Just wanted to wish everyone a happy holiday. We’ve had a good year despite a recession, culminating with a veritable blizzard of wins for our clients in November and December. I won’t bore you with the details, but not far off £1billion value in the last month. January is currently our busiest month ever for … Continue reading
We come from TV, and that means we have spent an unatural amount of time thinking about something most people don’t have to think about – how to tell a story. What is a story? In business, a story is a joined-up series of messages. It’s not “Once upon a time” or “Three men walked … Continue reading
You may know we use Prezi most of the time. We think it’s great. One of the few things that people missed from PowerPoint was the ability to build. So Prezi have added it. If you don’t know Prezi, use the arrows at the bottom to cycle through the presentation. Have a go HERE
Well, maybe not. But we set ourselves that task of trying….. Perfect in a Minute from Grist Communications on Vimeo. What do you think? You can view direct on Vimeo – http://vimeo.com/user5849471/review/45314709/fef1eec69e
How do you give feedback? ……….Carefully. We all have egos. None of us like to be told we’re bad at things. So how do you go about telling people they are rubbish at something and need to improve? The reason I’m bothering to write this is that we do this every day, and we think … Continue reading
I wrote a post recently called Architects – Don’t take “Yes” for an answer which was based on observation of many client engagements – and their outcomes. That is winning and losing in competitive bids. But yesterday I spend a day with a mixed team of constructors, Fm, finance and bid specialists and I started … Continue reading
Neighbours From Hell Driving through my old neighbourhood yesterday really set me thinking about seeing someone else’s point of view. We lived in a quiet, wide street with largish houses. Many were families like ours, but not all. At the back of our garden, at right angles, was the garden of a house in the … Continue reading
Click the logo for our Engagement courses We started as presentation trainers, after 20 years of working with TV presenters. We then realised that presentations are easy – if you do the work – but that you could win or lose during the Q&A. So we developed a process for Q&A that we know works. … Continue reading
Presentation Tips for Architects Tweet This Article We have recently worked with many of the UKs most brilliant and creative architects and designers. HOK, Nicholas Hare, tp bennett, Broadway Malyan and many, many others. We either do presentation and engagement training for many people across the business, or work on live bids. For us this has … Continue reading
We’ve been doing a lot of Media training lately. In that way that “life is what happens to you while you’re making plans to do something else,” we haven’t been marketing ourselves particularly hard as Media trainers, but the work has come to us. It’s been fun to do because there is no other area … Continue reading
I wrote a couple of pieces here on Mistakes Architects make when Pitching and realised that the overall effect was a bit negative. Of course, since we get paid to make people more effective we do have to correct what people are doing wrong. But, as a presentation coach your objective has to be to … Continue reading
As human we aren’t as rational as we hope we are. So understanding our biases makes us more effective. Here are 10 ways we get things wrong, and ways that effects how we present ourselves. Confirmation Bias is where we look for information to support what we believe to be true, and ignore the opposite. … Continue reading
Today I’ve been thinking about pictures. TOO MANY VISUALS Yes, you can have too many visuals, or at least too many visuals on a screen or a page. Architects produce beautiful visuals of all sorts. Sketches, photos, mood boards, all can be beautiful, and often are. But, human beings can only process one piece of … Continue reading
We all have blind-spots, and the Architecture profession has many. How do we know? Because we have sat in 1000 rooms and heard the same mistakes made by 1000 people. If you can be the team that doesn’t fall into these traps then maybe you will win more new business. Are we right? You judge … Continue reading
Grist is a company that works with you to make you more effective in winning new business. After 6 years of winning business with our clients we know many sectors intimately. All aspects of construction, Facilities Management, Architecture, and Design. But our processes are effective in all sectors as we have shown in Software, Banking, … Continue reading
