How to Wash a Chicken
Page 9
The best number of bullet points is three or four. Never, ever have twelve. Please take this vow: “I promise to never put twelve or more bullet points on a page.” Repeat that phrase three times.
HAVE MORE THAN ONE BULLET POINT
While having too many bullet points is a problem, having too few is also a problem. The reason is simple. Bullet points are a way of presenting a list. You can’t have a list with just one thing; that isn’t a list, it is just a thing. Even two bullet points seems like a fairly feeble display. Just two things? Really?
If you have just one bullet point, you probably don’t need the bullet point at all. If it is one thing, perhaps your bullet point should be your headline. If you have two bullet points, perhaps you should have two pages, with each bullet being its own headline.
VARY THE VISUALS
To keep your presentation interesting, you want to change the way you present data.
Bullet points are lovely but if every page is full of bullet points, the presentation will seem dull and repetitive. Your audience will likely think, “Oh, great! Another page of bullet points. That looks a lot like the last three pages we reviewed.”
Similarly, if every slide has a bar chart or a pie chart, then the presentation will appear flat. It will lack energy and excitement.
By varying the type of visual presentation, you keep it interesting. One page might have a bar chart, another page might have three bullet points and another page might have a line chart, followed by a scatter plot.
Remember, you want your audience to pay attention; you are presenting for a reason. You have a job to do. If you are asking for approval to launch your new product and your audience zones out, it is your problem, not theirs. A good way to keep your audience engaged is to make the presentation interesting.
USE SIMPLE WORDS
Many people believe that long words make you seem smarter and more credible. If I know all these big words, the logic goes, then I must be a very bright and intelligent person. As a result, my recommendation is strong.
In reality, long words have the opposite effect; using big words makes you seem less intelligent and credible. That may be the case because people think you are deliberately using big words to cover your fundamental lack of smarts (see Chapter 18 for more on the power of simple words).
PRUNE UNNECESSARY INFORMATION
If you don’t really need a particular piece of information, drop it. Every figure, calculation and fact in the presentation should be there for a reason. As advertising executive Bob Rehak notes, “Fewer words mean more readers. Fewer distractions mean greater impact. Brevity enforces clarity. Clarity improves comprehension.”7
Steve Jobs was legendary for pruning information out of a presentation. As Carmine Gallo writes in his book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, “Where most presenters add as many words as possible to a slide, Jobs removes and removes and removes.”8
The Gettysburg Address, one of the most famous presentations of all time, highlights the power of pruning. President Abraham Lincoln is celebrated for what he said. What is striking is what he didn’t say. He didn’t discuss the details of the Battle of Gettysburg: the number of injured soldiers, the length of the battle or the scale of the conflict. He didn’t mention anyone in particular, the generals or the foot soldiers. He didn’t provide any background on the events leading up to the battle. He cut all the unnecessary information so that his core message came through.
Each page in a presentation should contain just enough information to support the headline. A cluttered page full of numbers does more harm than good; it will confuse and distract your audience. A better approach is to have a simple chart, graph, or series of bullet points that makes the case. Exhibit 8-1, for example, is a clear and effective page.
Exhibit 8-1
2017 was another strong year, with growth in both revenue and profit
CONSIDER PROPS
Sometimes the best way to support a point is with a prop. Steve Jobs, for example, famously used a three-legged stool at the 2008 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference to illustrate the company’s businesses: Macintosh, music and the iPhone.
Props can capture people’s attention and make a presentation memorable. I learned this when I washed that chicken. When you hold up a stool, people pay attention. Why is he holding up a stool? It is a welcome change from a series of slides with headlines and support points. “When you incorporate the senses—speaking of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures—you engage the audience’s imagination. Numbers and data rarely stick, but the language of the senses creates internal worlds and experiences that are impossible to forget,” explains Gifford Booth, CEO of the TAI Group.10
A prop can also bring a concept to life. Productivity expert Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, used rocks and sand to dramatize the importance of focusing on big priorities. The idea seems simple and dull when you simply say, “You should focus on the big priorities.” When Covey brought out the rocks and sand, the concept came to life. It was magical. If you haven’t seen it, google “Covey and rocks” and you can easily locate a video.
You should use props selectively. If you use too many, your presentation can seem a bit like a circus. As always, think about your audience and what will work best. A serious, somber CEO might not respond well to a puppet and a lollipop.
Be careful not to overwhelm the message. The goal is to sell a recommendation, not win an award for “Best Dramatic Performance in a New Product Update Presentation.” As Geoffrey James notes in his book Business Without the Bullshit, “You want your audience to remember your message, not how many special effects you used.”11
Polish the Pages
Once you have the headlines and the data, you then need to polish the pages. This is the process of making your presentation look cohesive and put together. “Make it simple. Make it memorable. Make it inviting to look at. Make it fun to read,” advised ad legend Leo Burnett.12
The difference between a polished presentation and a rough one is significant. A polished presentation simply works; it is impressive and smooth. A rough presentation looks like what it is: unfinished. “If your presentation and leave-behinds look professional, your entire organization looks professional,” notes Bob Rehak.13
Steve Jobs understood the power of a polished presentation. According to Carmine Gallo, Jobs was “relentlessly focused on improvement, laboring over every slide, every demo, and every detail of a presentation.”14
ANIMATIONS AND GRAPHICS
A certain amount of animation can help a presentation. Having a list of points fly in can spice up a dull list. A video clip can make a point with particular impact.
At the same time, be careful not to overproduce your presentation. The goal is to make it look professional and well done, but not to make it look like a game show. Too many whizbang special effects can be distracting, and can even suggest that you are trying to compensate for a fundamentally weak story. Each special effect is also a risk; it might not work when needed, and this will make you look unprepared.
When using graphics, be sensitive to the tone. If you are talking about laying off hundreds of salespeople, you should stay away from bright and funny graphics. If you are reviewing a big innovation, you should avoid somber pages. A presentation about the holiday party should have a very different look and feel than an update on realigning the global supply chain.
The challenge is balance. A page of black type is not going to attract a lot of attention. It looks dull. On the other hand, a page full of cartoons is exciting but often too much. Making every letter in a sentence a different color is interesting and flashy. It is also childish and distracting.
SPELLING AND GRAMMAR
Spelling and grammar matter, so spend the time to check things. Using proper grammar makes you look smart, polished and credible. A very strong presentation can lose a lot of credibility if there are grammatical mistakes throughout. “If your work is sloppily punctuated, misspelled or
grammatically awry, your reader will think you have not done them the courtesy of making the effort,” observes Sam Leith from the Financial Times.15
Polish, on the other hand, builds credibility. As Steven Pinker notes, “If readers can see that a writer cares about consistency and accuracy in her prose, they will be reassured that the writer cares about those virtues in conduct they cannot see so easily.”16
Good grammar is also important for clarity. Consider these somewhat unfortunate statements:
Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog
Man eating piranha mistakenly sold as pet fish
A faculty panel on sex in college with four professors17
You might find it useful to send your presentation to an editor to catch mistakes; for a very small amount of money, you will significantly reduce the number of errors in your work.
FORMATTING
Perhaps the dullest part of creating a presentation is getting the formatting right. Adjusting the font and type size isn’t a particularly dynamic process. It is a little methodical.
Still, formatting is important. The small details can have a surprisingly big impact on the overall presentation.
People have different preferences when it comes to formatting. Some people like one font while others support a different font. One of my colleagues at Kellogg believes Arial is the ideal font for a presentation. Another consistently uses Calibri. Some people believe the text in a presentation should always be 16 point. Others have a different opinion.
Two things are important when formatting a presentation. The first is consistency. In general, there should be a basic look and feel that carries through the document. The presentation should use just one font, with a consistent type size for headlines and support points. The simplest way to make a presentation look sloppy and unfinished is to use different fonts and sizes throughout, giving each page a different look.
At times you may want to break the format in a bid to stand out. This is fine, if done on a limited basis. Just be clear and deliberate when you are breaking away from the otherwise consistent presentation.
The second thing to remember when formatting is legibility. Ultimately, people have to be able to read the presentation. Whatever font you settle on should be easy to process. For this reason, you will generally want to avoid very flowery, elaborate fonts (see Chapter 18 for more on the impact of legibility).
Stay away from fonts like this.
Steer clear of fonts like this.
And avoid this font at all costs.
You also want to avoid small type; it just makes it difficult for your readers.
TWO CONSIDERATIONS
You should think about two things when putting in the finishing touches. First, consider your audience. If you are presenting to someone who loves special effects, then add special effects. If they don’t, then keep it simple. I once had a boss who hated animated lists; he wanted to see the complete page all at once. When presenting to him, I of course showed the full list. I cut the animations.
If you aren’t sure what your boss likes, look at one of their presentations. You can generally assume they are trying to create a good presentation, so you can just copy their approach when it comes to formatting and structure.
Second, you should think about your personal brand. What does your brand stand for today? What do you want it to stand for? Your presentation should reflect your goal.
If you want your brand to be associated with analytical rigor and strategic thinking, then your presentation should generally reflect this. Stick to charts and graphs. Avoid the cartoons. Follow the template. Skip the funny cat videos.
If your goal is a personal brand strong in creativity, innovation and fresh thinking, then you should take a very different approach. Add funny graphics. Don’t consistently follow the template. Limit the charts. Make some jokes.
Remember that consistency is important; you can evolve your brand but you can’t change it overnight. If someone known for being analytical shows up with a goofy presentation full of Pokémon jokes, people will wonder what happened. They might think, “Is everything okay with Bill?” or “Wow! This is unexpected. I wonder what is behind this shift?” or “Did Bill’s intern create this presentation?” None of this is positive.
Writing as a Group
Creating a good presentation on your own is a challenge; it is difficult to find a compelling story and lay it out in a logical fashion.
Creating a good presentation with a team is an entirely different matter; it can be far more difficult and challenging when there are several people involved. In my experience, groups produce some of the most painful presentations.
The challenge is to capture the power of a group—creativity, insight, energy—without letting the pitfalls of group dynamics drag down the final product. You have to be particularly careful and deliberate when working with a team on a presentation.
THE WRONG APPROACH
Let’s review how not to create a good presentation as a group.
Determine a rough outline for the presentation.
Divide up the different sections. Give one person the first section, another person the second section and another person the third section.
Ask everyone to create their portion of the presentation and send the pages back by a certain date.
Arrange the contributions in order, following the outline. Put agenda pages between each section and put a cover page on the front.
Have each person present their section.
This approach seems logical. It divides up the work. It gets everybody involved in the action. It is likely to result in an actual document.
But it is a recipe for disaster; odds are very good that this presentation will simply not go well. This approach has many, many issues.
The first problem is the likely lack of consistency. People write differently. Some people like long headlines while others like short headlines. Some people like to end a headline with a period while others like to skip the punctuation. If you simply combine different people’s slides, you will have a presentation that looks like a hodgepodge. It will be anything but the polished, smooth presentation you are striving for.
The second issue is the potential for flawed logic. This is actually a greater concern. Remember that a good presentation should tell a story. There will be a logical flow to it, with each page building from the previous page and setting up the next. It should be tight, with key concerns introduced in one section being addressed in another section.
If different people are writing different parts of the presentation, it is difficult to establish this tight connection. The overall story weakens. A point in the first section might have nothing to do with the second section. Or a recommendation in the second section may address a problem that should have been mentioned in the first section.
The third problem is one of density. One of the things we know is that people hate giving anything up. Ownership is a human emotion; we are all possessive people. Loss is also a human feeling. This means that people don’t want to abandon their material. If someone creates slides, they will want to use them, whether or not the material particularly supports and connects with the over-all argument.
If you ask people to go create some pages, they will likely do exactly what you asked them to do. The problem is that then they will want to see those pages in the finished document, and the presentation might then be too long, too wordy and too clunky.
Fixing these problems isn’t easy. In many cases, the only way to do it is to rewrite pages and cut material. Sometimes, the presentation requires a major overhaul. This reworking process can create bad feelings on the team. Rewriting someone’s headlines doesn’t make them feel validated. Eliminating pages can create hard feelings and conflict. People might ask, “Why are you cutting my pages? That was important material. Who made you king of this committee? You have even more pages than I do; I think we should be cutting some of your pages. Back off!”
A BETTER APPROACH
In many organizations, teams are a fact of life. You don’t work alone; you are part of a group. The challenge is to create a strong presentation while at the same time keeping the team engaged and connected.
One thing that doesn’t work is simply excluding people from the process. It can be tempting to say, “Oh, I can take care of this presentation. Just leave it to me.” You then write it and present it, easy enough. But this won’t work well; you need people to be on board. If you show up with a finished product, they will likely find faults. People, especially people on a team, don’t want to be left out.
The best way to get people on board is work together to create the presentation. If someone contributed to the process, they will likely support the final product. It is very hard to attack a presentation you worked on.
The challenge with a group presentation is this: you need people to be involved in the writing process, but you can’t let them drive the writing process. It is a delicate balance.
The first and most important step is to agree on the recommendation. If the team isn’t aligned, it will be hard or impossible to create a strong presentation. Starting to write without agreement on the core message won’t work well; you will end up with pages that don’t fit together.
At times, it is impossible to reach complete agreement on a recommendation; people may well have different points of view. There are ways to deal with this problem.
It is important to note that recommendations don’t have to be unanimous, as on a jury. I was recently on a jury with eleven other people. We heard a rather complicated case involving a car crash and a back injury. After hearing all the testimony, we were sent to the jury room with instructions not to emerge until we had a unanimous decision. It was an exciting time; at one point eleven people agreed on a decision but one did not. The job wasn’t done. We continued debating and discussing. Eventually there were ten in favor and two opposed. Things were not looking good. It was only after more discussion and compromise that we finally reached an agreement that everyone was satisfied with and had a unanimous decision.