The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method

"You are the Presentation" - I respectfully disagree

I am in Wisconsin this week, visiting two clients, American Family Insurance and Kimberly-Clark. But the world doesn't stop just because I am spending a few hours driving through this beautiful state. I arrived in my hotel room this evening to find that the "blogosphere" is alive with several bloggers violently agreeing with each other that You, not your PowerPoint, are the presentation: see Neville Hobson, Bert Decker, and Jeremy Jacobs.

I agree with them that you should first figure out what you want to say, before you start creating your visual aids. PowerPoint is not a good place to do your thinking. But I disagree with the conclusion that they draw from this that "you are the presentation." I think this is an unhelpful idea: it adds more stress to the already high levels that many presenters feel, by putting so much pressure on the presenter (but not because they fear public speaking more than they fear death. Emphatically: you are not the presentation, you are just part of its delivery. Your message is the presentation. Put that in the center of all you are doing, and take the spotlight--and the pressure--off yourself.

But we may be talking at cross purposes here: their point applies more to Ballroom style presentations, while my point applies more to Conference Room style presentations--I wrote about the differences between the two in a recent article.

The Death by PowerPoint Debate: Ballroom Style vs. Conference Room style presentations

This article was published some time ago in Competitive Intelligence Magazine. Download final_0606_abela1.pdf

The Storyboard as Presentation

Interesting idea. At McKinsey we sometimes used to present our hand drawn slides to clients, to avoid wasting time producing them. This takes the idea to a different level: the storyboard as presentation. I have to give some thought as to what the role of the squint test would be with this presentation format, though.

Seven Deadly Mistakes Presenters Make, and How to Avoid Them

How to build an audience- (not presenter-) centered presentation. Why is it that standards for presentation design are so abysmally low? Why is it that most people would rather sit in the dentist’s chair than through another presentation? Why has the phrase "Death by PowerPoint" become so prevalent? The answer to all these questions is that most presentation advice and tools have been developed for the benefit of the presenter, not the audience. As a result of this, presenters have adopted several bad habits that weaken their effectiveness terribly. Here are some of worst ones. 

Mistake #1: Setting presentation objectives in terms of what the presenter intends to do, rather than how the audience should change their minds and actions as a result of the presentation.

Mistake #2: Focusing on what you want from your audience, rather than on how your presentation will help them solve a pressing problem of theirs. 

More on mistakes #1 and #2

Mistake #3: Only including evidence that supports your recommendation, instead of providing an objective evaluation of all the evidence, for and against. 

Mistake #4: Adding lots of color, sounds, and clipart to make your presentation look professional, instead of only using exactly what you need to get your point across. 

More on mistakes #3 and #4

Mistake #5: Assuming that your audience has the same personality and communication preferences as you do, instead of consciously considering how those with different personality types from yours would like to receive their information. 

Mistake #6: Presenting your information in the order that makes most sense to you, instead of building an intriguing story. 

Mistake #7: Using your slides as prompts, instead of as visual aids that support—rather than compete with—your spoken message.

More on mistakes #5 - #7

Winner of Extreme Presentation contest

Some time ago we announced the Extreme Presentation contest, looking for the best 1-page presentation. The winner of the $500 prize is Dan Schueckler of Infinitive Corporation. Infinitive is a management consultancy to the Global 1000 delivering Change Engineering(sm) expertise that helps businesses drive operational and organizational change from within. Infinitive is also the first company to have its entire staff trained in the Extreme Presentation method. Congratulations Dan!