Presentation Zen [25]
• Simplicity. If everything is important, then nothing is important. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. You must be ruthless in your efforts to simplify—not dumb down—your message to its absolute core. We’re not talking about stupid sound bites here. Every idea can be reduced to its bare essential meaning, if you work hard enough. For your presentation, what’s the key point? What’s the core? Why does (or should) it matter?
• Unexpectedness. You can get people’s interest by violating their expectations. Surprise people. Surprise will get their interest. But to sustain their interest, you have to stimulate their curiosity. The best way to do that is to pose questions or open holes in people’s knowledge and then fill those holes. Make the audience aware that they have a gap in their knowledge and then fill that gap with the answers to the puzzle (or guide them to the answers). Take people on a journey.
• Concreteness. Use natural speech and give real examples with real things, not abstractions. Speak of concrete images, not of vague notions. Proverbs are good, say the Heath brothers, at reducing abstract concepts to concrete, simple, but powerful (and memorable) language. For example, the expression “iiseki ni cho” or “kill two birds with one stone”? It’s easier than saying something like “let’s work toward maximizing our productivity by increasing efficiency across many departments, etc.” And the phrase “…go to the moon and back” by JFK (and Ralph Kramden before him)? Now that’s concrete. You can visualize that.
• Credibility. If you are famous in your field, you may have built-in credibility (but even that does not go as far as it used to). Most of us, however, do not have that kind of credibility, so we reach for numbers and cold hard data to support our claims as market leaders and so on. Statistics, say the Heath brothers, are not inherently helpful. What’s important is the context and the meaning. Put it in terms that people can visualize. “Five hours of battery life” or “Enough battery life to watch your favorite TV shows nonstop on your iPod during your next flight from San Francisco to New York”? There are many ways to establish credibility—a quote from a client or the press may help, for example. But a long-winded account of your company’s history will just bore your audience.
• Emotions. People are emotional beings. It is not enough to take people through a laundry list of talking points and information on your slides—you must make them feel something. There are a million ways to help people feel something about your content. Images are one way to have audiences not only understand your point better, but also feel and have a more visceral and emotional connection to your idea. Explaining the devastation of the Katrina hurricane and floods in the U.S., for example, could be done with bullet points, data, and talking points, but images of the aftermath and the pictures of the human suffering that occurred tell the story in ways that words, text, and data alone never could. Just the words “Hurricane Katrina” conjure up vivid images in your mind. Humans make emotional connections with people, not abstractions. When possible, put your ideas in human terms. “One hundred grams of fat” may seem concrete to you, but for others it is an abstraction. A picture of an enormous plate of greasy French fries, two cheeseburgers, and a large chocolate shake will hit people at a more visceral level. “So that’s what 100 grams of fat looks like!”
• Stories. We tell stories all day long. It’s how