The Extreme Presentation(tm) Method

Presenting Online: Conference Room Style presentations on Zoom

Photo by visuals on Unsplash.

 

Followers of the Extreme Presentation method will know that the key to avoiding "Death by PowerPoint" is understanding the idea of presentation style. There are two basic styles, which we call Ballroom and Conference Room style (based on where each type was most commonly delivered — at least in a pre-COVID world).

 

Ballroom style presentations are designed to be delivered to a large audience, such as in a hotel ballroom. They have rich visuals and minimal text. Their purpose is to inform or entertain large audiences — and no more. They are not very effective at persuading audiences to take action. 

 

Why not? Research shows* that if you want to persuade, you have to deliver the relevant details. Ballroom style slides, because of their simplicity, usually cannot contain sufficient details to persuade. 

 

Conference Room style presentations are highly effective at persuading. They have extensive — but always relevant — detail. Since they have lots of detail, you have to make sure that each slide passes the Squint Test: when you squint at the slide, so that the text is blurred and illegible, are you still able to grasp what the main message of the slide is likely to be about? If yes, then the slide passes the Squint Test. (If no, then redesign your slide!)

 

Conference Room style presentations should be distributed: either handed out or emailed in advance. Why? Research indicates* that the best form of persuasion is "self-persuasion," where your audience talks themselves into doing what you're asking them to do. Interactivity between presenter, audience, and content is essential here.

 

Audiences appear to be more comfortable interacting with you and with your content when they hold your content in their hands: they can mark up your content, flip back to check something before asking you a question, read ahead if they're getting it, etc. Most presenters are reluctant to share their decks in advance because of the sense of losing control, but if it helps your audience engage with your content, then it’s worth it. (More on the issue of control below.) 

 

What does all this mean for online delivery of presentations? As we know only too well by now, it’s much harder to engage your audience when presenting online. There is so much more to distract your audience: email, texts, technical difficulties, other pressing priorities, children and pets. And sometimes all of these at once. 

 

If your purpose is to inform or entertain a large audience, then a Ballroom Style presentation, live-streamed, is appropriate. But if your purpose is to get someone to do something — to agree to your proposal, to buy from you, to fund you — then you're trying to persuade, online, and so you need to use a Conference Room style presentation. 

 

And here's how you do that on Zoom, or Google Meet, or whatever system you use. Email your Conference Room style presentation to your audience in advance, and tell them to follow along on their copy. They could print it out, or just view on their screen or their tablet. Printing or tablet works better, because it allows them to make notes on your presentation.

 

During your presentation, you'll share each new slide on the screen for a few seconds so that they'll know which slide you're on, and then stop sharing and let them follow along on their own copy. Why? Because you want them to interact with your presentation, write on it, flip pages, and not just stare at the screen while you speak. And because you want to watch them as you speak, not stare at your own slides. You want to observe their body language — are they following you, are they buying in, or are you losing them? 

 

We're afraid to hand out our presentation decks in advance because we like the sense of control that sharing our screen and deciding when to move to the next slide gives us (in the same way that in the pre-COVID world we loved to hold that clicker). But that’s just an illusion of control. You never do control what the audience is actually doing, or thinking. So give up that illusion of control, hand over the deck, stop sharing your screen and look at your audience instead, and what you'll get in return is the reality of true engagement with them. And that's going to lead to persuasion. 

 

If you’re interested in learning more about Conference Room Style presentations, try out the free preview of the Extreme Presentation online course. 

For more details on Conference Room style slides, see this interview with Geetesh Bajaj of Indezine. 

 

*For details on the research I refer to in this post, see my book Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication that Drives Action.

 

Unleash The Power of Your Data And Evidence With Visual Storytelling

Hello, Everyone,

We hope you are having a restful holiday.  Just a quick note to say that a number of people have expressed interest in harnessing the power of data in visual storytelling.  And the folks at Prezi.com have asked us to lead a webinar on this topic.  If this is something that might be valuable for you or your colleagues, feel free to spread the word, and save the date:  Thursday, January 21, 2016, 1 pm Eastern US time (10 am Pacific US time; 7 pm Central European time).

To give our faithful readers an advance glimpse of the topics in this free, 45 minute "Prezinar" ...  

• how to present your insights, rather than just data;
• how to engage your audience by embedding your data in an overarching visual story;
• how to foster audience interaction through effective visuals;
• how to persuade your audience to act upon your recommendations;

and more.

More details to follow in the coming weeks, as they become available.

 

In thanks for 2015, and in hope for 2016,

Paul and Andrew

Microsoft's new design ethos

Microsoft Corporation was one of my earliest clients for the Extreme Presentation workshop, and continues to be one of my largest; I continue to teach the workshop in Redmond three or four times per year, including most recently on Tuesday of this week. 

I have been delighted to observe at Microsoft a growing concern with design, the recent history of which is described in Modern Design at Microsoft, an excellent article by Steve Clayton.  Clayton notes that he

"...started from the very place I bet you are right now — disbelief that Microsoft is leading the way on design"

and he goes on to describe the journey he has observed, and participated in, towards a leading edge design focus at Microsoft.  One of the external design influences on Microsoft is the Bauhaus movement.

"At the heart of the Bauhaus philosophy is stripping away superfluous decorations to focus on the essence of the functional. There are many parallels in today’s computing world. The practice of mimicking real-world materials such as glass, brushed metal or leather, and effects such as drop shadows, reflections and lens flares, are an attempt to adorn experiences without being functional. When Sam Moreau, design director for Windows, says, 'The content is the interface,' he’s channeling his inner Bauhaus."

To my mind, the essence of the idea is this:

"A Microsoft designer’s focus is on making every element have a clear and useful purpose. No more, no less. It helps communicate what is most important so a person can focus on the task at hand."

I am of course delighted, because I have been pushing this approach in presentation design for several years, at Microsoft and elsewhere, not always to a friendly audience (including at Microsoft).  There's a brief clip from my workshop on the third video on this post (or go directly to the video here) where I argue for stripping out everything on a slide that isn't directly communicating or reinforcing your message. 

The idea is part of the Conference Room presentations style, which I argue is highly effective for persuading small groups of people, and is highlighted in points 3 (no chartjunk) and 9 (show all the relevant details and only the relevant details) in the Anatomy of a Conference Room Style Presentation. 

 

 

Fighting the "Clicker" Fetish

After the videos on yesterday's post, here's one more clip: 

When you use a Conference Room Style presentation, you switch off the projector and relinquish your remote, and so you give up your control over your audience, right?

 

The Future of Marketing Research, Animated

Ian Lewis, at Cambiar, sent this to me.  (Sir Ken Robinson's animation, on a lower budget?)

 

 

 

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.

 

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.  

Change This: Presenting to Small Audiences

Presentations to small audiences have very different requirements than those for large audiences, and yet most people design them as if they were just the same.

Issue number 50 of Seth Godin's brainchild ChangeThis includes a manifesto of his on How to Sell a Book or Any New Idea, as well as one of my own entitled Presenting to Small Audiences: Turn off the Projector!

How to combat fear of public speaking using Conference Room style presentations

With conference room style presentations, much of the time your audience is looking down at your handout rather than up at your projected slides--and you.  It makes a big difference.