Sometimes my philosophy on presentation design can apply to real life situations. At a recent public meeting, I witnessed firsthand the benefits of making a presentation less about one’s self and more about the audience.
The people’s forum
Here in New England, town meetings form the foundation of local government. In addition to voting on the more mundane aspects of governing a small town, such as budgets and bylaw wording changes, we vote on matters brought to the meeting by citizen petition. My town had its annual meeting on June 4th. The meeting starts at 7:00 pm and citizen petition articles are generally heard toward the end of the night, which could be anytime between about 8:30–10:00 pm. By then, everyone just wants to go home. But the presentation and discussion of citizen petition articles usually takes a while because these are issues near and dear to the petitioners’ hearts.
Vote yes, and here’s why!
At about 9:45 that night, a citizen petition article came up about changing a private road that the neighborhood maintained into a public one that would be maintained by the town. Twenty-four of the twenty-five families who live on that road approved of the change. A couple of people spoke briefly in favor of the measure, and one woman described filling potholes when she was several months pregnant! Their stories made us folks who live on public roads realize how easy we have it. We could clearly see their point of view and commiserate.
Vote no because I said so.
In contrast, the dissenter spent most of her speaking time complaining about damage done to her property over the past 40 years, such as tree cutting by the electric company (which has to be done), stone walls being knocked over, and surveyor stakes being plowed up in the wintertime. Her grievances had nothing to do with the article we were voting on and her petulant, confrontational attitude earned her no sympathy. She made the presentation all about herself and didn’t notice that we in the audience were becoming increasingly impatient with her testimony. After giving her about 15 minutes to speak, the moderator ended the discussion at 10:10 pm and called for a vote. The measure won by a landslide.
The Takeaway
So here’s what I learned at this year’s town meeting:
- Make your presentations meaningful for the audience. When you’re trying to change minds, you really need to craft a message that the audience can relate to.
- A long monologue to a group of tired people who’ve been sitting for three hours and who need to get to work the next morning probably won’t get you the results you want. Be brief and get to the point quickly.
Who knew that the secrets of great presentations can be brought to bear when governing a town?