EMC Global Services has more than 14,000 employees spread all over the globe. Two career questions come up more frequently than any others: What can I do next and how do I get there?

Over the last two years, my role has been to help answer those questions.

The Challenge of a Global Workforce

The global, remote nature of our workforce creates some unique challenges. How do you find job openings, build a network and advance your career when you’re one of just a handful of people in your area?

There are employees at EMC who have quite successfully navigated those challenges. We realized early on that capturing and sharing their stories was important.

One of our first successes was Career TV, video podcast series with a simple concept: Ask some of EMC’s best and brightest employees to share their best career advice in 60-seconds or less, film it, and post it on YouTube.

After doing a series of these videos, we began to notice some common themes and trends. We started compiling insights around common topics into short ebooks. The Career Guide series was born.

All of these tools reside on an internal social network called EMC-ONE. They’ve helped sparked discussions around topics like leadership and continuous learning. They’ve helped people connect, share and learn from each other.

Storytelling as a Job

While the subject matter I’ve worked with has definitely been human resource related, the type of work I do is not strictly HR.

If anything, I’m a professional storyteller. I capture and share employees’ stories. Big picture, I tell a story about learning and development at EMC.

And I’ve come to realize that this is what I like best about my job. Storytelling.

I’ve been giving some thought to what I might do next. Something in our Learning & Development group would be an obvious match. But I also think Marketing might be an interesting way to use the skills I’ve developed.

After all, marketing is storytelling (ideally nonfiction).

So I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing next. I know I want to stay at EMC, and I want to help tell stories. Beyond that… I’m still trying to figure it out.

Apparently today kicks off Say No to PowerPoint week. A variety of tech conferences have “banned boring slide shows in favor of short, fast-paced product demos.” Honestly, I think that’s pretty stupid.

The problem isn’t PowerPoint – it’s how people use it.

You don’t blame microphones for the influx of terrible hip-hop and pop music. You blame the artists who make it and the consumers who willingly consume it. Same goes for crappy presentations.

PowerPoint Is Just a Tool

Some people (like Garr Reynolds, Steve Jobs and Guy Kawasaki) use it to tell wonderful, visual stories. But most people in the business world create hideous, boring, bullet-point laden snooze-inducers.

Instead of banning a tool altogether, why not force people to create engaging presentations and compelling stories, no matter what medium they use. Need an example? Check out TED. Some people use slides. Some don’t. It’s a moot point. The pre-requisite is a great story – not a particular storytelling medium.

If you ask people how to make better presentations, a lot of folks say things like, “Use better software, like Apple’s Keynote or Prezi.” That’s just dumb.

You wouldn’t look at a painting by Michelangelo (or your favorite Ninja Turtle) and ask what paintbrush he used. The brush is just a tool. The artist is what makes a painting beautiful or boring.

Same goes for presentations.

Some Ideas

So what you can you do to make better presentations?

1. Tell stories. Don’t just spout facts and concepts. Tell a story. Use emotion.
2. Stop using bullets. I haven’t put a bullet-point in a presentation in two years. Take each bullet point and make it it’s own slide. One line of text per slide, max.
3. Stop using words. Better yet, ditch words altogether. You’re telling a story. Use pictures. Full-bleed pictures that run right to the edge of the slide. Beautiful, high-resolution images. Not the crappy stock imagery you find in Microsoft Clipart. Relevant images that reinforce your story. Treat PowerPoint like a slide projector (you remember those, right?)
4. Go naked. Skip the slides entirely. Use a whiteboard. Bring a tangible product people can touch and manipulate. (Please don’t actually GO naked. Wear clothes.)

I’m sick of sitting through crappy presentations. I’m sure you are, too. Let’s do something about it!

PS: A great place to start is Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds.

No one actually knows…

So yea, this video has nothing to do with HR.

But it’s pretty damn interesting and entertaining, right? Unlike about 98% of the webinars and trainings we make our employees sit through.

Maybe you don’t have a talented animator at your organization, but you can still do something like this with one basic step: Stop talking at people and start telling stories.

Humans are naturally storytellers. It’s what we do. It’s how we learn. In their fantastic book, Made to Stick, brothers Dan and Chip Heath postulate that stories offer a proxy for real life experience, which is why people are so drawn to them.

Want people to learn? Tell them stories.

No really, I do.

Last week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Judith Lindenberger of the Lindenberger Group about my work at EMC. I talked about some of the unique challenges we face and how we overcome them.

We have 15,000 people globally and they work in small teams or by themselves. There is a huge body of institutional knowledge but employees don’t always have the opportunity to interact with one another or get to meet one another. I try to figure out ways to bridge those gaps.

Click here to read the whole thing…

One of the more interesting ongoing discussions I’ve had at work has been about how to incorporate gaming elements into learning and development.

The following TED Talks video explores that very issue (email subscribers click through).

I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section. How might we apply these ideas to learning, performance management, even recruiting?

A few months ago, Benjamin McCall from Rethink HR invited me to be part of an exciting ebook project: What we teach. How we learn.

As the name implies, it’s a book for learning and development pros. It’s a short, easy read and features an awesome lineup of contributors.

Click Here to Download

The other day my buddy Ben Eubanks from Upstart HR asked me if I had any tips for giving great presentations. Here’s what I told him.

1. You are the presentation, not the slides.

Your slides should compliment your presentation, not be your presentation. If people can understand the presentation without you there, why give a presentation at all?

2. Practice, practice, practice.

You want to be at a place where you know what the next slide is going to be before you click to it.

That doesn’t mean memorizing your presentation verbatim. It means know the core message and being able to speak to it clearly.

I never give the same presentation twice, but my core message is always the same.

Keep reading…