Deception is to winning wars as wars are to securing peace. Thus, does deception lead to peace? Even though war and peace don’t exist simultaneously, they rely on each other for the other’s existence. So to what degree should we use deception to establish peace when we’re at odds with another? The answer lies in the degree we wish to establish calm for the purpose of peace, versus self-exultation, self-efficacy, or some form of selfishness.

There are times we feel deceived due to someone not abiding by their commitment to us, or when we deceive ourselves because we refuse to accept the reality of what is, or what’s coming; in the latter, we do so to create the peace within us that’s required to deal with a pending situation. In the former, we do so because of the naiveté we possessed that allowed us to be duped.

Regardless of the meaning you give a situation, understand the source of motivation that led you to such actions. Take note of how you felt as you entered into a situation, what occurred during and while you were engaged in it, and its outcome. By making note of such milestones, you’ll be creating historical markers from which to compare and adjust your future actions. You’ll be more aware of the cloak in which deceit might disguise itself and you’ll have new tools to uncover and combat it.

When your world is filled with war accept it for what it is, knowing that peace will surely follow. If you have the fortitude, you can survive almost anything. Don’t let a setback prevent you from experiencing the setup for a comeback.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In negotiations, deceit is an integral part of the negotiation. You may give the appearance of feigning left when your intent is to move right, ask for more than you need in hopes of getting what you really want, etc. In reality, everyone’s negotiation strategy contain aspects of deceit. So, don’t get upset with the opposing negotiator because you feel he’s deceived you. Instead, plan for the inevitable, which means accounting for some form of deceit, in his efforts to maximize his outcome. After all, you’re doing the exact same thing, attempting to maximize your negotiation efforts and outcome. Account for this in your negotiations and you won’t be distraught when it occurs. In so doing you’ll be better prepared mentally to negotiate… and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

Presentation materials are not only expensive to create but often embody the essence of a company’s strategic, tactical and future development plans. Electronic presentations have therefore assumed a vital importance as the primary communications tool for many companies.

Despite all this, presentations are typically created by a single person using Microsoft PowerPoint their own PC, with the result that materials are seldom shared; indeed they might be jealously guarded. At best, presentations may be copied to a shared network drive of some kind but will remain hard to find in the absence of powerful content search facilities. There are also other challenges to overcome, such as:

• Not knowing of a presentation’s existence means that the same material must be needlessly and expensively re-created time and again.
• In the absence of an easily searched central repository of approved, signed-off material, presenters can be tempted to make up their own content, perhaps resulting in needless compliance risks and/or legal exposure
• Presentations are typically exchanged between staff using Email or a shared drive. However, colleagues may not be available to send urgently needed materials, particularly in a global setting when 1/3 of staff might be asleep. This results in the non-availability of key assets, as well as imposing an extra load on Email systems
• With many different versions of ‘standard’ presentations doing the rounds it is hard to know which is the most up-to-date. Nor is there an easy way to review previous versions if necessary.
• When new presentations are finally approved it is difficult (often impossible) to recall out-of-date or incorrect copies of slides or to update them.
• Workers in other departments, divisions or countries cannot tell what presentations may be available and how relevant they might be.
• Company-wide branding is hard to enforce in the absence of an easy way of distributing presentation materials quickly and securely to authorized users.
• There is no way of seeing who has used which materials or when. Lack of audit trails can be a severe handicap in the event that legal compliance is called into question.
• It is impossible to determine the origin of any individual slide once it has been copied or moved from its original presentation.
• Selected materials cannot be shared securely with outside users or suppliers.
• It is difficult to quickly pull together tailored presentations for a specific audience.
• Expert and novice users alike have no option other than to be proficient with PowerPoint.

This is very costly

Make no mistake; living with this kind of inefficiency is very expensive. When the biggest outlay for most organizations is the salary bill, having highly-paid executives spend their time messing around with PowerPoint is just not smart.

Presentation Management therefore quickly leads to more effective collaboration between staff, with more efficient use being made of expensive presentation assets.

What’s the alternative?

If a solution can be found to address each of the above, it follows that large savings are possible, especially for organizations employing many presenters.

These are some of the challenges Digital Image set out to solve by creating a Presentation Management service to act as a secure central repository for an organization’s PowerPoint slides.

What’s in it for me?

Typical Presentation Management benefits are:

• Re-purpose expensive presentation materials saving time & money
• Web-based libraries of key PowerPoint presentations & slides
• Secure distribution of business critical presentations worldwide, 24/7
• Create new presentations ‘on the fly’ from existing slides
• Users save time by easily managing and sharing presentations
• Maximize revenue – react quickly to sales opportunities
• Stay on-message; Automatically slide updates when an original changes
• Share approved, signed-off information with remote users
• Save confusion – manage different drafts using ‘Visual Versioning’
• Save time with a powerful slide search and retrieval engine for individual slides
• Help Compliance- help enforce & monitor the use of legally approved and up-to-date materials
• Brand integrity- help impose current branding & template use
• Management controls record and report on usage of sensitive or valuable assets
• Reduced loading on Email systems by posting links, not large files
• Forensic reconstruction of historic materials delivered at any past time and date
• Zero client installation
• Minimal training because of an easy, intuitive interface.

Need to know more?

A solution does now exist for users and managers to share presentations with colleagues, perhaps worldwide, whilst keeping a record of who downloaded which material and when.