In recent years I have been told far to many times that preps the way I do preps are:
Oh, and feel free to add your own…
- Not necessary, I’m just the <role> I don’t need this.
- Not needed by <person or higher up>
- A waste of time…
- We’ll do it live…
- Just a run thru of the deck…
- I don’t want to do this
- It’s awkward to rehearse
- I don’t understand why we need this?
Well, as it turns out. Luck favors the prepared. Imagine what luck you and teams have if you overprep?
What I will try to outline is why this concept is often discussed. It is often undervalued, ignored, or not done. Many times, people think that creating deck’age is the preparation. However, it is actually the last thing you do to prepare. When groups of folks need to collaborate and communicate, they face challenges. Competency in these areas is where things begin to break down.
Collaborate means to think and work on what is to be shared within a given context. This could be a meeting, workshop, work session, discussion, or pitch. When collaborating, ensure there is a structure. Have a way of scaffolding a story map that a group can contribute to. Adjust and align with it. Sadly, in many instances folks do not know how to collaborate. There was not collaborate classes in school I guess. I am skeptical of humans who struggle with collaborating since it is how we are here today. See my story on storytelling.
Communicate in prep what story you are thinking about to your teammates. Then actively listen to points of view on how and where this fits, thematics, and key insights. All to say, your audience is spending time. What would you have them leave with?
Competency is a super important characteristic of over prepping. Folks need to know things. They need to convey information in a comprehensive and comprehensible way. This is a lot harder than it seems. Generalists can struggle with specificity while specialists can have issues with context when detailing things. The ‘T’ type person is broad and deep. They can also prep a session by identifying the context. They understand the nature and substance of what is to be covered in the session.
The concept behind why I am obsessive about preparation. Preparation is the fundamental basis for any success in nearly any endeavor I’ve ever done.
Some reasons:
- Rehearsal make content and flow familiar to the point of ‘muscle memory’.
- Content is committed to memory across key objectives and outcomes desired
- There are generally more than one person in any presentation or other meeting. Group dynamics are smoother when practiced as a group.
- Making adjustments and getting more POVs on what is being put together.
- Establishing a run of show that works regardless of people with a pile of deckware.
- Deck culling, talk tracking, story mapping also creates a considered and curated experience for your audience.
- Story boarding, layout in snippets what the end in mind is
- Murder boarding, beat your narrative to death, be deliberate, be difficult be the antagonist in order to be the catalyst for the prep to be of value
- Deal with ego, neediness, pettiness, unprepared.
- The Curveball questions, do them
- Find the angles that work, work the team, so the team works.
- Over to you, can you take that, back to you. Callbacking and foreshadowing through the presentation—obvi do this in preps, to do it during the presentation, meeting, interactions—whatever.
- Ultimately, people will not remember what you say as much as they will remember how you made them feel.
Know your audience, and no your audience, also know your team and no to your team. What does this mean?
Understanding every person or persona requires some thinking. It also requires research and profiling. This involves all the peoples, topics, and expectations you can derive or discover.
Including some of the stuff above will ultimately shape your narrative in unexpected ways. You will realize there is more to the prep than meets the eye.
So what?
- You need more prep than you think. Always true.
- You and your teammates are more confident that they should be. See the Dunning Kruger effect. Act like you don’t know anything, and you’ll understand the expansive ignorance advantage.
3. Overprepping is overcoming collective egos and gets at the journey of preparation not the destination of delivery.
4. This is a repeatable form of team building and team protection. There is a certain amount of psychological safety in all the preps.
5. This is not the end, this is just the beginning.
Now if you read this and think, you got this, don’t. There are many unexpected things that will happen that you can’t prep for enough. Don’t be discouraged, your prep will pay dividends.
#keepprepping and #keepmoving.