Page 38 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

6

GET IT TOGETHER

once got a call from an $11 billion operating arm of a big manu-
I facturing company. They explained that their main competition,
a large producer of aircraft engines, was eating their business for
breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The market share was roughly 85/15.
Something was clearly amiss. Could it be that their new business
and client presentations needed work? Would I come and take a
look?

I flew out to the client, sat in on a couple of key presentations,
and wound up stunned by an apparent paradox: how could such
intelligent, competent men and women—top managers, division
heads, talented engineers—be so patently inept? I came up with a
long laundry list of things I thought might help turn the situation
around, got the OK to proceed, and went to work.
For the next several months I met with groups of managers (no
more than six at a time to ensure quality) for a total of three days for
each group. I let them witness their own presentations on video play-
back and then led them through a series of steps to change their
thinking, their focus, their procedures, their planning process, their
attitudes and objectives, and other categories that needed fi xing. We
developed a consistent business message, threw out most of the slides,
shortened the presentations, practiced basic talking skills, redesigned
the few remaining visuals, began using anecdotal evidence, intro-

29