It’s easy to get pulled into the usual way of doing things. To take for granted that a presentation requires a formalised presentation, or that you have to sit in an office and work. Sometimes, stopping and questioning leads to more satisfactory outcomes.
The other week I had to go home to Sweden to say farewell to my nan. The funeral was on the Tuesday and on the Thursday we had a meeting in Lund, Sweden (which is very conveniently also my home town). My designer colleague flew in on Wednesday morning so we could finalise the sketches and our ideas. By routine my first thought was that we should set up camp in the canteen at the client’s office, but thinking twice about it there was no need.
We weren’t going to meet them until the day after and we could do with sitting in a more relaxed place. So instead I suggested that we go find a cafe in town with free internet. We went to Espresso house (the Swedish equivalent of Starbucks) from where I have many a teenage and early 20ies memories of meeting up with my friends. We picked a corner, unpacked our laptops and sketching pads and got working with a hot cup of coffee and a treat on the side. A few hours and a lot of good work later (including a joke with our AM back in London that my designer colleague never arrived) we had what we needed.
The next day we did some final tweaks and went over the work in the client’s canteen. We took our AM, who had arrived late the night before, through our paper based sketches and my visio document of user groups and needs. He wasn’t too thrilled about the idea of us coming to the meeting without having put a formal deck together, but we managed to reassure him that in fact, for the purpose of the meeting and knowing the client, it was more appropriate to put all our ideas up on the wall and talk him through them.
Said and done. The meeting proved to be a success and the client participated moving our sketches around, drawing and writing on the white board. By the time we left we had a clear steer on the route to take and a client that was happy, and an AM that was happy for that matter.
My colleagues flew back after the meeting and I went back to work from my dad’s and be there to support him for a few more days. Watching TV later that night I got a txt from my designer colleauge saying what a great two working days it had been and if only every working day could be like that. I couldn’t agree more.
The point of this story is not that I would like to work from a cafe all the time (as much as I like cafees I really wouldn’t) or that I never want to present work in power point, but that no two people are the same. Being that the client you’re due to present to or the colleagues you work with. To get the best out of people you need to pay attention to who they are and what rocks their boat and adjust accordingly. No matter how good the presentation, if the client doesn’t like powerpoint avoid it and come up with alternative ways to present work. Or you risk some of it getting lost in his/her frustration of seeing yet another powerpoint presentation. And if you/your colleague/employee works better away from the office every now and again, embrace it and you’ll make them/you happier, see better work and an increase in their/your sense of ownership.
It’s the little things like these that often get forgotten or overseen but which has the greatest impact, both on employee happiness and productivity. And on client relationships. We are by no means experts at it in Sweden but there is a lesson to be learnt about the Swedish way.
What made those two working days so special was the break they gave from the routine. How it didn’t feel like work when we were sat in the cafe and how we got to work collaboratively with our client. Of course it didn’t hurt that we were sat in a cafe.
