Steve Jobs does not sell computers; he sells an experience. The same holds true for his presentations that are meant to inform, educate, and entertain. An Apple presentation has all the elements of a great theatrical production—a great script, heroes and villains, stage props, breathtaking visuals, and one moment that makes the price of admission well worth it. Business Week’s Carmine Gallo recently wrote a book about Jobs’ presentation style.  Here he reveals the five elements of every Steve Jobs presentation. Incorporate these elements into your own presentations to sell your product or ideas the Steve Jobs way.

Read the five elements here.

New father and creator of the Lateral Action blog, Mark McGuinness, recently shared some of the lessons he’s learned from road-testing his newly-developed productivity system (written in e-book form) in a high-demand, low-sleep environment.  Extreme conditions, he points out, are great for revealing truly essential behaviours, so most of these lessons should hold true for ‘ordinary’ life as well.

As a newly minted father myself, I read Mark’s post with great interest.  He has some great tips that anyone can use, parent or not.

Read his post here.

Eric Ries recounts a very bad meeting in his Lessons Learned blog.  His description of the disfunctional event sounds like many of the meetings I have been in.  I’ll bet it will sound familiar to you, too.  Do you have the right data to make the decisions you need to make in a meeting, for example?  He uncovers some common problems, root causes, and suggestions.

Read Eric’s thought-provoking post here.

As each major spending decision your customers make is increasingly subjected to greater scrutiny, and as more hungry competitors fight harder for every deal, can you afford for your sales presentations to be anything less than World Class?

As Carmine Gallo succinctly points out in a recent Business Week article, “Giving truly great presentations requires skill, work, and practice. Giving catastrophic presentations is far easier. So if you want to take the easy way out and look like a rank amateur, here are 15 surefire tips to guarantee that you leave a really, really bad impression.”

Click here for the list of presentation pitfalls to avoid.

At the Lateral Action blog, Mark Hayward describes how to use what might be considered an engineering concept, reverse engineering, and use it to achieve life results. He describes his approach this way:

In technical terms, reverse engineering can be defined as “the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object or system through analysis of its structure, function and operation. It often involves taking something apart and analyzing its workings in detail.”

Mark applies his own interpretation of reverse engineering to his goals and building a framework for success by breaking down, in reverse order, the steps and tasks that will be required to effectively achieve his ambition.

The four keys he identifies to reverse engineering for success are:

Determine the most basic level of the goal.
Ensure that you are committed.
Identify as many steps as possible that are required to reach the goal.
Take action!

I appreciate the simplicity and systematic approach he advocates.

Read his whole post here.

The most obvious issue about social media: Is this a useful way to spend your time, or is it a sinkhole of attractive distraction? It could very easily be one of those one minute, and the other the next! It all depends on why you’re doing it, and this must be evaluated moment to moment. It’s an important distinction to make for yourself, because focus is probably your greatest asset that you can control. You must be judicious about where you place it and what you let grab it, thus reducing your effectiveness.

Read here about three ways social networking can be productive.

Sometimes habitual lateness is due to personality. It can also be because you have trouble realistically assessing how much you can do in a given time – or because you perceive time differently than other people, based either on cultural differences, innate wiring, or even a disorder such as ADHD.But whatever the reason, being chronically late can play havoc on your social life, your career, and even your self-esteem. Luckily, there are some effective steps you can take to seize control of your inner, dysfunctional clock.

This article describes five easy ways to improve your on-time performance.

Scientific American recently reported recent research that explains one reason why our brains slow down with age. 

Older brains do not think as quickly as younger brains do. But does this cognitive impairment arise because processing speeds slacken or because the ability to block out irrelevant information falters? A recent study reconciles these two leading hypotheses: older brains have a harder time ignoring distractions in the initial stages of performing a task, which slows down processing.

It seems that old brains process less well, but, more importantly, they ignore less well.

Read more here.

BNET recently released a short video (under 4 minutes) that describes how to set SMART goals.

Now folks, this is pretty much Management 101 stuff.  However, for all you Lean Thinkers out there, I will tell you that I have found many, MANY instances where the five points of SMART goals are violated when it comes to kaizen events.  Take a look at this video and think about them in terms of the objectives that were set for you (or that you set as a leader, process owner, or sponsor) in your kaizen events. 

Has it ever happened that you got to your kaizen out-brief and the person who chartered your kaizen or the leadership team in the audience ripped your solutions apart?  If it has happened to you, remember how demoralizing that was for you and your team?  Very often, train wrecks like this happen because they are engineered to happen: the train is sabotaged even before it leaves the station! 

I have seen this happen when the solutions the team came back with are not the ones the leaders had expected – or wanted.  The root cause?  The problem statement or kaizen charter was not specific or measurable: SMART guidelines were not followed.

See the video here.

By the way, if you like those UPS whiteboard commercials, you will appreciate this series of videos.  Very lean. 

Have you ever sat through a meeting where the person holding the whiteboard pen scrawls sentences of text?  How productive did you feel sitting there …. while …. he …. wrote … out …. every …. single …. word?  Or how about when the stuff left on the board is like something a three-year old left behind?  What does it mean?  The motion of the pen certainly meant something in the context of that single instant of conversation, but what does it mean five hours – or five minutes – after the guy sits down?

The UPS commercials and these BNET spots show how your whiteboard in compelling ways.  The visuals are simple, supplement your verbal presentation, and help structure your content.  If you like this type of stuff, check out books like Back of the Napkin.

My boss recently told me that I am very competent and have a clear vision for my team, but in order to get promoted, I need to show a stronger personality. As a naturally introverted person, what should I do? – Anonymous, Atlanta

Read the advice of Jack and Suzy Welch in BusinessWeek.

Scientific American recently ran this article, the key concepts of which are:

• Almost everyone occasionally procrastinates, but a worrisome 15 to 20 percent of adults routinely put off activities that would be better accomplished right away.
• A penchant for postponement carries a financial penalty, endangers health, harms relationships and ends careers. And yet perpetual foot-draggers sometimes benefit emotionally from their tactics, which support the human inclination to avoid the disagreeable.
• Research into the reasons people put off projects has led to strategies for helping all of us get and stay on task.

Read the article here.

Personal effectiveness is not related to ‘busyness’ in any way. In fact busy people can be detrimental to an organisation. By trying to achieve many things simultaneously they run the big risk of achieving precisely nothing and, in the process, create needless work for others. This article briefly summarizes three common causes for busyness and five practical actions for reducing your level of busyness and becoming more effective.  Read the full article here.