The Foolproof Guide to Structuring Your Next Presentation

At some point, you will be asked to prepare a presentation. More often than not, it will come upon short notice. And when that happens, you want your story to be well-structured and well thought of by your audience.

No matter how useful the content is, or how great the visuals are, without a structure they won’t make much sense. 

In the article, I’m going to explain and show you the way I structure presentations for myself and my clients. This is the first step to complete before diving into creating the presentation.

I’ll share some not-so-fancy backstage photos and actionable tips to help you be more efficient. 

In short, here’re three main reasons why you should bother about this method:

1. It helps to move past messy thoughts or that feeling when the brain goes blank.
2. You get to structure your ideas, see what’s missing and what’s extra in the story you have in your mind.
3. If you have several people working on the presentation, this method makes it easier to align everyone and reduce the preparation time.

How much effort does it require?

For me, it takes anything between 40 minutes to 4 hours to structure the flow. If you’re familiar with storyboards, I perceive this stage as a high-level pre-storyboard. It’s the very first thing I do when I get to work.

I conduct all the activities offline, using only post-its and a marker. I tend to keep it this way as I sometimes get distracted when working online. Having physical things to work with makes me feel more present and involved.

What you’ll need:

1. At least 2 packs of post-its of the same color. You may not need all 200 pieces, but it’s good to know you won’t run out of them. I also prefer to have 1 pack of post-its of a different color to mark the section names.
2. A 1-3mm black marker. I use whiteboard markers, while some people prefer Sharpies. What matters is that the line should be quite thick to write only the main information. I might also use a color marker for extra marking.
3. A free wall, a table or a movable board. These are the surfaces you will use to place and rearrange the post-its. I prefer to have a horizontal surface to start with and continue to a vertical one.

To me, the place doesn’t matter much. Later in the article, I share Case #1 when we had a planning session in the oldest Icelandic restaurant. There were only a couple of visitors and the staff was too polite to distract us from working.

Yet, some people might be precise about the atmosphere. Make sure you’re comfortable with whatever conditions you decide on and you won’t be bothered for some time. 

Throughout the process, I ask you to keep in mind these two things:

1. The main goal of your presentation. Your precious WHY you create it in the first place.
2. The audience you will target. WHO are those listening to you and checking out the slides?

Okay, you prepared post-its, markers, and space. What’s next?

I prefer to start from scratch instead of gathering or rewriting all the information I previously collected. These are the steps I follow:

Step 1. Get it out.

The main goal is to write on the post-its everything you have in mind. Uncensored and raw is just fine.

Make sure you write 1 idea per 1 post-it. It’s important as you will then arrange them. Try to phrase your ideas concisely and convey only the main point. If your marker is thick enough, you won’t have other options :)

Step 2. Put post-its in front of you.

It doesn’t matter if the surface is horizontal or vertical, yet you have to see all post-its at a time. If some of them repeat, take them away.

If you notice one post-it having 2 or more ideas, separate it into 2+ post-its. If you see something is missing, write another post-it and place it next to the other. Moreover, feel free to add new post-its at any stage.

Step 3. Define the preliminary structure.

The structure may be given beforehand by someone who assigned you the task, or you may wish to come up with one yourself. This is not the final set-up, but rather something to start with.

All you need is some idea of the sections/clusters where you can later place the post-its you generated in Step 1. If you struggle at this stage, check out my suggestion Cases below.

Step 4. Organize post-its into clusters.

Write the ‘section’ name on the new post-its and arrange them in the logical sequence. Then, move the post-its from Step 1 next to the respective section post-its. I prefer to place section post-its vertically and the content post-its horizontally.

I rearrange the post-its in the rows until they make sense to me and create a flow. If some post-its don’t fit, I place them in the ‘backlog’ on the side.

What if you don’t know what structure to pick?

It’s perfectly fine, and people rarely get it right from the first time.

Here are three examples of the ways I structured presentations.

Case #1. The Golden Circle: Answer Why-How-What.

Have you ever heard of Simon Sinek? He’s a famous author and speaker, who’s best known for popularizing the concept of WHY in his TED talk. In short, here’s how his concept looks like:

We used it to prepare a group presentation about our design experiments on Behaviour and Transformation in the Iceland University of the Arts. As a team of three, we needed to align our vision and decide how to convey our findings.

Firstly, we wrote down everything we wanted to tell. Secondly, we marked the post-its to place them in ‘Why’, ‘How’ or ‘What’ category. Thirdly, we made a mindmap tree out of post-its to see how they fit together. We ended up having three vertical rows and a few extra post-its we decided not to use.

It took us about 40 minutes to create and discuss the structure. The setting: two tables in the oldest Icelandic restaurant. We never showed these post-its to anyone but used them as our hints during the presentation.

Here’s how the process looked like:

Case #2. The Rule of Three.

It is said that three is the optimal number for people to perceive and remember the information. This is the smallest number to create a pattern, yet remain simple with the structure. Just like eggs, bacon, and toast.

I used this rule when planning the storytelling workshop for Business Intelligence specialists in fintech startup Monese. They dedicated 45 minutes to this training, so it needed to be concise yet memorable. 

In general, I followed the same flow as in Case #1. I started messily by writing and sketching my ideas on the post-its. Then, I organized them into groups of three within these sections: Who I Am, What is Story, Secret Wow, Methods 1-2-3, Little Reminders. In the end, I refined each post-it as they served me as actual slides during the workshop.

I spent about 3 hours on producing these post-its and figuring out the structure. However, I’d been thinking about them for the previous 2 days. Hence, I had a pretty good idea of what I’m going to do and I only needed to make it tangible.

As you can see, inspiration found me on the floor and I laid out post-its on the blanket next to some Christmas lights:

Case #3. The Given Structure (Already Defined for You).

This option can be either easier or harder, depending on how free-spirited you feel today. You may use it if you already have the template, e.g. All Hands presentation or pitch deck standard sequence. Or if someone wrote down an exact flow for you.

For instance, we presented the results of our Mompreneurship school project within the Service Design course at the Estonian Academy of Arts. According to our mentor, the story had to have the following parts:

On the final presentation day, I woke up at 4 AM feeling urged to remake the presentation we combined earlier. It took me about 8 hours to create new content to fit this flow and produce the slides to be projected. Then, we spent another 3 hours refining the story with the rest of the team. At last, I spent 1.5 hours polishing the design.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a chance to gather before I started working on the slides. I’m sure, if we aligned our vision during the post-its arranging stage, it would have taken us less time and effort. Well, that’s a lesson learned the hard way.

Some snaps of that memorable day:

Once you sorted out the post-its, ask yourself these three questions:

1. Should I elaborate more?

Will the audience understand what you’re trying to say? Is this data enough? Did you assume they understand some concepts that you actually should explain better? What can you add? Remember that what’s obvious to you may feel like the best-kept secret for those listening to you. 

2. Do I provide too many details?

Are you going very deep into details? Do people need to know all the specs of your process? How much information should you have? Is it possible to simplify or cut some parts? You’re the expert, and not everybody may have the same background and knowledge as you.

3. If I have precise timing, do I fit into the timeframe with this content?

Try to be as realistic as possible. If you have 4 minutes to present and over 100 post-its, most likely, it will take much more time. Check if you have enough content and whether you should prepare something extra just in case. Use your common sense, no serious rehearsals needed.

Three post-it-specific hints I share from my experience:

1. If you have some extra post-its that you don’t know where to put.

Do you need them at all? If yes, place such post-its into your ‘backlog’. You might want to come back to them later, review and use. If you see they aren’t relevant, put them aside for now.

2. If you feel like throwing the post-its into the trash.

Firstly, don’t ‘kill’ the post-its you don’t need now. If you decide to come back to the structure, they might be useful later. Secondly, make sure you properly recycle them. By the way, you can initially buy recycled post-its. Check if they stick, as this is an infamous issue with eco post-its.

3. If you would like to work further on this structure.

You might want to develop a system to mark some of the post-its. For example, some ideas can be shown as images or videos. Come up with the signs and draw them on the respective post-its.

You finished the post-its structure! Now what?

Congrats! First of all, take a photo of the surface with the post-its. Just in case, you might need it later for the reference or ideas.

Then, go through the structure, post-it by post-it and retell the story based on them. This doesn’t have to be an official rehearsal, but if you can speak out loud, it would be great. 

If you see some link in the chain is missing, write a new post-it and place it where needed. If you find something to be extra, put the post-it aside. 

Even better, if you have an opportunity to engage someone else who doesn’t know what you’ll be talking about to listen to you. Again, you don’t need to make a performance out of it, unless you want to, but rather briefly tell the story.

Keep track of what parts were confusing. Feel free to make the changes right away or mark them down and come back later.

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As you practice this method more and more, you’ll do it faster and more efficiently. Over time, you might find yourself using post-its for structuring other pieces of content like articles or videos. 

Quite simply, a well-structured presentation is easier to follow. This ensures a higher level of audience’s understanding of your ideas. It also increases the chance of achieving the goal you set for yourself in the very beginning.

Grab post-its and a marker, find a place and get going! Good luck with your journey.

If you are like many people, you struggle with getting your ideas out there. If you would like me to help you structure the information and polish the visuals, write at design@natakostenko.com. Let’s chat about your goals and discover how I can help you achieve them.