Reclaim your time – ditch slides for your next presentation

Yesterday I read an article about a message that the CEO of Nokia sent to his employees. It was a refreshingly candid summary of the state of the company. I do not want to discuss the letter itself, but there was one sentence that stuck out:

At the lower-end price range, Chinese OEMs are cranking out a device much faster than, as one Nokia employee said only partially in jest, “the time that it takes us to polish a PowerPoint presentation.”

This is far from the first time that a (negative) comparison with Powerpoint has been made. A US military reserve officer was released from the service because he went public with his frustrations with a HQ in Afghanistan; he claimed that the majority of the work being conducted there was creating powerpoint slides for briefings. I suspect that we all have our own stories that reflect the same frustration – that we waste valuable time creating slide decks for meetings.

And, quite frankly, this is true. We do spend too much time preparing slides for meetings.

Why?

Somewhere over the last decade or so the terms “meeting,” “presentation,” and “talk” have all become synonymous with “Powerpoint.” There is an expectation that, whatever the specifics of the occasion, we will have to prepare slides. And slides take time to create – time that could be better spent elsewhere.

As such, I want to issue a call to arms: reclaim your productive time by creating fewer slide decks.

Let us start with the basics – the purpose of slides. Slides exist to support your message, they are not the message itself. I know that most people use them as cue cards, but text slides act in direct opposition to the purpose of sharing your message. Slides are most effective when they are used to display relevant graphics to support the point you are making verbally.

So the first question you really need to ask is whether you really need to show graphics to support your point. Do you have data that needs to be shown, or can you summarize it to the same effect? Do you need to show a picture of a product, or can you bring the product itself? Is a flow-chart, org-chart, or venn-diagram really required to make your point?

And even if you do need to show the graphics, is your audience big enough that you need to project slides on a screen, or can you simply pass around a piece of paper?

Meetings and even presentations do not require slides – we have simply become used to them. Yes, use them if you need them, but if you do not absolutely need them then simply create some speaking notes and go from there.

And then go and do something productive with the time you save.

[Tips] Slow Down

One of the common…. not mistakes, not even issues, but, well, things we see… is nervous presenters speaking at a breakneck speed. It is probably a side-effect of all the adrenaline that is surging through the body, perhaps combined with the knowledge that the clock is ticking. Or maybe it is simply born a desire to get off the stage. Whatever the cause, people tend to speak fast when they get in front of a crowd.

Speaking fast has several drawbacks. First, you (as the speaker) are more likely to stumble over your words and become more nervous because you feel that you are making a fool of yourself (you’re not, but you feel that way). Second, speaking quickly makes it very difficult for people to understand you, especially people for whom your first language is not theirs (I have been a chief offender on that one).

But perhaps the biggest drawback of speaking quickly is that it is simply exhausting for the audience. Remember, you set the tone for the audience – if you are bored, the audience will be bored. If you are excited, the audience will get excited. And if you are going at a mile-a-minute pace, well, your audience has to also just to follow along. And that gets tiring.

What brought this on? Well, today I came across a talk by Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame. I love the show, and enjoy sitting and watching it with my kids. And I quite like Adam – he has a quirkiness and sense of fun that comes across positively.

So when I found out he had a TED talk, I watched it right away. It reveals a lot of interesting things about Adam, but for me it was mostly exhausting. I think Adam took three breaths through twenty minutes. Maybe. And two happened while I wasn’t looking. Don’t believe me? Check it out yourself:

See? Exhausting. A wonderful topic, good use of visuals, palpable enthusiasm… but waaaayyyy too fast.

So, unless you can pull it off at least as well as Adam Savage, do your audience a favor and slow down.

[Tips] Using the right language

No, I do not mean English versus French vs Swahili. I mean the right subset of your language for your audience.

Consider the extreme cases of presenting to a general audience of people in the public, versus a group of peer specialists. For latter you can easily use jargon and shorthand, because they know what you are talking about. For the former you need to use easy, everyday language, even if it means you have twist your technical topics a bit to explain the concept.

But what about, say, a conference which contains peer specialists, but also generalists from other fields, and managers who are definitely not specialists. – what then?

The trick here is to start off using the lowest common denominator in terms of language. Define those terms that you need if you will be re-using them. Perhaps, as a nod to the specialists you can throw in the technical jargon at points if it can help clarify a point for them, but does not interfere unduly with the rest of the presentation. The point here, though, is that you need to aim near the common denominator. The more advanced audience members will be able to translate up, but if you aim too high you will lose the rest of the audience.

[Tutorial] Dealing with quotes

Generally I recommend that you keep text to a minimum on your slides, but sometimes you can use text – even long text – to good advantage. Specifically, when you want to quote someone or some document.

Quotes come in handy in several situations:

• When you want to appeal to some authority to support your argument or set the stage
• When you have a requirement that you need to satisfy and you want to make it clear that you are responding to the requirement
• When you want to avoid any suggestion that you are taking something out of context

Now, usually when you throw up text your audience turns you off while they read the text. And, having read the text, they usually find that the speaker is reading the text out loud. And usually the audience will try to “read ahead” and figure out what you are going to say next. If you are lucky, everything is clear and they simply grow bored while you make your case. If you are unlucky, things are confusing and they turn you off completely while they try to make sense of it all. Either way, though, you’ve lost the audience.

The way to avoid this is to keep the audience from reading everything, and thus keep them focused on you. The way to do this is using emphasis. Consider the following example:

This is a very boring slide – it says so at the top. And the text itself is not particularly shocking. So what can we do to spice it up?

The first step is to find the words – ideally just a handful – that captures the essence of the point you want to make. Then we try to emphasize those words above the rest. Easy so far. But how do you emphasize the words?

One way is simply to take the words and make them bold. This is what it can look like:

Now, you can see the emphasized text, but just barely. I find that a simple bolding rarely words, but your mileage may vary. Let’s try to spice it up a bit more – let us add an underline:

Now this is better – the combination of bold and underline really brings out the emphasized words, and you can read the essence: “Text boring. Fix them. Add emphasis.” This is what your audience wil l read, and then they will focus back on you. And – as an added bonus – because you have emphasized these words, you are less likely to read the whole quote (hint: never read the whole quote – your audience can read faster than you can speak).

So – can we do better? Yes. Let us first step back and – instead of underlining – let us add some color:

This looks really good – at least I think so – but let us take it that final step. First, let us lose that stupid header – most slides really do not need a header. Then, let us add a relevant picture – say of the devestatingly handsome man who we are quoting:

There we go – color, emphasis, and relevant graphic. This will help you keep the audience interested and focused on you. Try it next time you are tempted to use a long quote.

Analog first – *then* digital

So, I’ve got a presentation lined up for next week. I’ve talked about this stuff before. Take a couple of slide decks, add a few slides to reflect new work… This is gonna be *easyyyy*

First, lets find those decks. Hmmm…. where did I put them? Okay – let’s try this directory. That one sounds right. Fire it up…. Nope – not what I was thinking of, but I like those slides – let’s keep this one open.

Now the next directory… Aww – forget it. I’ll use my desktop search. Great. 25 matches. Wait – that’s the one that I want. Terrific. And those two – yep – they’ve got some slides I want.

Great. Now, let’s take my base presentation and change the name. Now let’s import some possibly useful slides. Okay… can I just copy/paste? No – weird things happen with the formatting. Let’s import slides from file… great – what directory are those other slides in? Bring them to the front, one by one. Get file info. Okay… Browse…. what slide numbers do I want? Okay – there they are. And now they are in. Other slides packages, same dance.

Finally – I’ve got my slides. Let’s look at these. Oh geeze – Times New Roman in some slides, Arial in others, and what’s this other font? Nope – can’t use that one – I don’t trust the machine I’m going to use to have the fonts. Okay – let’s make it all Arial. I *hate* arial, but it’s sans serif and every machine has it. Let’s go to slide master, change all the fonts. Apply. Good. How’s that?

Damn – I forgot the text boxes. I have to go and fix those individually. Geeze..*how* many slides? Okay – gonna have to cut that back. And what’s with all those damn bullets? I gotta have a graphic that’ll work better than that.

Hold on – what did I want to talk about? Oh geeze – this is all crap. Damn. Okay – let’s start over. File… New Presentation….

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I don’t know about you, but all to often I go through something like the above. A presentation that should be a”gimmee” becomes an hour of busywork before I realize what I’m working on is total garbage. It shouldn’t be that way though. It doesn’t *have* to be that way.

Go analog first. Turn off your screen (you’ll only be distracted by the e-mail anyhow). Get out a pad of paper and a pen. Find a comfy spot if you can. And start thinking about what you want to say. Don’t worry about the slide decks you already have. Just sit down and write out a few points. Now lay them out into the order you want. Make a few notes about the graphics you want. Maybe sketch out an arrangement. If there are some key phrases or themes you want to use, write them down.

Make a mistake? Scratch it out. Rip up the paper, start over. Doesn’t matter.

Note what is happening here. By going analog you are concentrating on your content, not on the fonts, not arguing with your slide software, not searching for a missing slide package. Sure – you may end up doing that later, but at least you will have a clear idea of what you want. The presentation has taken precedence. After you’ve sorted out the presentation, then turn your screen back on and work on creating the slides.

In the end you will have saved time, and your presentation will be stronger because you focussed on it early and clearly. Try it.

Analog first. Then go digital. Your audience will thank you.