The end, at the beginning and other ways to success at a meeting with senior management

When you have to speak to people who are far above your level, structure your speech as follows:

- Start with the conclusion. Show what has been achieved and the keys to success (or failure) in a succinct way.

- Don't embark (first or after the conclusion) on a long argument of how you got there: If in doubt, someone will ask about specific points of the journey. If not asked, it should be in the documentation.

- Don't start looking something up on your computer to reinforce one of your arguments. If you are sure of your position, indicate that you will send “the evidence” later. Those seconds seem like hours, while you apologize that you're on it and all your argumentation, even the success of the project, goes down the sink.

- Put the project in perspective: The results may be very attractive, but you have to put those results in perspective of not only how they are beneficial to your team, but also to your division or the company. It's the famous slide of numbers, without graphs: 4 bulletpoints, 4 numbers that someone who has a global view can understand (and remember).

- Have all the data, documents, One Page Reports, etc. ready and available. It is feasible that someone will want to take a look at the process by which you have reached the objective (although it happens infrequently).

- And the most important thing, which generally, in almost no communication course is indicated, have an action plan ready. It doesn't need to be something very detailed, but a clear objective, a strategy of how we will get there and the big steps. There is nothing worse than presenting a success and not knowing how to answer the question “Great, now what's next?"

And one more thing: If the meeting is scheduled for half an hour, prepare your presentation for half the time. Don't count on the meeting starting on time and don't try to take up all the available time because people are bound to be late, especially when they don't have to justify themselves. So if the meeting is half an hour, plan for 15 minutes with 10 minutes of presentation and 5 minutes of questions. What will happen with the rest of the time? Don't worry... There will be no rest of the time :wink, wink: