There are two significant challenges that, when not well managed, erode how we keep an audience connected and engaged as we unpack our strategic business stories.

The most common of these is giving away too much too soon, unpacking every detail coming up before going through every detail in even greater detail. This is a surefire way to have the audience tune out and miss critical points when they think they know what is coming next.

40-60% of your pipeline isn't lost to a better solution.

It's lost to indecision.

Your prospects aren't choosing someone else.

They're choosing to do nothing and taking the safe option where they won’t get fired for getting it wrong.

We live in an era of great distraction. There is more information more readily available and constantly competing for our attention, a feeling of less time to take it all in, and as a result, we are more easily distracted than ever.

Coming into the workshop, everyone was caught up in their individual realities, playing the ‘survive the day-to-day’ game that so often takes over. It becomes consuming, narrow and frantic – and can be exhausting for leaders and teams alike.  

When it comes to pitching ideas and where you need to convince someone to back you, there are three things that make for consistently successful presentations.

And just like that, there goes the Easter weekend.

For many clients, this is where the first-half performance starts to properly come into view. And with just over two months to go, the results are coming in as to what will and won’t make it across the line before the mid-way point of 2023.

This is one of the most common coffee questions I get asked. It’s right up there with, “What are you seeing happening? How are others going? What are people focusing on?”.

Everywhere you look, there’s a digital device with a face glued to it. Whether that’s on trains or planes, on the sofa, in meetings or even across the table at dinner. We’re truly living life through a lens. Full disclosure, I count myself as one of those people too – and this is certainly not a rant about how devices and the content we consume are changing society. Rest assured, I’ll keep that for another day. This is more a reflection on whether our digital reliance means we are losing our connection to storytelling.

I spend a lot of time with teams – executive teams and departmental leadership teams all the way through to operational units.  One differentiating factor between them all is simply cohesion.