Hey there, can I borrow the product of your blood, sweat and tears?
October 4, 2018 7:47 PM   Subscribe

A co-worker casually asked me to share a work presentation so he can pull pieces from it for his work. I don't want my presentation format floating around the org yet. How do I politely decline?

I recently led a big presentation involving a deck that took many months to design and perfect. It's a brand new design look and feel that we plan to use as an industry rebrand of sorts for my business unit. After the meeting, a peer of mine in another business unit asked me to send him the deck. When I sent it in a non-editable format, he asked me to resend it in the raw format so he could use the layouts in his presentations.

I feel ambivalent about this request. On one hand, we are not in direct competition and some of the formats I created are likely to eventually bleed around the company over time. There's a long history of my team's presentations being hunted down by other teams and slowly pulled from because of their high quality. I'm ok with that and flattered to see our work adopted. However, this is literally the first deck we've debuted in the format and we have barely had a minute to milk the impact and explore our new approach. It's one thing to eventually get a hold of presentation over time and emulate pieces of it, but it feels like a bridge too far to just ask me for it directly for the express purpose of using it for your work. Is there a tactful way to say no?
posted by amycup to Work & Money (20 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
Hi Co-Worker,

Unfortunately, this presentation format took my team and I many months of work to design and perfect, so you can understand that we're not ready to share the format quite yet. I appreciate your interest and can help with [content, ideas, etc] if that will be of benefit to you. Let me know!

Regards,
Amycup


Your coworker is the one making the somewhat unreasonable request. A polite but clear refusal is all you need, IMO.
posted by Nightman at 7:57 PM on October 4, 2018 [10 favorites]


"it feels like a bridge too far to just ask me for it directly for the express purpose of using it for your work"

Does it? You work for the same organization? Is there any value to the organization for your co-worker to re-use your format?

You said, "we are not in direct competition" -- but you work for the same organization. The mindset of being in "direct competition" with one of your co-workers is inherently unhealthy.

Yes, I get it - there's a lot of this in corporate environments, but it's toxic in my opinion. Any time spent re-inventing the wheel just for corporate posturing is a serious waste of organizational resources. If you are an organization that sells things, presumably you have competition that exists outside your company. Everyone's time would be better spent if you focused on that.

If you really, really need to get organizational validation for this format / presentation, then politely ask your co-worker to cite your team when re-using the layouts since they were not trivial to design. That's a reasonable thing to request - but denying a co-worker a presentation layout to "milk" it longer within the organization is not and if someone on my team expressed the desire to withhold work from another team for this purpose they'd be getting serious side-eye from me before being told to hand it over.

If you requested something from another team that would save you time & allow you to focus on work that contributes to the organization's bottom line and were told no would you find that reasonable?
posted by jzb at 8:07 PM on October 4, 2018 [65 favorites]


Do they want the content or the template?

Templates like ten blank cards (if you did it right) yeah?
posted by tilde at 8:30 PM on October 4, 2018


I would just say that your team is planning on debuting the presentation format at a future meeting as part of a branding update effort. It's not yours to share yet.
posted by xammerboy at 8:31 PM on October 4, 2018 [23 favorites]


"Can I, another employee of the company, use the thing you made for the company for the purpose it was made for" is really really not a weird request, and I'm having a little trouble understanding why you're having trouble sharing it.

That said, if you want to wait until you have a good shareable product (template it out, like tilde says), that's fine - and it's probably better to create that and distribute it so it goes out in a good format everyone can use instead of piecemeal. And you can say something like "we're not quite ready to share yet, we're working on the version for company-wide release/templating" would be OK.

I definitely don't think you should go with the thing Nightman said, because I don't agree with the "so you can understand" at all, and I would find it really weird if you said "we're done but you can't have it because it's mine".
posted by brainmouse at 9:04 PM on October 4, 2018 [24 favorites]


It feels like you're placing your own interests (being the only one with the cool new presentation format) above that of the company's (saving other employees time by reusing templates) which doesn't seem a good idea. The best excuse is probably the not ready yet / official unveiling, but if you've already used it for a big presentation then this doesn't really ring true.
posted by JonB at 9:19 PM on October 4, 2018 [4 favorites]


Best answer: So I'm 90% with the people that say this is hard to refuse. It is I assume the company's IP and not your own and it is no effort to send to someone else? Reasonable to ask for credit internally but really hard to withhold. "Well, this makes us look good and if we gave it to you it would make you look good too." That's . . . not compelling, not matter how diplomatically you word it.

(I will say I not only do I get your attitude but as a prickly type I have said "no" in similar situations, non-diplomatically. It's human to want to own your own work product. But I don't just think it was wrong, I don't think doing that ever helped my me in any way.)

The exception I think if this is external facing and you are a major and distinctly branded divisions. You do mention "industry rebrand" so maybe that's the case? If Acme Contract Manufacturing is basically a different brand than the wholly owned subsidiary, Yoyodyne Consulting Services, you could point out that using the same styling and format dilutes *both* your brands.
posted by mark k at 10:20 PM on October 4, 2018 [6 favorites]


Are you concerned that this guy is going to take credit for your design work? I think that's a reasonable concern and if that's the issue, it's reasonable to not want to share it until you and your team have been properly credited / recognized for the work.

Is there a way to expedite the credit process? Like send it to the CEO as a "hey look at this cool new thing Team A made, we're now sharing it with other teams so you'll see it popping up soon!"
posted by pseudostrabismus at 11:40 PM on October 4, 2018 [14 favorites]


I feel like you could get away with putting him off, at least for now, by saying that this was the design's trial run, and that the finer points are still being debated and refined--but, if course, you'd be delighted to send it over when it's all settled. If it takes a few more presentations to get to that point, well, that's just how it goes.
posted by mishafletch at 11:43 PM on October 4, 2018 [9 favorites]


If it's design work, then you have enough experience to know that a format that hasn't yet been finalized can't be rolled out until it is, and there's no question here, because that's your reply.

If it's not design work, you can indeed hold off until the design is finalized. The format still belongs to your organization, and not you personally.

It is very common to have presentation formats copied and reused, and entirely normal where I've worked – it's even been expected. We can be criticized if we don't take the initiative to hunt down the latest, greatest internal format.

If what's important to you here is knowing your own value – rest assured that the value add is in content. I've seen so many presentation formats it would make your eyes bleed, all more beautiful and sleek and rationally refined than the last. If someone can't string together a coherent and consistent approach, it doesn't matter how shiny and chrome the format is. Back in favor of design, the reverse is less true; it's a huge help for solid content to have a solid format. Even better if it's attractive. Put into trite clichés: don't put all your eggs into one basket. Diversify your value.
posted by fraula at 11:52 PM on October 4, 2018


Best answer: Is it branding your department's product and he's wanting to use it for a different product? I think in that case it'd be valid to say "we're using this to create a look and feel specifically for the Foo, so unfortunately, it hasn't been approved for non-Foo presentations."
posted by salvia at 1:57 AM on October 5, 2018 [7 favorites]


Nonthing of what you are producing belongs to you. It belongs to the company. So if anyone else wants to borrow it, they are using company reSources to complete an assignment. That’s OK.
posted by alchemist at 3:04 AM on October 5, 2018 [4 favorites]


Also bewildered how this would even be an issue. In my organisation we repeatedly leverage each other’s work. People can waste a ridiculous amount of time re-inventing the wheel and that benefits nobody. There is no reason that would benefit the organisation as a whole for withholding.

If you want to get credit for the brilliant design you could mention the request to your boss and ask them if there is an official process for creating new templates and making them available for the wider organisation as efficient tools.

If there are pseudo political reasons why increasing overall efficiency is not valued in your organisation, your boss can use that conversation to ask you not to share, at which point they are the person refusing to play nice and share.
posted by koahiatamadl at 3:58 AM on October 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best answer: Here's an option for you:

"Our team is still fine tuning some of the facts and design. Once we're 100% finished keep an eye out on your email- we'll be sending this AND the template so that the whole company can take advantage of this resource. We're so excited to share this with everyone"

Fine tune wording for your use obviously.

Not sure why everyone's being all idealistic about this being company property anyway. Some departments actually sell to each other or explicitly complete for resources.
posted by cacao at 4:01 AM on October 5, 2018 [15 favorites]


Best answer: At first I was a little confused as to why you wouldn't share your presentation - I'm in marketing and my end goal at my job is frequently to ENCOURAGE standard templates, etc across departments instead of people going rogue with stock PowerPoint templates and clip art.

But then I re-read the question and saw the line about "industry rebrand of our business unit" - and here's where I think there could be valid reason not to share. Branding is important, and I think there's a way to say that you're so glad that they liked your presentation, but that it's part of a larger industry rebrand of your business unit. Explain that it's important that your business unit has a chance to establish that new brand and measure the results without diluting it or causing confusion in the marketplace, which is what will happen if other business units start taking bits and pieces of the brand and using them externally.

Check with your boss, too. If you can point to a larger brand strategy (do you have one?) that could also help explain that you're not trying to be territorial, but that there are best practice reasons to keep this look/feel to your business unit at this time.

If you went through a documented process to establish this brand, and/or if you used company resources/staff that are also available to this other business unit to do this work, you could share that with this colleague so you're not leaving them empty-handed. "We went through a time-consuming but really valuable branding process to develop this, and the framework is documented here on the company shared drive (or based on this book/website/etc). Ariana was a great help with thinking through the strategy part, and Susan has a lot of branding experience and lended valuable insight as well."

Also think if there are some elements that you could share - maybe it's just some of the more innovative slide layouts and not the colors/other design elements they liked - without handing over the entire brand.

Tread lightly, because depending on your company culture this could be seen as not being a team player. Think very hard about how much of this is possessiveness and how much is a valid business reason not to share - only you know the answer there.
posted by misskaz at 4:58 AM on October 5, 2018 [5 favorites]


Make templates and share them with the whole organization? “I’ve gotten requests for these so I figured I’d make them available here.”
posted by STFUDonnie at 5:25 AM on October 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: Not to thread sit but to clarify for everyone - we actually don't work for the same organization. We work for the same massive parent company but technically we work for different companies within it. We have different HR, benefits, and entirely separate org devisions for everything. They have their own documents and systems that are not available for us.
posted by amycup at 6:36 AM on October 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


Response by poster: It's also design based and will be seen externally in a B2B selling capacity.
posted by amycup at 6:43 AM on October 5, 2018 [1 favorite]


Best answer: @amycup

Thanks for the clarification - that was not clear at all from your question.

Even so, if you roll up to the same parent company I would lean towards being a good co-worker and sharing. But if that's not the way your massive conglomerate rolls, then I'd go with the strategy of politely declining on the basis that the template is not final, not ready to share, etc. Assuming you worked on this with other people, you can also rebuff with "let me check with my team to see if they're comfortable with this - I didn't do all the work myself, and I want to make sure the team is OK with this."
posted by jzb at 6:46 AM on October 5, 2018 [2 favorites]


If you are not high-up in your organization, I would take this up. Ask your boss (department lead, manager, etc - but choose someone who understands what your group does) for their take on it. Boss, do you think there's value in keeping this template that the team developed within our department, or our sub-company, or is that something you'd be happy to see [this specific] other sister company using? (and you can say your opinion)
posted by aimedwander at 7:01 AM on October 5, 2018 [9 favorites]


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