Read an interesting article the other day when putting together my MP presentation: Check it out.
It brings up some very interesting points about what makes a good power point presentation – specifically good slide craft. By focusing on several key cognitive principles (having to do with mental processes and how we intake and process information), the article reduces concept to execution by outlining several ways to obey the principles when creating slides.
My personal favorites have to do with using visual queues to trigger the brain to ingest information in specific ways. When discussing ranked information, by maintaining color schemes and orderings across slides, it is possible to increase memory retention in the audience. Or by making important information visible different from the other contents of the slide, it signals the brain that the visually different information is potentially more important that the rest on the slide.
I highly recommend that you run through the first 6 pages at least and compare the cognitive corollaries listed with slides you’ve done or seen in the past.
Problem solving is an area that each of us is challenged in every day. It may look different for everyone tactically, but we are all facing difficult problems both in our personal and professional lives.
This article supposes that problems can be divided into 4 classes. Each of the classes ranges from a well-defined problem with no solution, to a well-defined solution with no problem. The idea of creative solutioning was discussed some in our joint Strategy lecture with guest speaker Sean Coyne, who shared with us the idea of brainsteering, or focusing our problem solving to a specific problem or task. The article touches on the idea of problem solving via exploitation, or using what you already know, and exploration, or moving beyond what you already know to solve problems. These can also be referred to as the Edison and the Einstein ways of solving problems. Which category do you fall into? Which would you like to fall into? Moreso, which would you like your managers and direct reports to fall in to?
While our day to day lives may be relatively standard and we tend to approach problems the same way, I think this article serves as a good reminder to re-focus our problem solving and figure out which pieces of the “puzzle” we already have, which could change, and which are completely ambiguous. Sometimes the answer lies in just looking at the problem differently.
MEMBA learning community, Fall 2016- Spring 2017