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A question the other day: “What stunning visuals should I use to wake up the audience? I drew the speaking slot just after lunch…”. My answer was to pick an inspirational story (preferably personal) and tell it naturally, even without a single visual.
At McKinsey, I was told to write my documents with action verbs: create strategy, draft business plan, begin execution, monitor progress. It is the correct way to write things, but space on a slide is scarce. More and more, I find myself violating the rule and writing the absolute minimum amount of words to get the idea across, every increase in font size is a plus.
In his latest book, Daniel Pink talks about 6 new ways to pitch an idea (video). One of the most interesting one is what he calls “The Pixar Pitch”, a story line that follows the typical plot of a Pixar animated movie:
Once upon a time [fill in blank] One day [fill in blank] Because of that [fill in blank] Until finally [fill in blank]
Over on the Daniel Pink blog, a brief discussion about robosourcing; software that automatically generates prose based on statistical information (sports, finance, etc.).
I do not consider that a bad thing. In fact, I believe that many human journalists just do that: take data that can be neatly summarised in a visual and dilute it into text that takes far longer to digest and often provides an incomplete picture.
I am looking for technology that goes the other way: take human prose and turn it into razor sharp visuals and tables.
Sometimes, people ask you one question that forces you to focus. Yesterday: “So, what is your most important piece of advice to design better presentations slides?”.
Without thinking, I answered that he should forget about the way PowerPoint slides are supposed to look, and view it as a canvas that he can use in whatever is best to make his story stand out.
Hmm, that is what came out. Maybe still a bit concentrated and hard to act upon for a design novice, but that is actually what it boils down to.
Rattling through 25 points about why your idea is great on page 1 of your deck is not convincing.
Instead, resist the temptation for detail and explain roughly what you do on page 1, plus the most important differentiator. Then follow with a presentation that is short enough for the audience to focus on your key points.
When a company grows, a slide deck has to be used by more than one person. It is often hard for the pioneer presenter to let go of the old slides that she has been using for years. “What is wrong with this slide? When I put it up I tell this, this this, and this, these are really important points.”
Most of the above points do not appear on the slide though. The new presenters do not make them, the email recipients of the deck do not read them. The slide is merely a mental placeholder for the expert presenter to tell her story.
Time to let go.
President Obama’s key influencing strategy for convincing the audience of the need for tougher gun control laws in the US was appealing to shared values, the values of parents in the audience and in front of television and YouTube screens.
And it is interesting to see how he did it; taking time to let the point sink in, emotionally. The President elaborated about the process of raising a child, letting it separate from you with pain in your heart. In the end he came back to that emotion by mentioning the first name of each child that was killed. If he had just put in the elevator pitch “we need to protect our children”, it would not have been convincing. We have heard it too many times from too many politicians.
The same is true in business presentations: just giving the sound bite is often not enough to let the audience feel the point you want to make.
Please do not use that sentence in a presentation.
Frameworks are great to structure information but incredibly boring to present, especially if you have to repeat them many times over.
“Over the next 30 minutes I will describe each of the 15 business units using this framework: challenges, opportunities, profit potential, next steps. Here is business unit 1. ”
Oh no! 14 more to go…
It is better to tell a specific story about each business unit, actually on purpose using a different approach to tell it. The 15 data tables can go to the appendix for bed time reading.