Who's responsible for presentations?
Clear responsibility for presentations is a factor in corporate success. At first, this may seem odd. Marketing provides the template and the company presentation, HR runs training courses in software and presentation techniques, IT ensures PowerPoint operates smoothly, and everyone else is responsible for creating the actual presentations. There’s simply no other way; after all, every presentation is unique, depending on objectives, audience and the person giving it.
Scratch the idea of individual presentations
Reset the way you think. All these individual aspects are based on a host of organizational factors that can’t be dealt with by one single department or user for the entire company. Nor would any single department or user probably want to do that. This requires interdisciplinary knowledge, a good network within the company, business acumen, and assertiveness – and most people lack the time, the will, or the capacity for these things.
Which individual aspects are needed for a holistic approach to presentations?
- Finance: Reporting total costs, setting KPIs, assessing improvement measures
- IT: Assessing the technology used and its embedding in the overall systems landscape, incorporation into digitalization efforts, architecture, and organization of data pools for presentations or images, process automation, improving user experience in the workplace
- HR: Providing training courses, from software to argumentation and slide design to communication, presentation techniques and branding
- Sales: Type of presentation, occasion, resource constraints, managing recurring components and elements, simplifying processes for creating and giving presentations
- Marketing: Corporate identity, corporate design, corporate wording, the way brand messages and brand personality are conveyed by the presenter, consistent and up-to-date look, facts and figures
Now imagine which people need to talk and work together for this to work. Imagine the long-term benefits that these (ongoing) discussions could bring if your organization took a collaborative approach.
How to create a greater whole
Appoint someone with a strategic perspective for your organization, who is well networked, and who can assert themselves. A role such as the Head of Marketing would be a good choice. This central colleague can help kick-start a presentation project that forms the basis for long-term change and success. At the start of the project, this person would need to be heavily involved to establish and communicate the way forward. Once the project has been rolled out to the user departments, they’d maintain an overview of how presentations are created and used, and only step in to make minor adjustments when needed.
- Appoint the project manager and participants – from both central departments and important user areas.
- Run a kick-off workshop: Set conditions and parameters for organization, technology, digitalization, brand, implementation and overall cost reduction. Take quantitative and qualitative aspects into account. Then establish project goals, tasks, responsibilities, and a timeline.
- Let the project team present findings, analyses, measures and goals in milestones, from data organization or costs or to any surveys carried out. Look out for the initial results after 12 months.
We can help you with projects like this. They provide surprising new perspectives every time. And surprising results. Every company works differently. There’s no magic formula, but there’s a basic approach that’s the same across the board, and which promises individual success. In any case, we usually see smiling faces at the end.
And then?
Then it’s up and running – with someone responsible for keeping track of everything. And once everyone at the company knows about the new approach to presentations, you can make it an annual practice to set additional targets and measures, pool all information, see where things are coming unstuck, counteract this, and develop further. Enjoy a great return without any major effort or expense.