Category Archives: 07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation

Designing and building a professional slide deck, using best principles of persuasion and slide-craft, using PowerPoint features efficiently and effectively

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07c-Telling stories, 07d-Delivering a presentation

The Worst Ways to End a Presentation

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Recently, in reviewing articles on pulse media, I came across this article from Business Insider- Worst Ways to End a Presentation by Jacquelyn Smith. In the article Smith discusses the 6 worst ways to end a presentation from a book written by Darlene Price “Well said! Presentations and Conversations that get results.” While a few of these may be a given, some were a good reminder of tactics to utilize  when giving a presentation to drive results.

1. Not announcing you are wrapping up

Announcing you are wrapping up signals to the audience to pay attention. Phrases like “in conclusion,” “in summary,” or “as I conclude, let me leave you with a brief thought” not only highlight that you are ending finishing, they also heighten the audiences attention level and make the closing more memorable.

While I have always tried to signal a conclusion to a presentation, I never thought of it as heightening the audiences attention. Keeping this is mind, I will be more tactical when concluding a presentation and calling it out to the audience by announcing it before the most important point of the conclusion.

2. Not including a summary

Smith points out that the average adult attention span is 5 minutes. This is a limited time frame, and much shorter than an average presentation. Hence it is important to remind the audience of your key points.

Ending the presentation with a question that leads to your purpose is a great example of how to provide a summary in an interesting way that will grab the audiences attention.

3. Not providing a call to action

This is a point I often forget about and want to work on using more often in a presentation.

Smith notes that the point of the presentation is to persuade your audience. There is an action you are asking for from your audience. Whether it is to buy into your product,  formulate a solution, agree with your position, or any others, it is necessary to use an action verb that denotes what you need to take place.

The article provides some great examples from famous leaders. Below is a link if you would like to read more:

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/worst-ways-to-end-a-presentation-2014-7#ixzz381gp0EIw

4. Leaving the audience with a dud ending

It is important to leave the audience with the most important piece of information at the very end. Smith correlates concluding with “i’m done,” “thats all,” or “any questions?” to a firework with a wet fuse- dull & boring. Instead she suggests leaving the audience with a compelling thought or phrase that drives the purpose home.

Again in the article she provides some great examples of famous speeches that end with a bang not a dud.

5. Failure to tie up loose ends

Smith summarizes Prices point that failing to link the opening of a presentation – whether it is a story, quote, picture, etc- to the purpose leaves a loose end. By linking the opening to your purpose, whether in the middle of the presentation or in the conclusion, it provides significance and leaves a memorable reminder with the audience.

6. Concluding with Q &A

Smith proposes that ending a presentation with Q&A is the wrong way to go. Instead she via Price, suggests opening for questions during the middle. This will leave your ending for you to define the purpose of the presentation and give the ability to end with the summary and call to action that will drive the point home.

Overall, the tips given by Smith & Price are helpful in crafting the end to any presentation. We all should keep these in mind over the next few weeks as we present for MP.  Maybe Brandon & Smith will even allow for Q&A in the middle, instead of at the end 🙂

07c-Telling stories, 07d-Delivering a presentation, storyline structure

9 Public-Speaking Lessons From The World’s Greatest TED Talks

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When asked what my passions in life are, I often respond the same way – food and public speaking (in no particular order). While one is likely to help me further my career and the other is likely to help me further my waistline, they are both still passions of mine.

Public speaking didn’t come naturally to me at first; in fact, there was a time in life where it terrified me. But through practice, practice, and more practice, I came to not only achieve an acceptable level of competency in the skill, but I started to truly enjoy speaking to large groups.

I, like most, am constantly looking for ways to improve my public speaking skills. Like many, I often watch TED talks to gain ideas, inspiration, and witty one-liners to utilize in my presentations. Carmine Gallow’s article entitled, 9 Public-Speaking Lessons From The World’s Greatest TED Talks, is a great synopsis of how there is a style to TED talks, and how this same style can be incorporated into everyday presentations.

There are two ways to summarize this article. The first, and the conventional way, would be with the nine bullet points below. However, it is more exciting to view the most watched TED talk of all time via this link. This TED talk, like many others, illustrates eight of the nine points below (The presenter does not use any materials, so point #8 does not apply).

  1. Unleash the master within.
  2. Tell three stories.
  3. Practice relentlessly.
  4. Teach your audience something new.
  5. Deliver jaw-dropping moments.
  6. Use humor without telling a joke.
  7. Stick to the 18-minute rule.
  8. Favor pictures over text.
  9. Stay in your lane.

Aside from the list, I would like to add one more bullet point that I see as a theme through most of the great presentations that I have seen, the one you may have just watched included.

  1. Take chances.

I would like to point out one skill in particular that this article highlights and the TED talk illustrates – storytelling. This presenter is a phenomenal storyteller. He paints vivid images for the audience through the use of tales about his family, his friends, or moments in history that help bring his points to life. When this powerful imagery is combined with his vibrant scene of humor that both engages and captivates the audience, his message becomes memorable, and he gains instant credibility based on the audience liking him, not his actual subject knowledge.

The points raised in the article do not differ from the lessons learned in MP over the past year. Style, delivery, and content are at the heart of every presentation. The only way to improve these skills is to practice and learn from mistakes made along the way. For anyone with trepidation about public speaking, weather at school or at work, read this article and watch this TED Talk, you will be glad that you did.

Read more: 9 Public-Speaking Lessons From The World’s Greatest TED Talks

Watch the TED Talk: Ken Robinson: How schools kill creativity

 

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07c-Telling stories, slide-craft, storyline structure

Structure Storytelling into a Formal Presentation

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I will admit that I am not the best at crafting formal presentations. However, I also would not consider myself the worst. I have a technical background and my slide craft and delivery tend to reflect that. Why do my presentations tend to lean towards the technical and away from creativity and storytelling? I think it may because of my misperception that developing a presentation around storytelling means sacrificing structure until the presentation becomes “fluff”.

Nancy Duarte, a self-described communications theorist and empathy architect, is the CEO of a firm that specializes in the application of storytelling and visual thinking to communications in business settings. Duarte has also authored several books on the topic of communications: Guide to Persuasive Presentations, Resonate, Slide:ology, and Slidedocs. Duarte gave a TED Talk (view here) that has changed my understanding of the structure involved in successfully integrating storytelling into a formal presentation.

Here are a few notes that I took away from Duarte’s talk:

1. Understanding Proper Role Assignment

The presenter is not the hero of the story, the audience is the hero. Duarte states that the presenter needs to play the role of a mentor, guiding the audience along from the current state forward to the presenter’s idea.

2. Three Part Structure

Every story has a beginning, middle, and end, right? Yes, but Duarte provides a little more substance. The story should start with a likeable hero who has a desire. This hero should then encounter a roadblock or obstacle. Ultimately, the hero emerges transformed. This is the kind of structure seen in most movies.

3.  Presentation Shape

Should there be a structure to a good presentation? Most novels have an arch shape, in which they start, build into a climax and then return as the story is resolved. Duarte studied several famous speeches and recognized a similar structure, a repeating step function. The beginning starts with “what is” and compares it to “what could be”. Here is how things currently are, but look at how they could be. The remainder of the presentation should be based on the amplification of the gap between these two. The middle of the presentation repeats the back and forth motion of what is, what could be, what is, what could be. The goal is to make the current status quo and normal condition look unappealing. Finally, the end should be a call to action. The presentation should end on a high with the audience imaging how the world could be with your idea.

Two of the presentations that Duarte analyzed that exhibited this structure were Steve Job’s 2007 presentation to introduce the iPhone and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a Dream” speech. For more information regarding Duarte’s work, check out her website.

05-Creating & constructing good solutions, 07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 99-Applying business intelligence

Differentiating on Customer Service

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We all had some frustrating experiences with customer service representatives in our lives. Fortunately, I did not experience anything as severe as the one recorded example below by with a Comcast representative.

How much of the recorded conversation is the employee’s fault and how much is it the company’s? Obviously the representatives are not trained to react this way, but surely the “let’s-keep-a-customer-at-any-cost” strategy influences the representative’s behavior.

Why, in 2014, some companies are still able to differentiate themselves from the competition by providing great customer service? I would think that in our day and age, good customer service should be the standard, especially with the viral effect social media has on extreme customer experiences (good or bad). Why don’t Comcast’s management provide a better set of guidelines and solutions to their representatives? Why can’t you get the best deal (from any service provider) without dropping the “I’m leaving” bomb?

The switching costs are decreasing in the TV-provider industry. I now have an option to choose from four different providers, up from one (guess who) four years ago. Do you think Comcast is going to revamp their customer service strategy soon? Or can they keep it as long as they still have a monopoly in many markets?

Any part of the recording will do the trick, but to get the full effect please listen to the entire thing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/14/the-comcast-call-from-hell_n_5586476.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, slide-craft

Design Tips for the Novice Graphic Designer

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For those of you (like me) who are not designers or naturally gifted in graphic design, this post is for you. We are always being judged by the visual appearance of our presentations, so I think that it is worth improving our capabilities in slide design. I have gathered ten tips that are easy to implement. A link to the article can be found here, which includes a lot of useful illustrations to help get these points across.

#1 Avoid built-in themes

Custom built slides make for a more powerful statement. Templates should only be used for last minute presentations.

#2 Use quality photos

A good photo is one of the easiest ways to make your presentation look better. However, no photo is better than a bad photo. Photos should be unique, attractive, and cliché-free. Where to get free photos? Try Stock XCHING or Flickr. On Flickr, search for “creative commons licensed content,” as those photos are free and usually only require attribution.

#3 Solid colors rock

Yes, it is possible to create an impactful slide with plain design and solid colors. Choose wisely though—too bright or colorful can be bothersome to the eyes. Remember your color wheel from elementary school and use contrast when picking your secondary color.

#4 Select fonts prudently

Make sure you understand the message you want to communicate before selecting a font. The classic, old-style serif fonts are formal while sans-serif are more modern.

ds-bp-10

Note: People often think the classics are too boring. They are wrong. These are safe choices.

#5 Make your slides readable

Do not use that amazing photograph as a background if you cannot make your font readable over it. You can get around this by using a simple color bar (example below).

ds-bp-16

#6 Simpler is better

The main content comes from you when presenting, so the slides need to serve as a simplified visual aid. Think of your slides as an outline for your presentation. Additionally, simple slides prevent you from reading them.

#7 Go easy on the bullets

Keep them few in number and simple. Also, they do not need to be self-explanatory because that is what you are there for!

#8 Create clear focal points

Tip #8 may be harder to implement for those with limited design abilities (like me), but the idea is to know where and how to direct your audience’s attention You can do this with color, fonts, text size, and photographs. Without clear focal points, you risk losing your audience.

#9 Design a captivating slide cover

This slide sets the tone for your presentation, so do not ignore it even though it may only be seen for a few seconds. Leaving it up during your introductions helps start the presentation on a positive note and introduces your visual theme.

#10 Add some humor

Your goal is not necessarily to hear laughter. Consider inserting a simple comic or picture that will make your audience smile, as this will help ease any tension in the room. Remember, do not try too hard.

I know that we have some really good slide designers in the program because I have seen some beautiful slides. Anyone have other graphic design tips that the average PowerPoint user can start implementing?

 

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07c-Telling stories, 07d-Delivering a presentation, metaphors, Uncategorized

Storytelling: Displaying the Struggle Between Expectation and Reality

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Most of us in the evening MBA program are knowledge workers.  We don’t work with our hands, we don’t physically produce goods, we either create, analyze or transfer knowledge. Transferring knowledge from one person to another is the most challenging, because no two people think in the exact same way, but also the most important, because it is what drives change. Whether its giving a presentation, writing an important email, or having a tough conversation, my instinct is to fall back on my engineering background and rely on data and facts – and more often then not, doing this doesn’t inspire action.

The Harvard Business Review conducted an interview with screenwriting coach Robert McKee called “Storytelling That Moves People.”  In the interview, McKee talks about how storytelling is a crucial skill for business leaders to be able to motivate their coworkers, customers and partners to navigate through business challenges. McKee describes two types of storytelling that business leaders use.  The first uses conventional rhetoric and statistics, which, if successful, persuades people only on an intellectual level, which doesn’t inspire people to act. The second method of storytelling is to unite an idea with an emotion to persuade people on an emotional level and get them to act.

In the conversation, McKee describes the most difficult part of effective emotional persuasion through story-telling:  discussing the struggle. We all have a tendency, especially at work, to paint a rosy picture.  We want to be viewed as always succeeding, always in control, and always right.  McKee argues that story without a struggle doesn’t inspire because it doesn’t connect people on an emotional level about the challenges we all face.  To be a good storyteller,  according to McKee, “you want to display the struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness.”  McKee goes further to say that “the energy to live comes from the dark side…as we struggle against these negative powers, we’re forced to live more deeply, more fully.”

As an engineer working for a marketing company, the most difficult part of my job is persuading others to act while not falling back on data and statistics, and not painting a rosy picture.  Even though its challenging, telling stories that include a struggle has a tendency to unite people as they think about adversity in their own jobs, which usually causes them to rally around your goals.

As McKee says in the article, being a great storyteller alone won’t make you a great leader, but it is a skill that will help make you a better leader and help you to inspire action in others.  You can access the article through the Goizueta Business Library website, through the “Business Source Complete” database (search “Storytelling That Moves People”).

Source:

Fryer B. Storytelling That Moves People. Harvard Business Review [serial online]. June 2003;81(6):51-55. Available from: Business Source Complete, Ipswich, MA. Accessed July 12, 2014.

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, 07d-Delivering a presentation, charts & graphs, clearing slides, PowerPoint resources, PowerPoint tricks, slide-craft, story-boarding, storyline structure, tables

Edward Tufte on PowerPoint

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This is an interesting read on the pitfalls associated with PowerPoint presentations. One of the things that I am focusing on improving this semester is my presentation skills, and I found this article, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint by Edward Tufte, to be helpful with regards of how to present data in a meaningful way. While you may find some of his opinions to be extreme, I believe that he still has many valid points and that his arguments are logical.

Even if you do not read this entire article, at least see his demonstration of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address via PowerPoint presentation on page 12 along with the section on improving our Presentations on page 22. I’ve included some highlights of the article below:

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint

PP convenience for the speaker can be costly to both content and
audience. These costs result from the cognitive style characteristic of the standard default PP presentation: foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a deeply hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narrative and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis, conspicuous decoration and Phruff, a preoccupation with format not content, an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.

Extremely Low Resolution of PowerPoint 

Visual reasoning usually works more effectively when the relevant information is shown adjacent in space within our eyespan. This is especially the case for statistical data, where the fundamental analytical act is to make comparisons.

Bullet Outlines Dilute Thought

By leaving out the narrative between the points, the bullet outline ignores and conceals the causal assumptions and analytic structure of the reasoning.

Bullet outlines might be useful in presentations now and then, but sentences with subjects and verbs are usually better. Instead of this type of soft, generic point found in many business plans.

Improving Our Presentations

Designer formats will not salvage weak content. If your numbers are boring, then you’ve got the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a content failure, not a decoration failure.

Never use PP templates for arraying words or numbers. Avoid elaborate hierarchies of bullet lists. Never read aloud from slides. Never use PP templates to format paper reports or web screens.

Paper handouts at a talk can effectively show text, numbers, data graphics, images. Printed materials, which should largely replace PP, bring information transfer rates in presentations up to that of everyday material in newspapers, magazines, books, and internet screens.

 

01-Structuring a problem, 07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, slide-craft

The Art of an Executive Summary

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In my job I give 3 or 4 client-facing presentations per week.  These presentations are often very similar, and over the course of my career there are very few new issues in my specific field.  It can be very simple to reuse an old presentation with a few adjustments.  However, it is important to understand that this may be the first time your client has come across this particular issue or undertaking.  An easy an effective was to frame an issue and have your audience moving in the same direction is an executive summary page. 

Below is an article written by a CBS contributor outlining an effective executive summary. The key is to not approach the summary in chronological order… problem, solution, and outcome. If the goal of the presentation is a sale or a call to action, end with that.  Structure the summary beginning with current problem, the desired outcome, and then the solution. This ending will provide a nice transition into the meat of the work you will present.

The goal is to establish your credibility by displaying your understanding of the customer needs, provide a compelling value proposition and why your solution is unique.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-art-of-the-executive-summary/

07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 07b-Using good information design, 99-Spreadsheet modeling, charts & graphs, Excel resources, PowerPoint resources, PowerPoint tricks, slide-craft, tables

Sharing a Helpful Resource

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If your job is anything like mine, you use Microsoft Excel and/or PowerPoint on a regular (if not daily) basis. If you use either of these applications in conjunction with each other (which I know all of us have in our prior MP presentations), I have a very helpful resource to share with you.

One of the biggest challenges that I have faced is effectively incorporating data (particularly from Excel) into a concise PowerPoint presentation. Given that Excel and PowerPoint are both made by Microsoft, you would think that using these two applications in conjunction with one another would be fairly seamless and potentially even synergistic (1 + 1 = 3, right?).  However, integrating Excel and PowerPoint is not always straight forward, and conveying key takeaways rather than “data dumping” an entire financial model into your presentation can be a challenge. Additionally, I think that most of us are typically better at one than the other which doesn’t make things any easier.  I certainly have found this to be the case for myself, and while I have a strong background in using Excel, I have a lot of “room to grow” in terms of incorporating financial data from huge bulky models into a clean and concise presentation that conveys the underlying data effectively.

As I have searched for tools, resources, and articles giving guidance on this very topic, I have come across a particularly helpful website that I wanted to share with our class and hope that you will find it to be as useful as I have. This website is called ‘Think Outside the Slide’ and is as close to a “one stop shop” as I have found for guidance on just about everything relating to creating powerful presentations, with literally thousands of articles neatly organized by topic, as well as video tutorials if you’re more of a visual person. If you use Excel or PowerPoint at all, there is likely a specific article with tips and guidance on how to more effectively use the applications in a context relevant to you.

These are just a few that I have begun to frequently reference to give you a snapshot:

  • Using Excel Data in Powerpoint Presentations
  • Slide Design, Creation, and Editing
  • Linking Excel Data (and other content) to PowerPoint so that data in slides automatically updates
  • Tips on effectively cleaning up and animating graphs
  • Creating powerful visuals using Excel Data (waterfall graphs, diverging stacked bar charts, treemap diagrams, proportional shape comparisons, etc…)

For many business professionals, myself included, Excel and PowerPoint are critical tools, and learning to use data effectively in PowerPoint presentations can take time but is versatile skill with application to countless professions that can help to distinguish yourself from your peers/co-workers, and add value to your clients. I hope you find this to be a helpful resource, please feel free to share any other resources that you frequently use and have found helpful in your career. Thanks!

Helpful links referenced in this post:

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/free-resources/

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/using-excel-data-in-a-powerpoint-presentation/

http://www.thinkoutsidetheslide.com/articles/

05-Creating & constructing good solutions, 07a-Crafting an effective formal presentation, 99-Applying business intelligence

What Makes Messages Stick?

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In his book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, Garr Reynolds discusses many different methods and exercises that help you craft a great presentation, including techniques used by TED presenters.

A chapter I find particularly helpful talks about “messages that stick”- why do some presentations make a great impact on you whereas others just fade away minutes after you have stepped out of the conference room.

In order to make a presentation memorable, take a step back, prior to crafting your slides, and think about a time when stories were passed along around the campfire. What made those messages resonate with you? Garr mentions six principles, first introduced by the Heath brothers in their book Made to Stick:

  • Simplicity. Decide what matter in your presentation and simplify these points. Not everything should be “high priority”.
  • Unexpectedness. Keep the crowd interested. Create a “gap” in their knowledge by asking questions, then fill that gap with information.
  • Concreteness. Give a simple speech with real examples, not abstractions. For example: “let’s kill two birds with one stone” is easier than saying “let’s work towards maximizing our productivity by increasing efficiency across many departments”.
  • Credibility. Most of us are not well-known experts in our field, and usually use data to back us up. Try putting the data in contexts instead of just leaving it “as is”. For example: “enough battery to last you on a flight from NYC to LA” instead of “five hours of battery life”.
  • Emotions. An easy way to help people “feel something” about your content is to add images.
  • Stories. Try to provide real-life examples and illustrations instead of simple streams of information.

Think about the last memorable presentation you have witnessed. Most likely, it encompassed most, or all of the points above.

A link to the book on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Zen-Simple-Delivery-Edition/dp/0321811984/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404828019&sr=8-1&keywords=Presentation+Zen%3A+Simple+Ideas+on+Presentation+Design+and+Delivery%2C+2nd+Edition