Francois Miller
"Andy worked with our entire team from the start, and provided guidance throughout the process. We help brainstorming sessions, targeted follow-up meetings, and dry-runs with Andy. It was not only useful, it was also super fun!" Francois Miller, Sustainability Director, McGill University
My work with the McGill Office of Sustainability began with a 2 month engagement to help them level up their presentation skills. The format was to dive the team in half and work with each on a common pitch that needed to be developed.
One of the presentations was outward facing and entailed rethinking how they were positioning their work, the stories they want to tell to help them convey this approach, and developing the visuals to help support this process. What had been a long explanation of sustainability and work that the office was doing became a shorter, tighter, more engaging distillation of a core message that could then be used as a core part of any introductory presentation with any audience.
The other presentation was a for a specific pitch that would be given upward in the McGill management structure in order to better recognize and start to tackle issues of carbon footprint and travel. To say this opens the proverbial Pandora's box would be about right. Lots of discussions were had about how to best understand, anticipate and manage not only some hesitancy from the senior leadership group but also to anticipate and build strategies to respond to the various constituencies the leadership group would then need to onboard in order for success to happen.
Part 1 of this story ended with the 2 groups meeting up to take turns presenting to each other. This was fertile ground for continuing the conversations around voice and body language as well as getting feedback on the effectiveness fo various visuals developed.
And then part 3 of the story was a full circle moment that happened 18 months later. I was working with Chris Buddle (an associate provost at McGill) to help provide tips to a community of professors doing lightning talks about their research in the film studio that had been partially funded by the McGill Sustainability Office to help provide a high quality recording environment for professors who might choose to not fly to an event (an outgrowth of the pitch I had been working on with them).
Much to my surprise, I opened the door and there was Francois not only proud of the space he had helped fund but also ready to give a lightning talk of his own.
The video you see here is a short clip of Chris and Francois talking about the work I helped each of them do.
INSERT THE VIDEO CLIP HERE ONCE WE HAVE MORE ROOM
And I'm 90% sure I ahve some phtos kickin garound of our time together.