PowerPoint Slide Makeover #61: Making multiple messages easier to understand

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. When you put multiple messages on one slide, it confuses the audience. This makeover shows how you can deliver an effective message by having one message per slide.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.

To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide
If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: How less on your PowerPoint slides makes it easier for you to communicate your message

I was speaking with a new client recently about how they felt "free" when using the type of persuasive visuals that I suggest presenters create and use. Here is her story and lessons that all presenters can learn.

My client is a senior executive at a large firm and is regularly speaking to fellow executives and staff. The typical slides used at this organization are packed with text, as are too many slides I see. Bullet paragraphs detail almost everything the presenter is going to say. When she presented with these slides, she said she felt fearful. I wasn’t surprised.

You see, when you have slides packed with information, it puts you in a cage as a presenter. You have boundaries of what you can say based on what is on the slide. The audience can see all these points and expects you to cover each point in the order it is on the slide and to the level of detail shown. These slides set an expectation in the audience that is only fulfilled by reading the slides. You feel the expectation, and, fearful of disappointing the audience, you comply by reading each slide. Unfortunately, reading your slides is the most annoying thing you can do according to the audience surveys I have done.

A persuasive visual has a headline that summarizes the point you want to make and a visual that illustrates that point. With less on the slide, you are free to cover this point in whatever way you need to. You can tell the story behind the point, go into as much detail as you think is needed, or skip a portion based on audience reaction. The audience doesn’t have this rigid expectation of what you must say, so they are free to listen and engage. You end up having more of a conversation with the audience, which is a much more comfortable way to present your message.

When my client tried presenting with persuasive visuals, she felt a freedom she had never felt before. She thought her presentation went much better than previous presentations, and the positive comments and audience reaction confirmed that it was an effective presentation. Now I’m getting the chance to share these ideas with her colleagues in a full-day workshop.

How are your slides setting audience expectations that constrain you as a presenter? Would using persuasive visuals free you to be more natural in your delivery and be a more effective communicator? If you’d like to learn a five-step method for creating your own persuasive visuals, check out my book The Visual Slide Revolution.

PowerPoint Slide Makeover #60: Using animation to help audiences understand

Just a quick note to let you know that a new Slide Makeover Video Podcast based on the ideas in "The Visual Slide Revolution" is available for your viewing through the iTunes Store, online or through my YouTube channel. Animation is a good way to build each point as you discuss it. Instead of animation that confuses the audience, this makeover shows how to make sure you use animation properly to make your message clearer.

This slide is similar to those submitted by the participants in my workshops - someone just like you who is looking for a way to make their presentations more effective. If you want to submit some of your slides to be considered for a future slide makeover, e-mail them to me at Dave@ThinkOutsideTheSlide.com.

If you have already subscribed through iTunes or another podcatcher, the new podcast should be automatically downloaded when you next run the program.
To subscribe via the iTunes Store, click here.
To view online or get the RSS file for other podcatchers, click here.
You can also watch all the podcasts on my YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/ThinkOutsideTheSlide

If you have subscribed via iTunes or YouTube, please provide your positive feedback on the videos in the Comments and Ratings areas of the service so others know the value you get from the videos.



To get your own copy of "The Visual Slide Revolution", click here.
To access quick "how-to" videos for only $1.99 each, click here.

PowerPoint Tip: Deciding what data to show in your presentation

When a presenter dumps data on their audience and expects the audience to figure it all out, they are setting themselves up for disappointment. The “data dump” presentation is not effective communication. So if you’ve done a lot of analysis and the research to back up your points, how much of it should you put in to your presentation?

Let’s start with why too many presenters think they need to include every piece of data in their presentation. I think it comes from when we were in school. Remember the teacher always saying, “Make sure you show your work.” In school, the teacher needed to see all your work so they could evaluate whether you understood the material or not. If you just show an answer, they don’t know how you got the answer and can’t be assured that you grasped the concepts they were teaching.

But the workplace is different. As professionals, our presentations are not an attempt by our bosses to check if we know our job. They do that evaluation before they ever hire us. If we couldn’t do the work, we wouldn’t get the job; it’s as simple as that.

Your presentations are to present the results of your work in a way that enables others to use the information to make decisions or use the knowledge to be more effective and efficient in their own work. If you show all the background and data, you lose the audience because it is overwhelming. There is so much coming at them, they don’t know what the most important point is. And they give up trying to figure it out, or, even worse, come to a different conclusion than the one you wanted them to reach.

Instead of a data dump presentation, I suggest you start with your conclusion. By putting the result of your analysis at the start, the audience knows where you are going and how to interpret the backup that you will show. If they don’t know where the presentation is headed, they won’t be able to ask appropriate questions during the presentation.

Once you have presented your conclusion, get their agreement on assumptions, inputs and methods so they have confidence in the basis for the analysis. This builds the credibility of your work. You can show the key assumptions you made, explain how you think they are reasonable assumptions and get agreement from the audience. Discuss the data sources and inputs used so they have confidence in where the inputs came from. Finally, discuss work methods (general approach only not in detail) so they have confidence in how the work was done. With the foundation of agreement on assumptions, then inputs, and finally method of analysis, the audience can see how the conclusion you presented first clearly flows from the work you did.

The level of detail you include will depend on the audience, which can be different every time you present. Most audiences will only want to see the final calculation or formula used to reach your conclusion. If they want to get in to the details, you can hyperlink to the spreadsheet or analysis software to drive down deeper. If you feel you need to present more details, use a break-down and zoom-in approach to show a summary of the data and each portion of the detail one at a time.

When you are making a decision about the level of detail to present, do not overlook the emotional side of the decision. You are emotionally invested in the work you have done and will feel a need to present it all, in order to show how well you have done. Resist the urge. Instead, step back and see it from the audience’s viewpoint. They trust that you have done the work. They are only interested in what the results mean to them. Most times, a presenter thinks the audience wants more detail than the audience actually wants to hear.

When deciding on the level of detail in your presentation, don't follow the rule from school. Consider each situation uniquely and deliver the amount of detail that audience truly needs.

The Corporate Approach to Presenting PowerPoint on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch

When the iPad was announced, presenters immediately thought they had a new option for doing one-on-one presentations. Instead of lugging their laptop around, they could simply bring their iPad. With the higher resolution of the new iPhone 4 and iPod Touch, presenters saw an opportunity to further reduce the size of the equipment they carry for those presentations to one other person.

Unfortunately the reality is that converting PowerPoint to a Keynote format for presentation on an iPad or using an expensive third-party Office substitute application on any of the devices has proven to be disappointing. The conversion does not work as well as expected and presenters are embarrassed when “surprises” show up during the presentation.

Other challenges have also arisen. The corporate IT department doesn’t want to approve all sorts of new software that they have to support. With many people using a home computer to sync their device for their media files, it becomes a big hassle to try to get a new presentation on the device in a hurry. The promise of an easy solution for corporate presenters has not proven to be the reality for most.

Since my focus is on business presentations, I decided to see if there was an approach that gave reliable results within the constraints of most corporate environments. And I discovered that there is a way to reliably present corporate PowerPoint presentations on an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. The video below explains the method, and the Table of Contents allows you to jump quickly to any step in the process when you are reviewing the video later. The video is 20 minutes long, but I wanted to show you enough detail to make it easy for you to use it on your own iOS device. Let me know how it works for you.