Creating Effective Presentations

“Brevity is a great charm of eloquence.” Cicero

Businesses thrive on presentations, but too often this form of communication is created without clear thought of the end objective. If this wasn’t bad enough, meetings that are inconclusive beget more meetings. Knowing that “executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in [meetings],”* the last thing most businesses need is even more meetings. Too often, as a meeting attendee, it seems like the presentation seems constructed to waste everyone’s time in the form of an “informational presentation.” If the meeting is one where people are calling in and the presentation is over Skype or other meeting software, it is all but certain that people will multi-task.

The most important question to ask when starting a presentation is, “to whom is this targeted?” Doesn’t matter if the meeting is with 120 people or two, there is usually ONE person who is the audience. Seven VPs in the meeting where a decision is being made? Who is the one that all agree is the one who must be in the meeting? She is the target of the presentation. Everyone else in the meeting is there to support the presentation (more on this in part 2: Running Effective Meetings).

Once it is determined who the target audience is, the questions that follow are: What does this person care about? Does she like lots of raw data? A high-level summary? How much background does she have for the presentation? If this a repetitive meeting, related to compliance for example, there is likely a standard set of slides that need to be adhered to. Ultimately, what does this person and you see as being a successful meeting?

Assuming you are creating a deck from scratch (adhering to any corporate template that may exist, of course), create a storyboard that lays out the presentation as a story to support your need (if you don’t have a need for this presentation, why are you meeting?): there should be a beginning, a middle, and an end. The old saying for speeches holds true here: “Tell them what you are going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them that you told them.” That is why an executive summary is a great addition to any presentation. Need VP approval for a $3M project? Put that clearly in the Executive Summary. Then the VP will know what she is looking for in the presentation. It will likely lead to better conversation in the meeting as well (see part 2).

For each slide, the structure should be as simple and brief as possible and should be similar to how a good paragraph is structured: The title should tell the story of the slide (the topic sentence). The graphs and bullets on the slide should support that topic sentence. Ultimately, if you read all of the titles of each slide and nothing else, you should have a good overview of the presentation.

For graphics on the slides, they should be able to be quickly grasped by the audience (remember your target audience). Choose the right type of graph depending on what story you want to tell. Don’t pick a chart type that doesn’t support the business need you are addressing. If the ask is funding for a project, how did similar projects in the past perform? Did those projects fail? Then you MUST include them and say what is being done differently this time. If they aren’t included, more likely than not the VP will know of them and kill your project before it gets started. Include a clear discussion of how the current project is different, and the VP is more likely to give the project a fair hearing.

Slides should be able to stand on their own for two reasons: 1) if someone misses the meetings, he can review them later and understand the key points; and 2) someone undoubtedly will repurpose a slide for another presentation. For the latter reason, it is a good idea to footnote the source of the data, any irregularities or definitions, as well as the date the slide was created, which has the added benefit of helping with version control.

Ultimately, the presentation needs to be clear and anticipate the audiences’ questions and answers them. If you are a thorough analyst, more likely than not there is a lot of analysis that won’t make it into the presentation. It isn’t a bad idea to have a personal “supplemental deck” with slides ready to go if questions lead to them. Ideally, it is better to answer questions about minor points in the meeting rather than saying, “I’ll follow up on that.”

Do:

-Target your audience and how they like to see information presented.

-Clearly state what is needed in the meeting up front. Use an executive summary to help accomplish this.

-Create a clear story that supports the ask. Read the slides titles only and see if the overall message of the deck is clear.

-Keep the slides simple with as few words as needed.

-Keep graphs/charts simple and easy to grasp for the audience.

-Create additional slides for personal use to support minor points in the presentation.

Don’t:

-Create a muddled message with no clear objective.

-Provide more detail than the executive wants (it wastes everyone’s time).

Keep these things in mind and you are better set up for a successful meeting. Your audience will thank you.

*Harvard Business Review, July-August 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/07/stop-the-meeting-madness