This is the third in a series of several stories providing metaphors to help you get your audience invested in a new manual, guideline or procedure. Regular readers know that I believe telling stories and creating metaphors to help drive points home and convince an audience to act after a presentation is over is one way to persuade listeners. You may have a great presentation or speech planned, but you need someone to take action after the pitch and start using a new process or reference a large volume of info. You are not alone. Often, a presenter can only tell part of the story and excite the listeners, so the encyclopedia sized reference material is saved for later.
Einstein’s Phone Number used to introduce company-wide standard operating procedures
One of Einstein’s colleagues asked him for his telephone number one day. Einstein reached for a telephone directory and looked it up. “You don’t remember your own number?,” the man asked, startled. “No,” Einstein answered. “Why should I memorize something I can so easily get from a book?” In fact, Einstein claimed never to memorize anything which could be looked up in less than two minutes. Today, we are releasing our Standard Operating Procedures document for all departments. While you will come to know your department’s plan intimately, it is a reference tool to understand how other departments operate.
A story drives the point home – a manual is for intelligent problem solvers and helps them do their jobs well.
Read Part 2 – Go around and Part 1 – Freedom within a framework.
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After completing the Communicate to Win workshop, you will have the most compelling argument and the best ideas. With this complete package, you will gain the tools necessary to guarantee that you have the best ideas and that you can present them confidently so you will WIN. Read what participants say.
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