David Nyeste

The Power of Inclusion My first post on this blog was in German. At the time it was a spontaneous idea to share a unique experience that I knew would mark a significant moment in my life. I shared it foremost with my friends and the members of my sports club. Later I started to write posts in English just to test how it feels. As a German native speaker I only speak English as a second language, so why would I write in English? A simple and obvious explanation is that English is spoken by a lot more people than German. I do not intend this blog exclusively for a German speaking audience. In order to grant access to this content for as many people as possible is of course a very obvious, however not my most important reason. More Eloquence is More Potential for Clutter During my professional experience on multiple international projects and assignments I have realized that English native speakers can sometimes fall into a squabble where they talk a lot but say very little. Especially Am...

Virtual Coffee Break Strategies for networking had to be rethought in the times of the pandemic. Here's one of my favorite networking strategies that I usually apply on Fridays, to start a conversation with colleagues I would otherwise not have the opportunity to work with: 1. Visit your company's staff list, e.g. on the intranet or in your company's contact list. 2. Pick a specific unit within the organization (e.g. sales, IT, production, etc.). Repeat this top down approach if you like in order to make the next step less random. 3. Pick a random person within the contact list of the identified organization unit. 4. Call that person. This is important: don't write a message, but call her. 5. In case the person is not available, move on to the next person in the list and go to 4.. 6. Ask the person if she would like to have a short and spontaneous virtual coffee break with you (real coffee, remote meeting). 7. If yes: Hooray! Go get some fresh coffee, call again and enj...

Be Brief, Be Bold and Make a Difference In a professional context effective communication is all about the impact you make on people. I see a lot of emails, presentations, workshop preps and other attempts to convey information which all often lack the one and only essential ingredient to make an impact: a clearly stated key message. In this post you will find a comprehensive and basic methodology to create business presentations with impact.  Even though I sometimes create my own presentations and papers the largest part of my work is not tangible. That is because in order to create a great presentation the actual craft of creating slides is the smallest -and easiest- part of the work. 90% is deep analysis and thinking. Most of the time I receive positive feedback for my presentations the compliments are focused around the esthetics and the design of slides or about the look and feel that attracts people's attention. Though I welcome these compliments I often contemplate whether p...

How NOT To Write Emails Work without email is hardly imaginable these days. Emails have become so ubiquitous that sometimes you have to take a step back and ask yourself: is this still communication or is this art? I am pretty sure, what I received today was the latter. To give you the necessary context, here's how it went: Sender wrote an email to multiple TO-recipients, of which I had the privilege to be one. Subject: FWD:FWD:FWD: "<<lots of acronyms none of which I was familiar with>> contract" Content: "Hello, this with supplements of <<more cryptic acronyms>> <<27 lines of signature>>" Attachment: <<acronyms>>.xlsx Somewhere not too deep in my mind I have three simple drawers for emails:  1. do now,  2. delegate,  3. art.  Upon first scan the lights of the art-drawer immediately started to blink. But then I hesitated. I doubted. I questioned. I contemplated:"Nah! That's too easy. Let's do this old...