The CEO And Communications

James E. Rogers, C.E.O. and President of Duke Energy has three good observations regarding communications:

I want to know at the very beginning of a meeting, "What are you asking me to do?" or "What are you recommending that we to" - tell me right at the beginning so that I can listen to the presentation in the context of that.

I believe there is such a thing as "death by PowerPoint." I believe, and this is the storyteller in me, that I'd much rather have someone write a two-page summary of what they're thinking. When you're forced to sit and write it, not only are you getting the subject, verb, predicates right, but you're tying the sentences together and ideas together. PowerPoints are just bullets, bullets, bullets, and when you actually have to write something, you start to develop a more cohesive logic.

People really need to think in a broader way about the relationships and connections between the different functional areas of business. The second thing I would really teach is how to write, and how to speak and make presentations to tell a story, so that people feel it, sense it, and want to so something because of it.