Presentation Zen [24]
In Sum
• Slow down your busy mind to see your problem and goals more clearly.
• Find time alone to see the big picture.
• For greater focus, try turning off the computer and going analog.
• Use paper and pens or a whiteboard first to record and sketch out your ideas.
• Key questions: What’s your main (core) point? Why does it matter?
• If your audience remembers only one thing, what should it be?
• Preparing a detailed handout keeps you from feeling compelled to cram everything into your visuals.
Chapter 4
Crafting the Story
During your time off the grid, you brainstormed alone or perhaps with a small group of people. You stepped back to get the big picture, and you identified your core message. You now have a clearer picture of the presentation content and focus, even if you do not have all the details worked out yet. The next step is to give your core message and supporting messages a logical structure. Structure will help bring order to your presentation and make it easier for you to deliver it smoothly, and for your audience to understand your message easily.
Before you go from analog to digital—taking your ideas from sketches on paper and laying them out in PowerPoint or Keynote—it is important to keep in mind what makes your ideas resonate with people. What makes some presentations absolutely brilliant and others forgettable? If your goal is to create a presentation that is memorable, then you need to consider at all times how you can craft messages that stick.
What Makes Messages Stick?
Most of the great books that will help you make better presentations are not specifically about presentations at all, and certainly not about how to use slideware. One such book is Made to Stick (Random House) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The Heath brothers were interested in what makes some ideas effective and memorable and other ideas utterly forgettable. Some stick and others fade away. Why? What the authors found—and explain simply and brilliantly in their book—is that “sticky” ideas have six key principles in common: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. And yes, these six compress nicely into the acronym SUCCESs.
The six principles are relatively easy to incorporate into messages—including presentations and keynote addresses—but most people fail to use them. Why? The authors say that the biggest reason why most people fail to craft effective or “sticky” messages is because of what they call the “Curse of Knowledge.” The Curse of Knowledge is essentially the condition whereby the deliverer of the message cannot imagine what it’s like not to possess his level of background knowledge on the topic. When he speaks in abstractions to the audience, it makes perfect sense to him, but to him alone. In his mind it seems simple and obvious. The six principles—SUCCESs—are your weapons, then, to fight your own Curse of Knowledge (we all have it) to make messages that stick.
Here’s an example that the authors used early in their book to explain the difference between a good, sticky message and a weak yet garden-variety message. Look at these two messages which address the same idea. One of them should seem very familiar to you.
“Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.”
Or
“…put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.”
The first message sounds similar to CEO-speak today and is barely comprehensible, let alone memorable. The second message—which is actually from a 1961 speech by John F. Kennedy—has every element of SUCCESs,