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5 Tips to help you Plan your Next Presentation

“Presentation is the ‘Killer Skill’ we take into the real world. It’s almost an unfair advantage.”– The McKinsey Mind.

If youve followed this blog long enough, youll know that I am big on presentation skills. I completely agree with McKinsey when they call presentation, the killer skill. If youre a salesman, you can make an impressive pitch. If youre a teacher, you can deliver a memorable lecture. If youre a technocrat, you can make an effective point to your clients. If youre an exec, you can appeal to your employees. If youre a keynote speaker, you can do what Steve Jobs does. The list is endless! An effective presentation is often the edge that your core skills need.

So what goes into an effective presentation? I want to examine this in a series of posts. In todays post I want to touch upon the first step to an effective presentation -- planning. This is before you slam in your first slide. This is where you start to think of your story and how you will present it. I have a few tips thatll help you create a compelling story for your show.

Dont Start at the Computer

This has got to be the most common mistake of all time and its one of the six mistakes you should never make as a presenter. I find it very awkward to plan my presentation on slideware. I say so, because when my first step is Powerpoint or Keynote, then I end up context switching amongst the following jobs:

• crafting my story;
• deciding how i spread the story over slides;
• finding the right images;
• and dealing with every challenge the program throws at me.

To avoid this, I like to avoid the computer at the first step. As presentation guru Garrey Reynolds says, "One way to ensure that your computer and software applications remain great tools to amplify your ideas and your presentation is to first turn off the computer and walk away from it. Youll be back soon enough."

Plan on Paper

So if you dont start at the computer, where do you start? I like using low-tech, hi-touch tools like index cards, stickies, whiteboards and good old writing pads. Garrey reynolds calls this planning analog as against planning digital on the computer. These tools are highly flexible. If I dont like what Ive done, all I do is rip the paper apart and try again. During this phase, I try to do one or more of the following things.

• I decide how Ill deliver the presentation. I like telling stories over providing a collection of facts. So at this stage I decide what my storyll look like and how itll progress through various stages of my talk.
• I like to get some details nailed down at this stage of planning. I try my best to create a topic map from my story. This helps me understand what parts of the topic Ill cover at each stage of the story.
• If possible, I like to do some storyboarding at this stage. For this, I lay down index cards and try to sketch out as many slides for my talk as possible. In this video, youll see an example of how I do my storyboards.
  

Think of 3 Key Points

You may have heaps to say about your topic. Nothing wrong with that, except that people can only remember so much. To craft a memorable message, its a good idea to structure your presentation around no more than three key points. I usually let my audience know right up front, "In todays session, well touch upon three things...". Once Ive done this, then I keep coming back to this list of three so I can keep reinforcing the message in my audiences memory. Take a look at the examples in the above image. They are from real presentations and though my style could do with a little more variety, youll see that each talk focusses on three main topics which I can keep coming back to during my presentation.

The Grandma Test

Being complicated and difficult to understand is no longer fashionable. The acid test for your plan is if you can take your story to your grandmother and she can understand what youre saying. Well, if you think thats a stretch then you need a patient wife. My wife listens to all my stories and interrupts me when she doesnt understand something. If she doesnt understand, then thats a signal for me to simplify my message.

Theres something I want to say about statistics at this point. We seem to be obsessed about presenting statistics in our presentations. We use complex charts and graphs in presentations as if people can glean all the details in a few split seconds. Most charts, tables or graphs have one key point that we want to drive home. If thats really the case, then why not present just that key point? I was recently watching Steve Jobs announcing iPhone OS 4.0. Steve presented a lot of statistics in this talk, but its an education to see how he presents these numbers. A few things Jobs does really well:

• He doesnt present more than one number at a time.
• Whenever he has to, he provides context for statistics. Its meaningless to say how many applications there are for the iPhone. Its meaningful to say how this compares with the competition. For more inspiration on how you can do this, take a look at Shift Happens. No wonder it has close to a million views!
  
• Jobs uses visuals to convey his message effectively. Take a look at how he uses colour contrast and simple imagery to make his statistics stand out. This is something you and I can do. All that it takes, are simplicity, restraint and naturalness.
  

I have another example about presenting statistics - Jamie Olivers TED prize talk. Its one of the best presentations Ive seen in a long, long time. Jamie presents statistics and yet he doesnt. He talks about how American families eat unhealthy food, but instead of showing food consumption charts he shows a video of an American mother with all her junk food on the table. Definitely more compelling than a chart. He talks about how children dont know about vegetables. He could have shown education statistics, but instead he shows a video of children failing to recognise vegetables in school. The most memorable part of his talk is when he explains how much sugar children have, just from milk. He doesnt present statistics, he brings in a wheelbarrow of sugar to make his point. Now thats what people will remember!

So, let me come back to where I started. If your plan is to use a chart or graph in your presentation, then show it to your grandmother or wife. If you can make an impact on them, then youre OK. If not, please reconsider your plan!

The Catastrophe Test

If youve planned analog, thought of three key points to hang your presentation around, and been able to convince grandma about your point, then you need to undergo the catastrophe test before you get into Powerpoint, Keynote or Prezi. Whats the catastrophe test? Well, its simply a test for you to deliver your presentation without any electronic tools. Why should you do this? Remember Murphys law?


What if the projector fails? What if your computer misbehaves on the day of the presentation? What if you realise on the day of the presentation that slides are not the way to go? Youve got to be prepared, right? So I like preparing for the worst. Thats my catastrophe test. If I know my story like the back of my hand, then slides are just another way to visualise it. If I know my story well, then I can also move quickly when designing my slides. So try this out -- see if you can use your paper based plans to talk in front of a mirror. If you can, then youve got most of your presentation nailed.

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If you can pay heed to these five pieces of advice when you plan your presentation, designing it will become almost a mechanical exercise. You may feel that this planning phase is tough, and you may well be right. This will take some time. This will however, save you time when you create your slides. Its also likely to make your audiences time worthwhile, because youre less likely to drone and more likely to tell an engaging story. What do you think? Do my tips make sense? Theyve certainly worked for me, but Im keen to know how you feel about them. Let me know by commenting on this blogpost. In my next Mondays post, Ill cover off a few tips for effective presentation design.

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3 Visual Design Tips to Make Your Presentation Slides Pop

Cammy Bean is hilarious - and shes also just spot on. Some months back she wrote about her newly discovered syndrome - SoMeFat. My friend Neil Lasher talked about that on his blogpost to kick off the year. It feels like a bit of an epidemic to me, I tell you because I think the SoMeFat bug has reached me. Dont worry, Im advised that its a minor disorder and that I should be back to my vocal nature on all social media channels. Im also told that my upcoming three week vacation starting 21st April, will bring me back recharged. In the mean time, Im going to take the doctors advice and not blog about social media or social business today. Instead, in todays blogpost Ill share with you three tips that can really help bring your presentations alive. Of course, theres several other things you can try - all I want to do is share some interesting techniques to bring the zing back to your slides.

Use Contrast to your Advantage

Contrast is a great way to lead your audiences attention to items that deserve their attention. There are several ways of creating contrast. You could choose a variation of size, colour or shape to draw peoples attention. Youll see several presentation gurus use this trick all the time and it comes in handy when there are more than one element on the screen and you need to focus only on one of them. Take a look at some of the examples Ive put up for you above.

Build a Consistent Theme

I recently attended Tom Kuhlmanns talk at Learning Solutions 2011. Toms obviously a great practitioner of slide-based presentations and his talk last month was no exception. What I was quite interested by however, was the consistent moon theme that he adopted for his talk. You should see the slides here. The slide design actually added an element of fun and consistency to his visuals and kept me engaged. Toms made a habit of using a consistent visual theme, and youll see that even on the presentation he did at DevLearn 2010. Actually if you look hard, youll see that several illustrious presenters use this approach as well. Take a look at this presentation by Garr Reynolds and also this one. And while youre at it, dont miss Guy Kawasakis enchantment, though I know one of the viewers found it disappointingly predictable!

Use Hand Drawn, Organic Graphics

One of the trends Ive seen in recent years, is that of hand-drawn graphics. While Garr Reynolds did a bit of it in this presentation, I see it being more prevalent these days with a lot of us wanting to stamp our personalities with custom graphics. And what can be more custom than a hand-drawn picture? Take a look at Richard Lees entertaining Pecha Kucha talk to get an idea of how you can use this style effectively. Ive also added one of my presentations to this post (nothing really confidential), so you can see how some of this applies for real, business presentations. And by the way, if you were scared of sketching stuff out by yourself, theres help. The Articulate community has some really cool hand-drawn assets for download. If you do feel like sketching things up, its quite easy - buy yourself a pen tablet and then just use Powerpoint as Dan Roam recommends. And if you have something like an iPad, then there are free tools like Adobe Ideas that are so simple that even I can draw!

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So, I hope that you like this little break from social media and that these tips help you improve your presentations in some small way. By the way, I am going on holiday from 21 April as I already mentioned. I am taking a three week break from blogging during that time unless theres some way I can find an internet connection and the motivation to write during that time. I do promise to come back and spew my thoughts on this blog as usual when Im back, so hang in here if you do like the blog. Until next week - tada!

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5 Simple Ideas to Avoid Presentation Nervousness

A few weeks back I was in a conversation with one of my smartest and most confident colleagues. What he told me might leave you a bit surprised. If your were to meet this gentleman in person, youd have no idea that someone like him would ever be nervous. As it turns out, he was talking about his problem of getting nervous when he stands up and speaks in front of a large audience. Now, I must say I wasnt one bit surprised to hear what he had to say, because frankly I know very few people who arent nervous of public speaking and presenting. In todays blogpost I want to share the advice I shared with my friend - five tips to deal with presentation fright.

The Show Begins Before the Presentation
Its very tempting to spend the last few minutes before your presentation rehearsing your slides, thinking of your punchlines and deciding how youll wow your audience. Frankly, its a really bad idea to do so because it means youll spend time away from the audience thats gathering at the venue. Why is it easier to speak to people you already know, than to present to an audience that you dont know at all? Familiarity brings a level of comfort and safety. Too often, the time you spend staying aloof from your audience, gold plating your presentation, is the time you can use to build familiarity and comfort. So how about the next time you present, you try to mingle with your audience, get to know a few people by name and see how you can use the friendly faces in the audience to give you confidence?

Dont Blow Your own Trumpet
The other day I saw this really funny Dilbert strip and it reminded me of a session at the recent DevLearn conference. The speaker (his name isnt important) started off his session with a few minutes about who he was and pointed out that the most important thing for us to know was that he had about 30 years of experience in L&D. I found that amusing at the time, because he was speaking of social media in the workplace - a youth driven phenomenon that has come up just in the last few years. How did the 30 years of experience matter? In my mind he had set his billing quite high at that point and the only direction he could go was south. cIn fact, he didnt do his 30 years of experience any good when he said that theres theres a version of Facebook and MySpace that you can install behind your firewall. As it turned out, the talk was a huge disappointment for me personally and was the only session I didnt report.

Martin Fowler once told me that if you have to tell your audience how good you are before you start your presentation, its an indirect indication that your talk is not good enough to establish your credibility. Why would you want to brag and then set yourself up for failure? Presentation guru Olivia Mitchell shares some very practical tips on how you can establish your credibility without bragging at the start of your talk. Frankly shes got some great tips to relieve the pressure that a chest thumping self introduction can create for you.

Fight the Murphy Monkey


Regardless of how experienced a speaker is, the feeling of nerves is always there. Everyone feels a little nervous when addressing an audience, especially an unfamiliar one. Experienced speakers however, will deal with this quite well. As Townsend says, they know about the Murphy monkey. Youll notice that a lot of great speakers will start their talks with a question, or a show of hands, or a quick activity or icebreaker. They might initiate a discussion, tell a story or ask for a volunteer. This is a way to not just engage your audience from the start but also a way to share the spotlight with them somewhat. For sometime, during the tense initial minutes, youve thrown the monkey off your back and thrown it to your audience. Ive found this to be a good way to take the pressure off myself and get the rest of the presentation into a relaxed, conversational mode.

Practice Exclusion while you work on Inclusion


As experts on the topics we speak on, its natural to have heaps to say. Of course, everything is important and we want people to get a complete picture. Unfortunately people can retain only so much at the end of a standard 60 minute talk. To top it, the more points we need to cover and the more complicated the talk, the more we need to remember. As a consequence theres more pressure on us as speakers. On the other hand, if we were to keep the main presentation simple without being simplistic, the details are likely to emerge from conversation. Conversation helps ease the pressure in presentation situations. Its important to know how your audience is likely to pull the details, and drive out depth that way instead of putting all the pressure on yourself to push out all the information. Olivia Mitchells excellent guide helps you stop information overload in your presentations.

Manage your Environment
Last but not the least, I want to mention a problem I face often. At ThoughtWorks University, often the hotel room gets really cold when we switch on the air conditioning. Conversely when we switch of the air conditioning, it gets warm and comfortable, but at the same time it becomes hot and sweaty if youre a really active speaker. The feeling of being hot in a large room doesnt help any presenters mental state. To add to this, a warm, comfortable room after a heavy lunch in the afternoon is an invitation for a snoozefest, regardless of how engaging the speaker is.

Ive also walked into rooms with several chairs arranged neatly in rows when Ive got just about 15-20 people in the room. People have a tendency to sit in a scattered fashion if the room allows them to. I like to get people into one distinct cluster, as close to myself as possible. That way, its easier to interact with the audience and keep things conversational. If I have group exercises, theyre easier to run this way as well. More importantly, the feeling of having one group close up as against several splinters all across the room feels significantly less intimidating. The less intimidated I am, the more likely I am to be myself.

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If you present often, Im sure you feel nervous every now and then. How do you deal with the stage fright? Id love to hear your tips and Im sure others who read this article will find those useful too. Please drop your ideas in the comments section. Thanks for reading - see you here next week!

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