Room devotee who recommends, “If you have a list to remember, you put the items in a path throughout a familiar place, like your childhood home.”

Cooke, who is also the co-founder of Memrise, a “learning community” focused on memory, relates the technique directly to presentations. In a 2008 article in The Guardian, he wrote:
Begin by reducing your talk to, let’s say, 20 bullet-points…Write out your points in order. Now find an image that captures each point. To remember that the pound is losing ground on the dollar, you could imagine George Bush beating up Gordon Brown with a wad of dollar bills. If you wish to remember that 90% of women are at a disadvantage in the workplace, you might imagine a 90-year-old woman carrying a heavy weight. Then arrange your images on a route around a familiar space. So the Bush-Brown scenario could go in your bathroom sink, the granny could go in your shower, and the next 18 images could be arranged sequentially in a route around your home.
In my version of Cooke’s advice, I go back to Cicero and recommend that speakers and presenters cluster the diverse components of their pitches into a few conceptual Roman columns, or main themes. I then advise them to represent those ideas in simple PowerPoint slides designed under the Less Is More principle. The memory prompt then comes from a specific image rather than from an imaginary physical layout.

Financial executives, with their usual attention to detail and concern about forward-looking statements, often prepare their presentations as complete text on paper or on slides, and then they read or try to memorize the words. Those approaches force the presenter to stay connected to the text and disconnected from the audience.

One CFO showed up for his coaching session at my company with his presentation written out in full sentences. I asked him to reduce each sentence to a four-word bullet and to speak from that. He did and it flowed. Then I asked him to reduce each four-word bullet to one word and to speak from that. He did and it flowed. Then I asked him to speak without any text. He did and it flowed. We then put the four-word bullets on the slides and he delivered his pitch directly to the audience and it flowed.

Of course, you can always skip the PowerPoint slides and, like Mark Twain, write the first letter of each of your subjects on your fingernails or, like Sarah Palin, write notes on your palm, or default to those old standby three-by-five index cards. But every time you glance down you will not only disconnect from your audience, you will also appear to be unsure about what to say and diminish your credibility.

Better to go with Cicero’s columns and PowerPoint.

Jerry Weissman, a leading corporate presentations coach, is the founder of Power Presentations, Ltd., and the author of Presentations in Action: 80 Memorable Presentation Lessons from the Masters (FT Press: 2011).

Moody men are more attractive than happy men

Helen Thomson, biomedical news editor

(Image: PhotoAlto/Frederic Cirou/Getty)

A man walks into a bar, catches a girl’s eye, and immediately looks gloomy, moody and averts his eyes. The woman is overcome with sexual attraction. Not your usual love story but maybe a more realistic one. Turns out, a winning smile isn’t the way to a woman’s heart; men who swagger and look gloomy are more likely to set pulses raising.

That’s according to Jessica Tracy at the University of British Columbia, Canada, who asked more than 1000 adults to rate the sexual attractiveness of hundreds of photos of the opposite sex.

The images showed men and women in various displays of happiness, with big smiles and puffed out chests or shameful glances, lowered heads and averted eyes.

In an interview with UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph, co-author Alec Beall, also at British Columbia said: “We did not ask participants if they thought these targets would make a good boyfriend or wife – we wanted their gut reactions on carnal, sexual attraction.”

The study found that women were not attracted to smiling, happy men, preferring those who looked proud and powerful or moody and ashamed.

In an interview with Reuters, Tracy said:
“To the extent that men think that smiling is a good thing to do if they want to be found sexually attractive our findings suggest that’s not the case.”

The researchers say that smiling has been linked with a lack of dominance. Tracey reckons moody guys show that they are flawed, but “know it and are tortured by it”.

Displays of shame, Tracy says, have been associated with an awareness of social norms and appeasement behaviours, which elicits trust in others.

On the other hand, men’s reaction to women was just the opposite – they absolutely love a smile, says Tracey: “Women who smile are very attractive. That was by far the most attractive expression women showed.”

She emphasises that the study explored first impression, and the team are not recommending men adopt a no-smile policy for a long-term relationship. “We’re not saying don’t be a nice guy,” she says.

But don’t worry if you haven’t quite perfected “broody” – there are plenty of other ways to attract the girls. Making out that you’ve got a partner could help. Apparently us girls are a sucker for the married man. And make sure you choose the perfect chat-up line too. And if all else fails, you could always just change your name.

Journal reference: Emotion, DOI: 10.1037/a002290

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