The Best Presentation is the One the Audience Gives

Courtesy of Linda Kennyhertz

I gave a great presentation at the 2015 Global Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) conference in Las Vegas this week. Actually, the participants gave it to themselves.

It was called Leadership, Process and Culture: How to Build Change Agility into Your Organization. My premise was that we must build flexibility into our organizations so that people can quickly and easily respond to change because today's pace of change is faster than change practices can support.

For large audiences like this one (200), I would typically speak on topics that would build to an overall recommendation. Each one would include a question and participants would be asked to share their answers to the group. This usually results in me talking 80 percent of the time.

This time, I flipped the ratio: I talked for 20 percent of the time and participants talked either in their groups or presented to the entire group for 80.

Here are the questions they discussed:

• Describe a change agile environment in which you have worked?
• What is the biggest risk to change agility? Why?
• How do you ensure that the right conversations are being had?
• Share one highly effective practice related to embedding new ways of working into normal operations

The atmosphere was engaging. It was also noisy. People were learning from each other and the examples they shared demonstrated the topics perfectly. 

I have learned that the best presentation is the one the audience gives because it is the most relevant, interesting and educational. It's also the most memorable, which helps learning.

I didn't give a great presentation this week. I facilitated one.

Phil