Will it be alright on the night?

‘It’ll be alright on the night’ is a phrase used in the world of theatre to help calm nerves, and reassure actors that things will all come good at the moment of truth.

Speaking personally, I’ll always associate it with a TV bloopers show that was popular in the 1980s and 90s, with Denis Norden as host. But I guess that’s showing my age and lack of culture.

But if you have a big presentation coming up - where you need to get something signed off - my recommendation is that you don’t leave it to a big, single, sign-off event. Don’t leave it all to one moment and hope it goes well.

In my experience, you should aim to ‘get sign-off before sign-off’.

I’ll explain.

Before the big day, it will be helpful if you know…

The opinion and position of all attendees
Who is for and against your presentation
The approximate chances of success

Once you’ve established these things, mastered your preparation, your slides, and you have prepared your counter-arguments, here is one last dynamite piece of advice.

Ahead of presentation day, aim to get ‘secret’ sign-off from the key decision maker.

The sign-off of a concept, idea or proposition - when it’s 100% cold to the audience - is far less likely to succeed. Therefore your idea may be superb but your key decision maker may need some time to dwell on it. So spend some time with them first and get their view. You may even get their agreement in principle before the meeting.

This may seem an unusual thing to do, but hey it’s not illegal. And it can make that big presentation or speech run smoothly when it comes to crunch time.

Then you can feel pretty confident it really will be alright on the night.

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