Rethinking …
The most popular edition of the 268 posts of this Substack so far is Rethinking Presentations on how to put together powerful presentations with only 9 slides!
The third most popular post is A Company of One on a way to ensure one remains relevant in a world of changing work.
This post combines a second approach to rethinking presentations and then illustrates how the format is used to get people to start rethinking work.
Rethinking Presentations 2
Rethinking Presentations 1 showed how to put together a presentation to make a sale or get an order and remains a very impactful way to do so.
Over the past few years as I have worked for myself rather than a company. I spend less time selling and more time advising, explaining the tectonic shifts we are experiencing and trying to inspire new behavior. Here is a very simple approach anyone can use when one is trying to educate, explain or inspire change.
The three key outcomes this new format seeks to deliver are:
a) Accessible explanations that are simple, focused and identify all the key issues. People are overwhelmed.
b) Actionable inspiration that leaves people not just feeling inspired but armed with a way to take action right away.
c) Personalized relevance in that every single person finds relevance to their personal situation. It must resonate to help them solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity.
This approach also requires only 9 key slides:
Slide 1: Title Slide (Action oriented)
Slide 2: Agenda (A simple, impactful way to telegraph what is to follow)
Slide 3: Shifts (What are the forces driving the changing situation and future)
Slide 4: Implications (What are the implications of these key shifts on the audience)
Slide 5: Realities (The hard truths and key challenges we need to face)
Slide 6: Approaches (What steps should one take right now)
Slide 7: Mindset (How to frame and address the situation moving forward)
Slide 8: Questions (Interaction and Q&A key when trying to explain/inspire)
Slide 9: Resources (Ways people can learn more and upgrade themselves)
Rethinking Work
The Rethinking Work presentation below uses this 9 slide approach to explain to management why work will change more this decade than the previous 50 years and what leaders and companies need to understand and address right now.
But this same approach can be used by anybody who wants to educate, explain and inspire on any subject or topic. It is totally modular. Just change topic and put in the relevant shifts, implications, realities, exercises and mindsets!
Five interconnected shifts will change work more this decade than the past 50 years.
Demographics of declining & aging population. Different mindsets across generations.
Technology (AI, Blockchain & Media Landscape where everyone is a media company).
Marketplaces that allow individuals and companies to access talent and opportunities.
More people will work part time or free-lance than full-time in the USA starting 2026.
Covid did not just change where we work but why we work and who we work for.
Four implications that organizations and leaders must address.
More and more work will be done without filling jobs. Until 200 years ago there was lots of work and few jobs. We are now going to have more and more work and income/wealth opportunities than ever but fewer jobs. We are past peak jobs.
Full-time, freelance & contract employees will be joined by fractionalized employees and agentic workers.
Current structures of most companies are often built around jobs rather than how to get work done by attracting and retaining the best talent with the greatest agility and affordability.
Debossification is the only way forward where leaders focus on zones of influence vs zones of control. Where leaders spend the majority of their time selling, building, inspiring, servicing and mentoring vs. monitoring, measuring, processing, and checking in, all of which will be done better by AI.
Three realities every company must face.
Companies do not transform people do. Change never happens without a talent plan.
Talent/L&D more critical than ever but must reinvent themselves and be less fearful.
Leadership is the critical element more than technology or strategy or partnerships.
Two Exercises.
Most management is world class but often self oppress and limit themselves by imagining constraints that only exist in their minds. These two exercises suggest starting with a fresh sheet on both the organizational and talent front.
Why is the current organizational structure which was probably out of date pre-Covid, pre-AI, pre-distributed work, still relevant for the tectonic changes coming? Without the right spinal architecture it makes no difference what AI or other organs are added.
The only thing a company has is talent. If the game changes and the playing field changes, talent needs to be rethought via a combination of upgrading skills, new ways of working and accessing of enhanced expertise both inside and outside the firm.
One Mindset.
We are all migrating to a new country, a new world, an unknown zone called the future which will not look like the place we are today.
So why have an immigrant mindset?
We need to think like outsiders since the new risks and opportunities will come from outside our existing competitive set.
We need to think like underdogs since AI is the slingshot that allows David to bring down Goliath. Moats might be used as sources of water to flood our castle!
We need to take the hard painful decisions and make the sacrifices now so we and our company can thrive in the future.
Questions and Resources to Keep Learning.
Education, Learning and Reinventing are constant.
Here are three completely free resources to upgrade one’s mental operating system:
This Substack (The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past)
A weekly podcast (What Next?) where every week people who are forging the future share their best insights, provocations, perspectives and points of view.
And The Rethinking Work Show a show on YouTube but also on Spotify and Apple where every week a discussion with people reinventing work from CEO’s and architects wrestling with back to the office, technologists introducing agentic employees into the work place, academics with data that put a lie to so much fuzzy thinking about the future of work, pioneers designing new firms which are AI first, different generations speaking about companies and work and much more…
You can download the extended (18 slide version of this presentation which goes deeper into the 5 shifts and the 4 implications) here by clicking on the presentation and you may use it in anyway you want.
Also at Rethinking Work check out the resources section where there is career advice and lots of stuff to help every one become better and more effective. If you or someone you know is rethinking your career these four articles might completely change the way you plan the rest of your working life.