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Kindergarden ©2022, George J. Irwin. All rights reserved. This is, let us say, a variation on the "Keep It Simple" mantra that so often applies to, among other things, explanations of complex issues. A work group to which I was assigned had no actual manager within it, but it did have a nominal and I would add spiritual leader, the most senior person of the team. He had been at the executive level before and was very experienced in dealing with, as he called it, "those in the rarified air." He was also quite ready to share the development of executive level presentations. The rest of the team was happy to learn. Who knows, it might come in handy over the course of a career; and besides, very few people in any company have the chance to present to anyone in or even near the upper echelons of a corporation. We had previously attended some presentations given by executives, but other than our leader had never made or even helped to prepare any going the other way. When we met to discuss a requirement to provide a ten minute summary of our work group’s progress up to that point, we were expecting requirements, guidelines and maybe even a style guide. Nope! What we got instead was: "Kindergarden." "What?" "You have to make these presentations Kindergarden level. The higher in the organization you go, the simpler you have to make them." That seemed absurd to me. Didn’t executives get to where they were by being smarter than others? (OK, I was a bit naïve about that.) Wouldn’t they be insulted by a dumbed-down description of a project? And besides, I thought egotistically, if it was a complex project that was hard to work on, shouldn’t it be portrayed that way? This, a variant on the computer programmers’ "If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand." No, we were told. At their level, leaders have so much to take in at that it is actually to your advantage to keep the explanation as simple as possible, although with plenty of detail available if there are any questions. I still didn’t believe this, but I trusted our leader and went along with it. We built a couple of pages of material that kept things at a high level... and had backup at the ready. And, much to my surprise, we were praised for making this very easy to understand. I ended up leading the development of presentations after that, somewhat by default and somewhat given my interest in it. My apparent skill at this became well-known enough that an executive three levels above us called me to his office one day to assist him with a presentation he needed to prepare to his manager about it and other initiatives in his span of control. "I need you to remember one thing," he counseled after taking me through the various projects, "and that’s 'Kindergarden.'" The next thing he asked me was why I was laughing. ... |