Results 1 to 2 of 2
Apr 30, 2007, 22:52 #1
- Join Date
- Jan 2007
- Las Vegas, NV
- 0 Post(s)
- 0 Thread(s)
How to Introduce New Ideas (Without Losing Your Audience)
I'm working on a white paper for my corporation and it just occurred to me that speaking in technical jargon would make me look like a multi-headed hydra preaching Shakespeare at a kindergarten. Implications aside, I wanted to kick around some ideas on how to introduce a new topic to someone completely unfamiliar without losing her/him in translation.
Here's what I'd like: let's practice on each other by giving a short, maybe two paragraph explanation of a system that the others aren't necessarily versed in. We can then compare our presentation styles to find which is the most effective. I'll start:
Col. John Boyd USAF introduced a revolutionary way to grow and maintain a business with his OODA Loop Theory. OODA stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act; the concept is that every person in a conflict (business or military) must first observe the conditions of the conflict, orient himself to a position where he can act, decide on how to act (some theorists combine the Orient-Decide step), and then act in response to the conflict. Boyd's theory was that all persons involved in the conflict must go through this loop and that the people who can loop faster will have an advantage over the others.
In business, this means that the corporation who acts fastest has a time advantage over the opposition; this time advantage gets compounded each time the corporation acts sooner than the competition. By acting sooner we can take advantage of competitor's weaknesses and press our agendas to the marketplace, forcing them to react to us. This is key in obtaining and growing market share.Boyd's OODA Loop:
Observe, Orient, Direct, Act