I like Phil Rigotti
Of course I like Phil Rigotti. He is a good friend of mine. But right now I especially like him because of The Thing He Did. Phil works for Conwy Social Services. Last week three dozen local authorities got together to talk about How They Do Social Services. In other words two days of sheer boredom.
When Phil and his boss and the rest of the team met to talk about how they would do their presentation, Phil came up with the idea of Puppets. This makes sense. Phil uses puppets in the therapeutic work he does with children. Phil’s boss was smart enough to say yes to the puppets. And so last week Phil and nine of his colleagues who had never puppets before Phil said his idea out loud went up against 35 Powerpoint presentations. No prizes for guessing the stars of the conference.
All it took was a little bravery.
Two of the other teams asked for a video of the presentation. More went home inspired to do better work.
I’m sure there were a lot of local authorities at that conference who do very good social work, but no one cared because they put some words on a slide and read them to a bored audience.
Show is better than Tell.
Live is better than On Screen.
Puppets are better than Powerpoint.
Related: here’s Seth Godin on how to (not) use Powerpoint.
23 November 2008 Jeff Gill
tags: communication,
leadership
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