I awoke a couple of days ago at 5:30 AM. Usually that means that the dogs want to go outside. This day my thoughts were all about PowerPoint. Strange, I know. But I woke up thinking about all that I have learned about doing and, more importantly, not doing with this tool from Microsoft.

First, a disclaimer is warranted. I have personally created hundreds of PowerPoint presentations for many different purposes. The organizations that I was in expected that information would be delivered this way during meetings. So, I learned all of the ins and outs including all of the fancy animations, colorful templates and so on. I neither hate PowerPoint as some do nor do I consider it the answer to all communication questions.  But I do have some rules that I have evolved that make sense to me for the (mostly) technology oriented audiences that I have served. I have used these rules while doing strategy and competitive intelligence presentations for many levels of management.

When telling a story, it (usually) is best to tell it in a form that is familiar.

If an organization “thinks” in PowerPoint, then be prepared to tell and sell using that tool. I have to add the “usually” caveat because sometimes it is important to be different when the message is fundamentally different. For instance, in one strategy discussion, I used PowerPoint to create the presentation but rather than projecting it one slide at a time, I printed the12 slides and spread them out of the conference room table. Then the managers that attended stood around the table to view the content. At their own pace and in their preferred order, they could view the slides. This helped get all of the information in view at once and facilitated a better discussion of the complex topic.

Leave out the cuteness.

For business audiences, my feeling is that the animations, transitions and other such things are distractions. Of course there will be exceptions but most of the time people can absorb information much faster than some click through sequence controlled by a presenter.

Deliver the appropriate information density.

Few things are worse than 10 point font paragraphs densely displayed on a slide. I wish that I had a dollar for the number of times that I have heard from presenters that “I know you can’t read this but …”. (Embarrassingly, I have said it a few times.) On the other hand, I have also suffered through slides which are 10 words. Both approaches are disrespectful of the audience and show woeful preparation from the presenter.

The “right” information density is best described through Ed Tufte’s teachings. Far from eliminating detail, he advocates large amounts of information be delivered. The key is the presentation technique. For example, Tufte has described many useful depictions of trends and data sets that allow someone to make meaningful interpretations of data. One example is the use of Sparklines which highlights trends and outliers very well. Bissantz is a commercial vendor of this tool.

Tufte explains (and sells) the iconic diagram which traces Napoleon’s march to Moscow and back. It is a masterpiece of appropriate information density which allows that viewer to extract multiple important meanings about the event,

Tell a story.

Novelists and other writers have an advantage over many people in business. They understand that a typical book has a plot with characters, twists and turns and at the end a conclusion. In contrast, many business presentations rather than having any discernable story are a somewhat disjoint collection of facts. The impact of this approach is that there is little impact. It wastes time and distracts an organization from doing meaningful work.

It’s only a tool. Make sure you communicate.

I know people that love certain software. Some of them love PowerPoint and consider it important to their life. Okay. The rest of us need to remember that it is only one tool for communicating with our audiences. If we master PowerPoint and create the most beautiful presentations known to man but don’t connect with our audiences, what have we gained. Nothing. In strategy and competitive intelligence, communication usually has a purpose which could be to inform, to persuade or to educate. The tool used to convey information should be obviously subordinate to the purpose.

I enjoy creating presentations. Anyone that has worked with me on a presentation will agree that I am a stickler for what I present (i.e., it has to look good, it has to make sense, it has to spur discussion). I am proud of slides that I have created that allowed people to see something that they had not seen before and, because of that awareness, they can contemplate changes to what they previously knew. Nevertheless, I know that when PowerPoint becomes synonymous with communication we all risk diminishing what is vital to an organization. That is, the vigorous discourse among smart, committed people who are grappling with the most difficult issues in business.

Maybe I will sleep better tonight.

A while back, I was softly singing a song when a teenager nearby overheard me. The song was one from the 70’s named “Signs“. The chorus is “Sign Sign everywhere a sign, Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind, Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign”. The teenager was amazed that I knew the song which mystified me. Then I found out that another group had remade the song in the last few years. The teenager (probably like I did when I was his age) assumed that everything is new. My experience is that few things are new but that many are rediscovered.

One thing that is true in competitive intelligence (CI) is that signs are everywhere. Contrary to the image of a spy sleuthing through trash or bugging phones, an ethical CI professional is swamped with publically available information. The question is rarely about the quantity of information but how to identify and interpret the valuable information.

For example, suppose you want to know if a company might be wanting extend a product line. Maybe they have a couple of products in the line which are not threatening to your business but any extension would begin to encroach into markets that you valued.

There are several things to do.

• First, make sure that you know all of their current products. Then, sort them into product lines. Create a timeline for each product line so that you know the rate of new product introductions.  Usually a company will make all of this information easily available on their website.

• Second, assign values to product lines. This can be a qualitative evaluation. The intent is to understand how important the product line is to the company.  Part of the valuation is also how important the product line is to you.

• Third, research how the company trademarks the product names. This is a straightforward exercise of querying the database at the US Patent & Trademark Office. Sometimes companies will trademark names in advance of the actual product introductions.

• Fourth, where intellectual property is involved, research the patent position of the company. It is often helpful to use a tool such as the one from Innography to organize and facilitate the search. The goal is to get indicators (“signs”) of where the company is investing its R&D resources since that often points to the types of new products that will be introduced.

• Fifth, look at the company’s partnerships and investments. Many times a company needs help to complete a product. Every time that they engage with another company, they are seeking some benefit. Tracking the relationships and the likely value of the relationship will give clues to the company’s future directions.

There are many more ways to see the signs. They are everywhere.

When looking at another company, that company’s future plans are important to know. The company may be contemplating entering or leaving a market. They may be creating products which increase their competitiveness. Product lines may be expanded or contracted.

There is no one measure (short of public announcements) that signals the future. However there are many activities and actions which may help produce a reasonable guess about future plans. Job postings are one type of signal that may indicate a company’s future plans.

Most companies are good about publishing their job openings. Some companies even provide information about the level of opening (e.g., director, senior engineer, VP) and the division or product involved. This information can be captured at three month intervals to help identify trends. The captured listing should be sorted by location (certain activities occur at specific locations, product/division and levels). You want to know the following.

• Are job listings increasing or decreasing? (might signal changing R&D investment levels)
• What specialties are listed most? Least? (might signal turnover or expansion)
• Where are the centers of activity and how does this map to known products? (might signal what is being developed)
• What new skills (i.e., those not needed for the company’s known products) are being listed? (might signal new product type)
• How are recent acquisitions/mergers affecting job listings? (might signal plans for integrating the new company)

There are cautions to observe with this type of information. First, a job posting is not a job. That is, the company is making no promise to actually fill a position just because there is a job posting. Second, without turnover numbers, it is difficult to directly understand that a job posting (if filled) represents a staff expansion or not. Third, for companies with large campuses, it is more difficult to match postings with specific products (unless they tell you in the posting).

Mining job listings effectively over time helps the analyst map out the competitor’s future product plans, identify their development centers and understand how they expect to expand (or contract) their competencies.

Consultants and managers like to talk about grand strategies to win in business. They spend time and money to meet together to craft the best possible expressions of the purpose of the business, the vision for the future and the major steps along the way toward that future. They gather in retreats to make advancements.

Meanwhile, in the rest of organization, people come and go to work each day. They often know little of what has been decided. Or, if they have received the pronouncements from on high, they selectively integrate what they consider important into their work plans.

So, how can you tell that the business strategy is working?

There are usual external measures of revenue, profit, market share and so on that are typically used to measure the effectiveness of strategy. These are critical measures, of course, but they are lagging indicators when a new strategy is introduced. Often the first measures of strategy effectiveness come from the internal organization.

What should a manager look for to understand if the strategy is working within the organization? Here are my five success indicators to monitor.

1. Managers are modeling the changes. At all levels, a new strategy implies change (otherwise it isn’t new). If management expects change to occur only because of announcements, then the strategy is unlikely to be effective. People are sensitive to strategy fads which come and go. However, they are similarly alert to real change in people.

2. Success measures are being understood. It is not enough to have a bright idea. At some point in time, the performance of the strategy must be measured and the measurement must be understood (and accepted) in the organization. People that understand the external measures begin to adapt the internal reward system accordingly.

3. Competing strategies are retired. The temptation for management and organizations is to retain the familiar. If a significant new strategy is introduced, a significant old strategy must be retired. Not only does this make sense to the larger organization (sensible behavior is important), it establishes the credibility of leaders to focus the organization.

4. Increasing focus on the future. A temperature reading of the organization will reveal that people are talking more about the future than the past. It should be no surprise that a backward focus is a drain on the organization’s energy. Befuddled leadership, ineffective strategies and risk aversion prevent an organization from solving tomorrow’s problems. A strategy starts to work when an organization is energized about what is possible to achieve.

5. It is becoming personal. The best leaders create bridges between their organization and the vision. People then make conscious decisions to move toward or away from the vision. A strategy’s effectiveness can be measured by the extent to which employees own it. Increasing ownership means increasing alignment with the vision, greater problem solving and broader participation. Simply put, people commit themselves by crossing the bridges.