Know-How Exchange : Other

Dear RJ,

Whenever anything needs to be handed out to people, doing so during a presentation is a recipe for failure.

If you hand out packs of information and then tell people about it as they're leafing through pages, they won't be listening to you and all you'll hear is the rustle of sheets of paper.

Deliver you message instead in clear, short bites. Just the facts. Nothing too deep. Keep it simple and THEN, once you've made you points 1, 2, 3, etc., THEN hand out more detail and make sure your BIGGEST and most powerful points are spelled out first and last.

If you put the important information in the middle of your presentation it will sink like a stone because of something psychologists call recency bias: this explains why we recall the first and last parts of a message the most—because they are the most recent and we can only handle sets of information as they come in based on our notions of priority.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Focus the message on why the employees really should care about the value statement. Is the purpose to handle some recent internal problem? Is there some "meat" to the statement - something measurable that really can make a difference in the lives of your customers or employees? All the posters, jackets, and slogans in the world won't change the effectiveness of the value statement until you've figured out the "what's in it for me" side of things. And perhaps that's the activity you can do as a group - share the statement and get people to chime in on why certain values are important to them (or not). Make it a team building exercise and not a "message from on-high".

Hi RJ, Can you tell us a little more about your company and your value statement? It's extremely difficult to recommend products, especially a series of products, that will be relevant without knowing what industry the employees work in and what the focus of the message is. Even if you don't want to tell us exactly what the statement is, does it concentrate on service, teamwork, price point, etc?

Just going on the 3-part aspect, a few potential products you could give people are:
Juggling Set - Have a different part of your message printed on each ball.
https://teamworld.logomall.com/ProductDetail/ProductDetail.aspx?id=7217250&...
Gift Set such as a thermos with 2 mugs so each part of your statement can be printed on a different piece.
https://teamworld.logomall.com/ProductDetail/ProductDetail.aspx?id=7700671&...
Executive Game such as Perplexia, where each part of the statement can be written on a different side of the triangular base.
https://teamworld.logomall.com/ProductDetail/ProductDetail.aspx?id=7445430&...

These are just some quick ideas off the top of my head. I would be happy to make suggestions that are more relevant to your specific project if you provide us with additional information.

Hope this helps!

Rebecca