Many presentations contain updates: sales results of markets, investment return on portfolio companies, productivities of plants. If the list of markets, portfolio companies or plants gets pretty long, the presentation gets pretty boring. How to cut the boredom?
- Instead of a sequential flow (market, after market, after market) break things up and compare repeating elements of data: the sales ranking, the profit ranking, headcount ranking for each market. It is much more interesting and insightful.
- In update presentations, people feel obliged to create slides, even if there is not that much to say. Don’t. Update people about things that stand out, are counter intuitive, are really important.
- Put the factual slides as an appendix in the presentation file and leave the audience to read it.
- Cut the length of the meeting to make sure everyone is focussed on getting the updates that are really important, and can spend time on the really important decisions
- Don’t be too restrictive with the presentation template. If all the slides for all the markets look exactly the same, people get bored. Make sure the right content is covered, but each market is different and might require a slightly different visual approach.
Art: Barbara Takenaga, Forte, 2011. Acrylic on linen
