Chapter 16: What to Do When You re Not Getting Cooperation

Reality Check

We worked with a Six Sigma team on a project involving large-scale change across a complex organization. The team needed to make a presentation to the CEO, who did not have a detailed view of that organization. The team leader had a 60-slide PowerPoint presentation, but the Checklist: Effective Project Presentation helped her realize that she would have to capture his attention in the first five minutes or he would be lost ... and would likely tune out or (worse) end the meeting.

We knew that the CEO was a visual thinker; whenever he spoke, it was always with a flipchart at hand, and he’d draw diagrams to illustrate his points. So we advised the team leader to keep the wordy slides in her “back pocket.” We helped her design a giant poster, with figures representing the various parts of the organization, the current interrelationships among them, and the probable changes that the project would create in those interrelationships. While the poster included a few words, the information was primarily visual.

At the presentation, the team leader spent a few minutes orienting the CEO to the poster and what it depicted. She then let the CEO direct the discussion. The presentation moved at the CEO’s pace, in the order of his choosing, and at a depth that he dictated. The PowerPoint slides never made it out of the team leader’s back pocket. The CEO did not leave the meeting with in-depth knowledge of what the team had been working on. He did leave with a global view of where the organization had been and was going ... and the team leader left with his full support for the project.