On February 11, 2015, it was my good fortune to be a speaker at the 2015 SMPS Pacific Regional Conference in Seattle. My topic was one that is of particular importance to me, and a subject about which I am very passionate.
My session was about the often adversarial relationship between marketing and technical staff in the firms that make up the A/E/C industry—planning, architecture, engineering, survey, landscape architecture, environmental, construction management and construction firms—and how to make those relationships less adversarial, more collaborative.
Working both within and for A/E/C firms over the last 37 years, my personal observations have given me some strong opinions about where the difficulties originate, why they continue and what can be done to ease the tension and turn adversaries into advocates for both the marketing effort and the marketing staff.
By my count, we had more than 60 attendees at the 90-minute session. There were a half-dozen or more questions at the end, and a number of people came up to thank me for a good session.
On March 5, I received the evaluation summary of my session. The responses were a bit confusing, somewhat surprising, and brought me up short.
On the positive side, responses included:
- Solid overview of what needs to happen to enable more collaborative relationships.
- Frank input from someone who has been there/done that.
- Bernie has a strong base of information on the subject and communicated it well.
- Great speaker. Good anecdotes. Energetic!
- Bernie was a great presenter. Very clear, knowledgeable, and engaging.
On the negative side, responses included:
- Some of the examples given were a bit “dated” although it was accurate.
- Info and delivery was poor. Came off as old-school.
- Session had a very (ironically enough) adversarial tone. The content was couched in an “us vs. them” tone.
- Do not bring this speaker back. Ever.
Since my first conference presentation almost 10 years ago, this evaluation summary was the lowest scores I have ever received for a presentation. Looking back, I have to agree that the scores are pretty accurate.
The presentation IS “old-school.” I have been submitting this topic to conferences for a few years, and this is the first time it was accepted. It never occurred to me that this is no longer the issue I had been carrying around with me for so long.
The presentation WAS a little angry and negative—perhaps more than just a little angry and negative. I have been independent for more than 10 years now. I guess I assumed that the situation I left in the early 2000s was still common. Apparently, it is not.
I don’t know about the slides being “unengaging,” but they are definitely wordy. I try to limit the number of bullets on a slide, but not the number of words. This goes back to when the slide show was the hand-out. Since this is no longer the case, the slide show is really just an outline from which to speak, and I need to rethink my approach to the slide show—even for when I give presentations I’ve already given.
Bottom line: this set of evaluations was not particularly terrible, but it was not what I wanted to hear.
However, IT WAS something I obviously needed to hear, and I’m glad that the evaluators respected me enough to give honest opinions without pulling any punches.