The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method

Upcoming: Live, In-person Workshop

Hello, Friends and Colleagues,

We hope all is well.  Most of our workshops are for specific companies, so when we offer an Open Cohort, we like to let you know - to invite everyone.   Many of you have asked us to offer a live, in-person, open version of our Extreme Presentation workshop - and we are providing that.  Please see details below.  Reserve your spot here.  Express interest here.  Not sure, or have a question?  Ask us!

 

Details:

• Perhaps you have always wanted to take the workshop - now is your chance.
• Perhaps you attended the workshop, but would like to recommend it to a friend - feel free to introduce them to us.
• Rather than a full day - this live, in-person training will occur in a five-hour session - to make it easier for you to attend (see details above). 

Limited space available - first come, first served - we are intentionally capping the size of the workshop to ensure an interactive and integrated experience for you.
See the brochure and video here.

Download Extreme Presentation "Live, In-Person Open Cohort Workshop" Flyer

Visual Storytelling with Data and Evidence - Prezinar details

Hello, Friends and Colleagues,

We hope all is well.  To follow up the post from two weeks ago, we now have access to the registration page for the Prezinar "Unleash the Power of Your Data and Evidence With Visual Storytelling" this Thursday here  http://www.preziteams.com/data-storytelling .  If you can join us, we look forward to the event; if you cannot join us live, but you are still interested in this topic, the replay of the event will be available for everyone who registers.  See our previous post for details.

Please let us know if you have any questions,

Paul & Andrew

Problem with Ballroom style presentations?

The Advertising Lab blog points out a possible problem with Ballroom style presentations, towards the bottom of this post:

We used to spend hours fumbling with PowerPoint templates and animations and slide transitions. Today, we spend hours coming up with clever one-liners and raiding Flickr and stock image banks in search of the perfect generic photo in high resolution. The result is pretty much the same, only now the image-heavy and word-light decks can't even stand on their own without the presenter to provide context.

How quickly things move; it was only about a year ago that we were celebrating the triumph of the Ballroom style presentation. 

Video presentations

I recently had a visit from Jordan Schaffel. Jordan is a co-founder of Saying It Visually, a company that specializes in producing video stories.  They have several good examples on their site, including their newest one, which explains the complex subject of closing costs in real estate.  You can view it here.

McKinsey interview

I was recently interviewed by McKinsey & Company, and the interview is posted on their internal "Communicate" website.  It's only accessible to current McKinsey staff (who can click here), so I've agreed to post it on my blog too.  I have also added "translations" of McKinsey jargon in [square] brackets. It's a good synthesis of some of the core principles I have articulated in my books and on this blog.  

In addition to the interview, McKinsey consultants are being given copies of my forthcoming book, The Presentation: A Story About Communicating Successfully, With Very Few Slides. (Subscribers to the Extreme Presentation Breaking News email list will also receive a copy, in ebook form.  Subscribe here.)  

From EM [Engagement Manager] to charting guru

Alum [i.e. former consultant] Andrew Abela (Toronto [office], 1992-1998) is now Chairman of the Department of Business & Economics at the Catholic University of America and author of Advanced Presentations by Design. In this interview he shares some of his thoughts about effective charting and previews his next book project – your contributions welcome.

Presentation idiom. You define two in the book—ballroom style and conference room style. How should they differ? 

Most slides contain some mixture of bullet points, charts, or tables. Bullet points alone are a communications disaster: research shows that presenting slides filled with bullets while speaking at the time is less effective than speaking without any slides at all (because people are trying to read the bullets and listen to you at the same time—which means that they do neither particularly well).

Adding charts or tables is better than just bullets, but the real issue is how much detail should you put on each slide? And the answer to this is: it depends on the context. The two most common presentation contexts are (1) presenting to a large audience, where you’re trying to inspire them with a big idea or two; and (2) presenting to a smaller audience, where you’re trying to persuade them to do something: make a decision; accept a recommendation; execute a plan; engage the Firm [McKinsey & Company]. 

And this is where presentation idiom comes in: different contexts call for different idioms, or presentation styles. Ballroom style is where you’re inspiring or entertaining a large audience with a few big ideas. In this style you’ll have slides with minimal text and lots of colorful, attractive images.  

Conference room style is for persuading a small audience. Conference room style slides have lots of details—but only relevant details—on them. Research has proven the perhaps obvious point that providing the relevant details is essential if you’re going to persuade people to act on your recommendation. But research also demonstrates the less obvious point, that adding weak or irrelevant details reduces persuasion. 

So in order to persuade, slides have to contain all the relevant details, and only the relevant details. You can’t communicate details in anything like a ballroom style slide, which is why we need an alternative, which is conference room style. But how do you ensure that the details aren’t overwhelming? Make sure that your slides pass the squint test.

Squint test. What's that, and how can it help people craft more effective charts? 

The challenge for a conference room style slide is how to fit all the details you need and still keep the slide lucid and attractive. Conventional wisdom says that slides should not be too “busy,” but research contradicts this. So long as the slide is well designed, then showing more steps in your logic—and therefore more details—on the same slide actually strengthens comprehension and persuasion.  This is because the audience doesn’t have to keep the content of multiple slides in mind to follow your argument. 

The way to make sure that a slide is well designed is to follow what designers call the “squint test.” Squint at your slide, so that none of the text is legible. Can you still tell what the slide is about? Is it about a linear process, a cyclical process, a convergence of events? If the layout alone gives the viewer an idea of what the slide is about, then the slide will pass the squint test. In order to create a slide that passes the squint test, identify the overall point of the slide, and then lay out the slide in a way that visually reinforces that main point. 

We don’t know for sure, but the strong hypothesis is that when a slide passes the squint test, the viewer, upon seeing it, has some idea of what the slide is about and is therefore willing to listen to the presenter. A slide with just a list of bullets, by contrast, gives you no idea what it is about, and so the viewer automatically starts to read the bullets, which distracts from what the presenter is saying.  

To paraphrase Edward Tufte, what we’re trying to achieve on each slide is simplicity of design and complexity of detail. The detail provides the content that is necessary to persuade the client to do what you are asking them to do, while the squint test ensures that your slide’s design is simple enough to enable the detail to be understood clearly. 

To me, the ultimate presentation is one slide long: beautifully designed to pass the squint test, containing all the necessary details, with absolutely everything that is not directly relevant ruthlessly stripped out of it. This is not just fantasy; in my own career at McKinsey, I had a couple of occasions where we had a great success with one-slide presentations. In one case my ED [Engagement Director] and I ran a hugely successful two-hour meeting with the client CEO and his team, with just one slide. In another case, a colleague in the Toronto office (Patrick Pichette, now CFO of Google), reduced his client’s entire production process and his team’s recommended improvements to a single, superbly impactful slide.

New project. What's next for you on the book front?

I just finished my brief “novella,” The Presentation. It is a narrative account that conveys the concepts of presentation idiom and squint test, as well as the S.Co.R.E. method for developing a compelling storyline, as part of a short story. I think Firm members [McKinsey consultants] will find it a quick and useful read; you can also give copies to any clients who need some help with their presentation design skills.

My next book takes a deep dive into the topic of slide layout—it’s all about the squint test. It will have a large number of real world examples of great slide layouts. Right now we’re collecting the examples. I invite anyone reading this who has any examples to share to email them to me and, with the appropriate permissions and sanitization, we will include the best ones in this book. 

Coming Soon—The Presentation: A Story About Communicating Successfully, With Very Few Slides

My second book, The Presentation: A Story About Communicating Successfully, with Very Few Slides, will be coming out in a couple of weeks. 

 

Subscribers to the Extreme Presentation Breaking News email list will receive a free copy of the ebook version of The Presentation—the complete ebook, not just a teaser chapter or two. If you aren't on the Breaking News email list, you can sign up now.

The Presentation is an exercise in using storytelling for effective communication.  It teaches the principles of the Extreme Presentation method, which I covered in all their scientific detail in Advanced Presentations by Design, in a fast, easy to read and enjoyable format. 

 

The Presentation tells the story of David who, with the help of his boss, Barbara, and the enigmatic Professor Edwards, is preparing for the most important presentation of his life.  In a few short days, David will have to convince the Board that his division—along with his job and those of all his staff—is worth saving.  He has the data he needs, and he thinks he has a good case, but can he pull it all together in a way that will capture the Board’s attention and pitch his proposal successfully, in just a few slides…?

 

Follow David as he learns:

• that you cannot add interest to your presentation, through fancy transitions, clip art, and so on; you can only draw out the interest inherent in it by solving a problem for your audience

• that there is a vast difference between slides designed for a large, Ballroom style presentation to inform or entertain the audience, and a smaller, Conference Room style presentation to persuade or sell

• how to decide what you should include in your presentation, and what you should leave out

• and how to design a presentation when the goal is to persuade your audience to do something: invest in your company, buy your product, approve your project, support your initiative, or donate to your organization.

 

A 200-slide Presentation

Seth Godin recently made the provocative suggestion that you break up your typical presentation into 200 slides.  He's talking here about a Ballroom style presentation, not the kind of thing you'd present to physicians, scientists, marketers, managers, prospects, board members, or any other small group that you are trying to persuade to take a specific action.  

But for presenting to a large group, such as a sales convention, nothing beats a good Ballroom style presentation.  Here's one of my favorites, Dick Hardt's now legendary OSCON 2005 presentation:

(If you can't see the video, click here.)

Prezi: the compromise breaker

I am very excited about Prezi.  I commented on it briefly in a post some months ago, and have been spending some time with it since then.  Yesterday they announced an upgrade, including revisions to their editor, including simple addition of YouTube video and easier text editing.   

Here's why I'm excited about it.  I think Prezi is one technology that can actually bridge the gap between Ballroom and Conference Room style presentations.  

People who who follow this blog, or who have read Advanced Presentations by Design or attended the Extreme Presentation workshop, know that I make a big deal about the distinction between Ballroom Style and Conference Room style presentations (see for example Presenting to physicians, scientists, engineers... and marketers). The reason I do so is that I believe that much of the confusion about Death by Powerpoint arises from confusion about different presentation styles.  

 

If you're trying to present a big idea, to wow people, or to entertain them, then you should deliver a Ballroom style presentation: projecting great visuals, with few words--the kind of thing Garr Reynolds promotes in Presentation Zen.  But if you're trying to persuade people to do something: buy, approve, invest, change behavior, etc., then you need to deliver a Conference Room style presentation: lots of details on printed slides which pass the squint test.  

Why?  Research tells us that if you want to persuade someone, then you must provide details, interactivity, and lack of distraction (for specific references to some of this research, see my article on Evidence-based Presentation Design principles).  Here I want to focus in particular on the importance of details.  If you're trying to persuade someone, you need to give them the details about what you are proposing: costs, resources, implementation timing, etc.  To show such details in a presentation, you need the higher resolution offered by paper (as Edward Tufte has taught for years); a projected slide just won't do it.  (For a longer explanation of why this is so, see my Change This manifesto Presenting to Small Audiences: Switch off the Projector!)

So what has all of this to do with Prezi?  The most original and significant features of Prezi, to my mind, are its ability to pan and zoom.  In Prezi, your presentation is one, very large canvas, and you tell your story by panning around it and zooming in and out.  

Here's an example.

The important thing about details is not overwhelming your audience with them.  The usual solution to this is to minimize details, which is what we do in a Ballroom style presentation, but that is not an option if you're trying to persuade someone to do something--the details are essential.  

The way to present details without overwhelming your audience is to keep the details always in the context of the big picture.  In Conference Room style presentations, the way we do this is by creating slide layouts that pass the squint test, and then filling those layouts with details.  The squint test ensures that the big picture is communicated--if you squint at the slide, so that the details are blurred, you should still "get" the big picture in a well-designed Conference Room style slide.

In Prezi, the way you communicate details without overwhelming your audience is by making the details small, zooming in to view them as necessary, and then zooming back out to see the big picture.  

Here's an example.  This is a Conference Room style slide that I use in my workshop.

The way to present this is to hand out a copy to each of your audience members, and then talk them through the slide ("Starting in arrow #1, on the left, we can see that..." etc. etc.).  It is very effective: it contains the necessary details, but keeps them in the overall context of the presentation--of the logic that ties it all together.  

And so here's an example of how this could work in Prezi.

This was very simple to create.  I imported the existing slide into Prezi, placed a Frame around each element I wanted to zoom into, and then created a Path to link all the elements in the order I wanted to present them.

Here are some quick thoughts on using Prezi, based on my experience so far:

1. Spend the three minutes viewing the Prezi in 3 minutes video; you will waste more than three minutes if you don't.  The Prezi interface is very intuitive, but this quick explanation will speed up your learning dramatically.  

2. Try to ensure that the layout of your Prezi reinforces the logic of your presentation: is it a cycle, a linear flow, a spiral, etc. (in Extreme Presentation terms, make sure that your Prezi layout passes the squint test).  Here's a very good example of this, from the Prezi website:

It seems to me that the ideal Prezi-style presentation will pass the squint test at every level of zooming.  I believe that layout, in Prezi, should be fractal, in that the layout will show interesting information at every level of magnification (although without the self-similar property of fractals). 

3. Try it!  This is one of the best communication technologies to come along in a very long time.  

Presentation style

One of the more popular topics on this blog has always been the importance of choosing the right presentation style for a given situation.  The essential difference between the two main presentation styles (ballroom style and conference room style) is the size of your audience and what you are trying to achieve with them.  Ballroom style presentations are suitable for informing or entertaining large audiences (e.g. participants at an annual sales meeting).  Conference room style presentations are best for persuading smaller audiences (e.g. a sales pitch to a client team; a funding pitch to a venture capital firm; or a proposal to senior management or the board). 

But what if you want to persuade a large audience?  This is actually very hard.  In my ChangeThis manifesto, I wrote about how research shows that persuasion requires three things: details, interaction, and absence of distraction, and how conference room style presentations are ideal for delivering all three. 

In a recent comment on this blog, Jeff Hurt wrote:

While I concur that ballroom presentations are usually to entertain, inform, impress, inspire or motivate an audience, I've seen some very skilled presenters take those ballroom presentations and turn them on their head. I've watched them use the same concepts they would use in a conference room session of 50 people and engage an audience in small group conversations, exercises and activities. Their goal is still to educate, engage and persuade an audience from awareness to action. With the advancement of mobile tools and Web 2.0 interface, I've also watched experienced and talented presenters with very large ballroom crowds engage with the audience through SMS, Twitter and other features.

Jeff is right: it can be done.  But it is very hard, and it takes exceptional skill to persuade a large audience (that’s why good politicians are so rare).  One approach that I have often recommended is to introduce your topic with a brief ballroom style presentation and then follow up with a conference room style one.  Another is to use some of the new technologies, as Jeff mentions.

One particular new technology that can be helpful here is the online presentation design program Prezi.  Prezi allows you, while following a specific storyline, to dive deep into details along the way.  Here’s a good example of a Prezi presentation; this one was designed by Nick Matarese, a fifth-year Industrial & Interaction Design major at Syracuse University, who was interning at a client of mine.  It’s nicely done.

I would be happy to hear about other examples of approaches to persuading large audiences.

Smile and Move

Here's another good example of a ballroom style video presentation.