Chapter 13Be direct and talk about the elephants in the room. Even ride ’em and teach ’em tricks—it’s a better way, even if it feels wrong.
One of my favorite business cartoons shows a man presenting a chart on which the line graphing his project’s progress starts in the middle, climbs a bit, and then falls dramatically. The caption is a question from one of the men being presented to: “Would you please elaborate on ‘then something bad happened’?”
I used this slide in presentations about Kodak to illustrate the decline of film and the company’s need to adapt and become a digital company or die like RCA, Oldsmobile, Polaroid, and other great American brands. But the cartoon is equally good for illustrating the importance of talking about elephants ...
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