Page 142 - The McKinsey Mind

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PresentingYour Ideas 117

stacked with presentation documents that never got out of the
boardroom.
If your idea is to avoid a similar fate, you need to practice the
gentle art of generating buy-in: taking the steps necessary to max-
imize the chance that your audience will accept your recommen-
dations. These steps involve bridging the information and trust
gaps between you. The information gap exists because you know
more about your findings than your audience does. Depending on
the relationship between you and your audience, the trust gap (if
it exists) could take any of several forms. Your audience may think
that you are too inexperienced to comment on their business, or
they may mistrust you because you are an outsider, are overedu-
cated (or not educated enough), or for any of a number of other
reasons.
In this section, we will describe two ways to bridge these gaps:
prewiring and tailoring. Prewiring means taking your audience
through your findings before you give your presentation. Tailor-
ing means adapting your presentation to your audience, both
before you give it and, if necessary, on the fly. Together, these tech-
niques will boost your chances of making change happen in your
organization.

THE McKINSEY WAY
On the subject of buy-in, McKinsey alumni have one principle
inscribed on their hearts: prewire everything.
Prewire everything. A good business presentation should con-
tain no shocking revelations for the audience. Walk the relevant
decision makers in your organization through your findings before
you gather them together for a dog and pony show. McKinsey-ites
have a shorthand expression for sending out your recommenda-
tions to request comment from key decision makers before a pre-