This is not the information age

We're moving on really fast. The so-called Information Age has arrived, settled in and changed our lives. We've been drowning in data from all directions for a while now. We know where to find it all and the technology delivers it pretty reliably, wherever we are. So what do we do with all this information?

Time to stop talking about the information age and start thinking about the persuasion age. How do you stand out and get your message heard?

 In the context of presentation technique, people have the resources to gather their own information and there are simple ways to get it to them. You really don't need to stand there listing all the facts. What many people need is the motivation and inspiration to use that information to get results. They need to know what stuff really means and why it's important. Where can they find the rest of the details and what can be done with them? What good is it? The big SO WHAT?

Far too many speakers are still just delivering information. They fail to connect their content to emotion and purpose and fail to motivate people to interest and action.

Your audience has become more demanding. Their time is a precious resource and they won't accept boring PowerPoint presentations full of details. We all demand relevance, stimulation and real understanding. We always have actually.

So slow down a bit. Work on connecting with the audience. Think about what you can add to the subject that they can't look up on Google or your website. It's really not so difficult once you dare to put yourself into the presentation.

The trick is in the planning - step four

I love PostIts! You can do so much with them and they have to be the best planning tools ever. Maybe this would be a fun thing to try.

If you're planning a new presentation which is just a bit too complex and you have many ideas in desperate need of structuring, then try this. Take a pile of PostIts, maybe in different colours. Get hold of a pen with a nice broad tip. Find a big whiteboard or a piece of paper from a flip chart. A big desk surface will also do the trick.

Write down all of your separate ideas on PostIts and for the time being just spread them out over a surface so you can see them all. Break up big ideas into smaller ones and add even more PostIts. When the ideas start drying up, group the PostIts together into categories or subjects or sections of the talk. Pick out the best ideas and throw away the rest. Think about how much time you have and whether you can get through all this material. When you have the categories sorted out you can start to convert them to messages or statements. Think in terms of slide headlines that describe the main points you are trying to make.

Then you can arrange these main points in order and start to add some supporting statements or sources of data. After this you need some transitions between the main points, which could be written on PostIts of a different colour. You may want to add notes about how certain points can be put across, also on PostIts. Somewhere here you can transfer the whole thing into PowerPoint and turn the words into pictures, videos diagrams and other illustrations. What you have to think about is only writing the point itself on the PostIts, not the actual words you will use to get the point across. Supporting statements/data should also be very brief; keywords and bullet points.

It might not work all the way for you but most help can probably be had in the early planning stage of presentations. I find that deciding the order of slides or sections of the presentation is a lot easier using PostIts on a whiteboard than working in PowerPoint.

Hopefully you'll find a little bit of inspiration in there somewhere. Have fun!

Friday again!

All this snow is getting to me. Time to dig out the car again... Here are two small quotes to finish off the week.

"Of those who say nothing, few are silent."

Thomas Neiel

"The most precious things in speech are the pauses."

Sir Ralph Richardson

Designing slides - there's a lot of help out there

There are a few great books on the art of designing good slides. For example: " Presentation Zen: simple ideas on presentation design and delivery." by Garr Reynolds or "slide:ology: the art and science of creating great presentations." by Nancy Duarte. Nancy Duarte has also written the wonderful, beautiful book "resonate: present visual stories that transform audiences." which really does live up to its title. If you like graphic design in general then you'll love thumbing through this book. It's a wonderful source of inspiration on planning presentations in general and one of my absolutely favourite books.

But I would suggest that if you want to create really stunning slides then the best source of inspiration comes from books on graphic design. One of my favourites that's piled full of inspiration is "Design elements. A graphic style manual." by Timothy Samara. I have a couple more at home whose titles I've forgotten for the moment. Send me a mail if you're interested and I'll give you some more suggestions.

...and an extra thing just because it's Friday

"What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The trick is in the planning - step three. Make life easier for your audience!

When you figured out your main message and your purpose for being there, and you've considered who the audience are and what they want to hear from you, then you should have at least a general idea of what you're going to put into the presentation. At this point you might want to try the following approach. Open up a number of empty slides in PowerPoint (just keep pressing the new slide button). Pick a suitable number for the time that you're going to present. Then fill in the titles of the slides by writing what the point of that slide would be. Another way to look at this is to write the conclusion or the bottom line that belongs to each slide. Ideally you ought to be able to read all the titles from start to finish and hear yourself telling a story that has a beginning middle and end. So you can also start by writing out that story and then break it up into slide titles of course.

For example a slide somewhere in the middle of the presentation might describe a series of costs that would be entered into a budget in the form of the table. The title might be "Our total costs amount to XXX". So the conclusion becomes the title and the audience don't really need to listen to a description of the rest of it unless they are particularly interested. The more common title on a slide like this would be "Costs" or "Budget"or something else equally non-informative. It's usually a description of what the subject is rather than what the actual point is. You're placing quite heavy demands on your audience if they've got to listen to every detail you say in order to figure out themselves what the point of each part of the presentation is. So make it easy on them!

The trick is in the planning - step two

Okay, the next step is for all of you who have a clear purpose, you know exactly what your primary message is, you've characterised your audience as far as you can (including the room that you will be speaking in), and you know what result you want to achieve from your presentation. You're well ahead of the game already.

So another way to prepare your thoughts of what to actually include in your presentation is to take the three vital ingredients of ethos, logos and pathos and to make an inventory of how you can work with each of these.

Firstly, Ethos. How can you be perceived as credible and reliable? Of course you can always list your qualifications, drop names and generally be fairly direct about it. But this is not always the best way, nor is it usually enough. I would say that you should never need to actually introduce yourself in terms of your qualifications, your name and affiliation is enough. If you can't achieve credibility through the things you say, with your voice and stance and body language and generally by being a competent presenter, then there's no way you will compensate by telling people about all the positions you've held over the last 20 years. The audience's impression comes from what you do more than what you say. So think about how you, personally, in your own way can ensure that you are perceived as someone who knows what they're talking about. Start by learning your presentation well, practice it and take notes with you if you need them. Then think about the specific things you can say to boost your credibility and be subtle about it. For example: " when I worked as head of research for Roche I learnt this excellent method for visualising complex research projects which I would like to share with you today."

Logos is all of the facts, the rational stuff, figures and statistics, and the meat of the subject itself. This is where most people have all of their focus and of course you have to sort through all of this, prioritise and find a logical order. Then you have to present it so that people pay attention, understand and preferably remember. Even more work is required if you expect them to act on your words. So there's a lot of work to do here and this should also support your credibility (ethos) by being accurate and relevant and so on. List the most important facts. The things you really can't leave out, in order of priority. Find as many pictures or diagrams as possible to illustrate the subject and keep it as simple as you can.

Pathos I have written about earlier. But just to recap: you need to reach people through emotions and experiences. Logic is not enough. People will forget what you said and they'll forget what you did and they will never forget how you made them feel, as someone famous once said. So this is the key to influence, persuasion and memory. Think about ways that you can use to reach people in this particular presentation.Your own enthusiasm for the subject is a starting point. Find ways to surprise people, make them wonder, make them laugh and make them smile in recognition. If you're putting photographs into a presentation try to find pictures of people. Use bright, beautiful high-resolution photographs. Above all, describe your subject in terms that are relevant for them, explaining why this is important in their own context.

So there it is, ethos, logos, pathos. Check you have a balance and check you have them all.

The trick is in the planning - step one

How do you plan your presentations? Do you have a system? Do you usually open an older PowerPoint file and adjust it according to the new situation? Do you change planning approaches every time you start a new presentation?

I've spent a long time thinking about this and and done it badly many times! These days I have much more of a system. I thought I would share a few thoughts about how to make life easier. Maybe something in here might be useful to you. Well, we can at least try!

Step one:
For me the first thing is always the audience. Who are they exactly, how many people will be there, and why are they there? There's loads of questions that could usefully be answered here and it's often not too difficult to find out if you're prepared to ask around. What does the room look like where you will talk? Will you have a small audience sitting around a meeting table or a couple of hundred people spread out in an enormous sloping lecture theatre with everything that implies?

Then the next question is what is your purpose in being there. Do you want to create any particular impression? Do you want the audience to do something? What results do you expect? Think really seriously about this. What are you REALLY doing there? After that you need to formulate your message. What is it that you really want to say, expressed in one short clear sentence? If you can get this far then you should have a much easier time deciding what material to actually put into your presentation. You should have a clear goal and purpose and that always helps doesn't it?

So next time you have a presentation ahead of you spend some time seriously considering these aspects. Write them down on a piece of paper, it helps to clarify things that little extra. And when you then open PowerPoint and start creating slide material, don't forget to look back at your purpose, your message and your definition of the audience, preferably before and after every single slide!

Hope this helps a little. Step two of planning follows in a little while

Another Friday thought

"No one ever complains about a speech being too short."
Ira Hayes