Presentation Disaster
True incident which happened today.
I had a presentation with one of our most important clients at 9am today morning. My team and I had been working on this account for months. This presentation was vital for our future engagement. It showcased our work and the showed the path forward. It had taken weeks to just get the calendars of all key members aligned and get 30 minutes.
Here’s what happened.
5am – I wake up early and start to fine tune my materials. I usually avoid the use of AV materials like slides, video or audio in my presentations. But not today. I thought I am going to WOW them with my creative skills along with my powerful words.
830am – Still hammering my creativity on my slides. Saw a new feature to add audio and used it to my slides. Took a backup. Changed the music with a more peppy number. Saved. Done. Let’s get ready to WOW them now.
9am- Presentation begins and I give the opening remarks.
905am - And then it dawns on me….I made a terrible blunder. This meeting is on google meet, not Zoom. Shit! I did not know how to share my audio and video on google meet. I am more comfortable with Zoom.
906am - I apologize and request the CEO of the client company to say a few words while I resolve the crisis. He sweetly obliges. Oh! The Irony of it all. I call myself a communication expert and am supposed to work with their top leadership brass on a communication leadership program. Here I am....struggling with my own communication tools.
907am - I can’t figure it out. I enter a panic mode and ask for help. Few of the members in the audience volunteer. "Send us your slides and we will play it from our laptop", some reply.
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908am - I email the ppt file to a noble soul among the audience. Copied 3 others just in case.
912am - I decide to postpone my AV presentation to the last to ensure that I don’t break the flow of the meeting. I invite other speakers to say their views. Smooth sailing so far.
925am - everyone else has spoken and I have to now show the slides with AV materials which I had sent to the noble soul in the audience.
926am – I call his name and he obliges. I watch the slides and listen to the music. My jaw drops. Its all wrong. I sent the wrong file by oversight. Oh Shit!!!
930am - the audience was quite graceful and didnt show their disappointment much. They are lovely people and deserve better. I apologized profusely, ended the meeting and am searching for a puddle to drown myself since then. (figure of speech)
My colleagues sent lovely messages to cheer me up. My family has begun preparations for an evening full of ice cream and other dishes I enjoy when I am little low.
Despite all the planning, preparation and expertise, this presentation was a disaster. It could have been avoided by better planning and preparation which ironically, I teach in my programs but did not apply to my own work today. Lesson learnt.
Has this happened to you? Do share your agonies of presentations gone wrong and what did you do after that.?Please also share tips and suggestions that have helped you.
#communication #confidence #collaboration #curiosity #creativity #competence
Senior Vehicle Weight Engineer | Data Analytics | Six-Sigma Black Belt
3 年Hi Rakesh, guess this is the most common experience for almost everybody these days. I would like to share some insights from my own experience recently. I have a comfort of working online meetings using Cisco Webex and one day i am asked to deliver some experiences via Microsoft teams (googled when i got the meeting link to see how material is shared on Teams). What was originally a one hour planned session, then last minute was made into 1.5 hour long. so i made last minute changes to use some videos for the talk by the grace of YouTube. Challenge is YouTube pops ads which i had not anticipated. So golden minute of the talk, i click the link from presentation and voila!!! ad pops up before the video. my learnings: keep the video link open in the browser just before the talk. if the ad still pops (coz Murphy works), engage in a filler talk muting the video for that 5-10 seconds of ad which you cant skip.
Senior Manager - India post payments bank
3 年Sir, I am so thankful to you that I am one of your students @ IIM-VIZAG and the way you teach is awesome ?? I recollect your words that speakers are must speak with the soul and sense instead of preparing of PPTs etc ??????????
Harvard Project Fellow 2022 | Co Founder at Human First | Graphic Designer I Blockchain Enthusiast | Educator
3 年Hi, Rakesh it was not a disaster at all but a lesson from the School of Meaningful Experiences for the post-pandemic world where we all are trying to be meaningful with whats needs to be communicated while scrambling through wifi connectivity and hardware, software issues. I have learned that in an online presence if something has to go wrong it will go wrong so the best way is to remain cool let people know things have gone wrong and to be honest which you did. I must admit audience too has started being supportive having witnessed such scenarios in their personal capacity one or the other way. I am writing such a long post as I really liked that you shared this incident which may help many of us to avoid such disasters. Besides everything, I must admit Google Meet sucks! The UI isn't intuitive and it appears that Google has abandoned it for sake of being free. for suggestions, I may put 1. Always confirm the platform to be used before meet suggest if it may be accommodated to a familiar one. 2. Keep a copy of your document over Gdrive, Onedrive, and Dropbox: with open access to links to anybody. And last but not least avoid touch devices: you never know what u might end up clicking!
Assistant Professor at Jssate / Education nationale
3 年Hi Rakesh, Thanks for sharing your experience. Similar experience I had recently. I knew to switch between screens while presenting using google meet. I thought it could be the same on any tool. But, when I had to do on ZOOM, I could not switch between the screens, without stop presenting one screen. So, I did not share many of the content, manage to tell orally, which was not effective.
IT Leader | Driving Large-Scale Deals | Integrated Digital Solutions | Presales Expert | Driving Global Delivery & Delivery Excellence | AI Enthusiast (PGP AI for Leaders, TEXAS, McCombs School of Business)
3 年I have faced similar situation and learnt that to accept mistake, learn from it and strive to be better next is the way forward. Truly appreciate you sharing this personal story.