Category — travel & technology

Consultants do present in front of board rooms full of CXO’s the whole time, from Monday to Friday, even the most junior ones.

Nah, ‘course not. Most of the time, the Powerpoint slides you do never end up being projected on a wall, but rather emailed and printed. And, I hate to brake it to you, there are weeks when you don’t have a sit-in at the CEO’s office. He still calls you, of course, but that’s just a given. (If you haven’t noticed the tongue-in-cheek yet, for all its worth, go become a banker)

Still there regularly are occasions when you get to actually present. For those times, the right tools can kick your performance up a notch. There’s no use in gadgets without solid preparation – both of the material to be presented and the performance itself – but let’s assume that you did your homework for now.

Think about one of the last keynote presentation Steve Jobs gave. See what you don’t see? Right. He doesn’t stand there hunched over his laptop, clicking the slides forward.

He’s got a remote. You need one, too.

Maybe not the exact same one – that one costs you around 500 EUR minimum. It’s a great piece of tech, but for 99% of the settings… a bit over the top. But fear not, there are many affordable options out there.

What you want is a device that advances the slides on the push of a button, remotely. There are many option out there, the cheapest I saw cost about 25 EUR. I got myself a Logitech Presenter (about 60 EUR), mainly just to pamper myself, but there are some features I like:

• It has a built-in timer that gives you  a countdown, an indication which quarter of your time you are in, and buzzes when you are about to run out of time: This saves me looking at the watch, plus I can glance at it relatively unnoticed.
• It has buttons to get the presentation started,  to blank the screen and a switch on the side to control the volume of the computer – great when you are showing embedded video/audio files and the sound level is not perfect from the start.
• There’s a laser pointer embedded. I mostly use it to fool around, but it might come in handy.
• It has a three-level battery indicator which reduces guesswork
• The USB dongle fits inside the remote, so risk of losing it is minimized.

The basic feature set you are looking for, anyway: Slide forward / slide backward, a button to blank the screen as bonus. Don’t go for anything that just submits “left mouse click / right mouse click” – especially in consulting presentations, you almost always have to get back a few slides when questions pop up, and it’s worth nothing when on a right click the context menu pops up. Too much hassle.

What is in it for you?

• You can move about freely. Most often, you still look at the screen of your laptop to see the slide that is shown behind you, but now you don’t hunch over it like a hen protecting its eggs. This leads to…
• Better presence on stage. Your posture is a big part in how you are perceived as a presenter. Plus, it has a feel of professionalism to it when you don’t have to glance over to your colleague to have him click to the next slide or do it yourself.
• Last and most importantly: You are more relaxed while presenting. This cannot be paid in gold. When you are in front of the client, presenting the results of that big, expensive consulting project – you need all your mojo on the content and on your performance.

Florian in travel mode - Copyright: Malin Schulz, 2008

I know I mentioned this before, but for those of you who didn’t catch it while in print: Zeit Campus recently released the article they did about me and (mainly) the content of my suitcase on their website.

So, in case you were wondering what the heck a consultant has in the black trolley, this is your chance to get the inside scoop.

“Der Typ mit dem Koffer” (Zeit Campus online)

Thanks again to Inge Kutter and Malin Schulz from Zeit Campus who made this a really pleasurable experience, and to Achim from my employer’s press department who gave me this fun opportunity.

I just finished “Air Babylon“, and it only took me two days because I had bought other books in between and had to get started at them as well. It is a made up story about people working for an airline – but based on real tales from people in the industry – taking the reader along for an event-packed ride of one working day at a british airport. It features ground staff, from baggage handlers to the chaplan to the girls at the check-in desk, and also the pilots, the stewardesses and last not least, passengers. There’s fun, grief, blood, drugs, sex, love, crime, the whole lot and then some.

One word: Hilarious.

So much for the fun part. The book got that down pretty well.
But wait, there is more! Every consultant should consider this mandatory literature… because it teaches you a hell lot about what to do and what not to do when dealing with airline personnel, and I take it you all do this more or less every bloody week, enjoying it or not. This book might just save you from getting the worst seat in the airplane, or having your coffee spit in. Not that I assume any of you do behave in any way that might tickle such behavior. Of course you don’t.
But maybe you have a cousin – you know, that bloke who behaves really badly sometimes, especially when it is 6am on a Monday morning and he just wants to get on that f’ing flight and really has no time to be friendly or stuff, and happens to be a consultant. Just by chance, of course. Then you should really recommend this book to your cousin.

On a sidenote – yeah, I am back. I really had no nerve for blogging in the last months, but the skies are clearing now, so let’s kick this thing back into gear, shall we?

Just a little piece of self-promotion: If you live in German-speaking continental Europe and fancy meeting me and my suitcase – this is your chance. The magazine ZEIT Campus did a feature on Consulting, and they asked me to show them what a Consultant packs for a normal week of travel. You find me in the current edition (September/October 2008) on pages 52/53.

For those of you who are wondering if there are some rules to follow when packing your bags – well yes, there are! My heroes at Manager Tools recently started covering travel-related topics, and as luck has it, they cover packing your bags first. You find that podcast here.

At many of my assignments I need a rental car to get from the nearest airport to the client, the hotel and back. The travel policy of my company tells me what class of cars I can rent – but of course, this is just were the game begins: What upgrade can I get for free?

1. Get the plastic
   Every car rental I know of has a bonus card. The standard ones are usually free for everybody and only carry your details, so that you don’t have to provide address, etc. every time you rent. The better ones (“platinum”, “privilege”, etc.) often entitle you to free upgrades. You get them by either simply renting a lot of cars (just a matter of time) or, if you are lucky, your company already has a deal with them, so that you not only get a special rate, but also that desired piece of plastic. Check with your colleagues when you are new – everybody plays this game, so it should not be hard to find someone in the know.
2. Build a relationship to the people at the counter
   This works great when you are renting in smaller airports / train stations / cities, where the crew at the desk of the rental firm does not rotate too much. In the best case, there is always the same person there when you arrive, half awake, on Monday morning. This is your chance! Those at the desk have, most often, direct influence on what car they give you. The hold, so to speak, the keys to your rental luck. Be nice to them. Cheer them up. Don’t be pushy, and don’t force it. The key (again!) lies in making it a positive experience for THEM, so that they can happily reward you with a bigger/faster/nicer car. If not this week, then next.
3. Ask for an upgrade. NICELY.
   The times I got a shiny sportscar while paying for a Golf? That was when the customer before me was a rude idiot who tried to push the clerk at the desk into giving him a big car. Of course, he did not. If I remember correctly, he walked away with a Ford. Serves him right. When it was my turn, we first shared a laugh about that ridiculous guy, and when I gave her my piece of plastic and said that I had a reservation, I just said “something that fits the good weather would be great!”. Her response: “Hm, let me see. Wait a minute!”… off she went to the back office, and when she came back she was almost apologetic – “I am sorry, there was no convertible left… but I think you’ll like it still!”. Let’s just say I was never faster at client side than that day.
   Remember: Asking for an upgrade is perfectly fine. Just be nice and casual about it. And don’t bitch if it doesn’t work – see point two, you might see her again next week!

On a sidenote: I do recognize that it does not matter at all in a real-world-sense what car you get as long as it takes you where you want to go. Still, being a road warrior, it often is a very welcome goodie that makes the Monday-morning routine just a bit more fun.