How to have maximum impact

Many times, people have asked me if I would write a book about my experiences. I decided not to do that for many reasons. What I will do is post some of my interesting experiences and lessons that I learned over the years. Sometimes you must walk a different path than what people expect to have an impact. Today I will write about one example.
In 1997, PPTA introduced voluntary standards to demonstrate that the industry was serious about the safety of the products that are used by so many, even willing to do more than was required by regulators.

In those years, the European Medicines Evaluation Agency was in London and had invited us to make a presentation about the value of the voluntary standards. We had done our homework and had new data that showed the positive impact of the standards on viral marker rates. Remind you, in these years there was no PowerPoint, instead you had to use overhead sheets, not easy for last minute changes.

In the preparatory meeting with the members we went over the data and were all very pleased with the results. Then I gave a shocking statement when I said that I was not going to include the new data in the presentation.  I proposed a different approach.
My prediction was that someone would ask for the data and when that happened, I would walk back with the new data and the impact would be stunning. And guess what? This is exactly how it happened.

After my presentation, a regular Question and Answer session started. And then it happened. In a very professional English style, the representative of the Scottish Transfusion Service complimented me on a fantastic presentation, however he said, “it would have been so much stronger if you would have data to show the impact of the standards”. At that moment I turned around, walked back to the overhead projector and showed the sheet with the data. I will never forget his face when he realized that he had fallen into a trap. The impact was enormous, we had data to show the value of the standards and were successful.

After the meeting, he walked up to me with a big smile on his face and said:” You bastard.”

When we see each other now, we can still laugh about it.

Jan M Bult