One Mid

Nearly every business team leader has experienced it at one time or another. You have just 15 minutes to make a presentation to upper management about an initiative your feel deeply about. You work hard to prepare the perfect presentation, only to met by the executives with stony silence after you are through. What happened?

My work over the past decade with change leaders has allowed me to hear some great tips for making successful presentations to senior management. I have also seen the flip side with more than one flop. I went straight to the source and asked leaders in both public and private industry what they wanted to see from their mid level managers when hearing presentations.

The executives agreed that when mid-level leaders attempt to make a case for funding or other support, they often provide far too much information. Many pitches fail because executives don't have the time or interest to delve into every aspect of an initiative. Most executives don't want or need to know each and every task your team is working on. They don't want to have to weigh in on every decision.

Here are three proven strategies to have a presentation to senior management that will limit the presentation to the most important details.

1. Summarize your main points in a Power Point presentation.

Power point is so powerful in this type of presentation because it forces you to organize your key points into short and to the point statements. The Power Point Presentation should be high level key points, and you should be prepared with illustrative stories and anecdotes to bring those points alive. The goal will be to stay on any one Power Point screen no more than three minutes during your presentation. Make sure you have the details to back up your presentation, but only as a resource if you receive specific questions about a key issue.

2. Organize your main objectives and goals into relevant groups.

Recently, I saw one mid-level manager include all the details of every task his team had planned over the next year in his presentation to senior management. While it was his hope that the details would strengthen his proposal, it resulted in irritating senior management instead. One executive even told the team leader that the committee had no interest in hearing what the team had planned for the year. They just wanted the significant points.

Separating goals and tasks into related groups is a helpful technique. One example of this might be to state in your introduction that in the coming year, your groups goal is to focus on cost savings, making processes more efficient and creating a stronger bottom line. Then, your presentation would consist of giving examples of how you intend to be successful in each of these three areas. Using this approach will help senior management to focus on how the proposals you suggest for your team will impact the entire company, and allow them to decide if these are the areas that they want to stress in the coming year.

3. Briefly describe what you need from senior management to press forward.

A great number of presentations to senior management take on an informational tone. The team leader will update the executives on status of the project and then ask for questions. Their expectation is that senior management will take the initiative and suggest a plan for funding and support of the project, which unfortunately is rarely the case.

Instead, conclude your pitch with a slide that summarizes specifically what you need. This might be money, a decision, or dedicated resources. Yes, there is a risk that your request will be turned down, but it's better to know that now, than to keep spinning your wheels.

In the 90s, a group of external consultants went to work with General Electric to derive a change acceleration process. As part of that process, the team found a four step process that worked very well in short, effective presentations:

* Our initiative is about...

* It is essential to the organization because...

* What this means for senior management is...

* Here is what we need from you. . .

Use this approach both in one-on-one conversations with stakeholders and in your formal pitches and presentations. You will find that your ability to argue for your case will improve as you learn to focus on these key elements.

Streamlining your sales presentations so that they are short and to the point, you will be much more successful at communicating your goals and not your tasks. Being very specific and clear about what you need will help senior management to know right away what you are proposing, what you would like from them to help you succeed, and, most important, how it will positively impact the entire organization.