How to Wash a Chicken

by Tim Calkins

  How many people should present during a meeting?

  You will always be better off with fewer presenters.

  It takes a certain amount of time for someone to get settled when presenting. They have to get the feel of the room, adjust their volume and settle into the presenting mode. It also takes time for an audience to get used to a particular presenter.

  The altitude principle also plays a role. You always want to spend a bit of time reviewing easy information before you move to more complex and controversial material. Each presenter builds on the material covered earlier in the meeting, to a certain degree, but they have to battle to gain their own altitude.

  As a result, you want to have fewer presenters in order to minimize the transitions and disruptions. At all costs, don’t have a series of people each presenting for five minutes. This will not go well.

  There are times when you will need different people going through the material. Usually this will be driven by endorsement, expertise and politics.

  Endorsement is important; there is symbolism in everything. You might start a presentation with a senior executive. This will indicate that the material has their support. By standing up and presenting, they go from being a reviewer or judge to being a supporter, someone who is part of the operation.

  Recently I went to my children’s school for the annual “Back to School” evening. The presentation started off with the school president welcoming everyone back and wishing them a good year. Then he passed the microphone to the head of the secondary school. The unspoken message was that he fully supported the event but his team was going to cover all the details. This worked well.

  Expertise is another reason to shift presenters. There are certain topics that are best addressed by particular people. The sales force incentive plan, for example, will be best covered by someone from the sales organization. The new R&D formulation for a product will be best addressed by someone from R&D; it would be odd to have a finance person presenting the R&D plan. An advanced financial model featuring a multivariate regression should be presented by someone close to the model.

  And then there is politics. Sometimes you need a particular person presenting for organizational dynamics. Perhaps they will be offended if you don’t invite them to present something. Perhaps your relationship with the finance group is a little rocky, so you need to focus on their support in particular.

  Political factors do not necessarily lead to the best ultimate presentation; you may well end up with a presenter who isn’t particularly skilled. Still, it is impossible to ignore these dynamics; they matter in every organization. Ignoring politics doesn’t mean it goes away. It just means you are more likely to get into trouble.

  How can I quickly improve my presentations?

  Here are three simple pieces of advice.

  First, avoid cluttered slides, especially busy slides that lack a headline. There is nothing worse than a slide full of data.

  I watched a presentation just the other day delivered by a senior government official from a major African country. His thirty-minute update included more than forty pages, each one packed with graphs and charts. I tried desperately to read each slide but failed again and again. I didn’t have time to get through the page, let alone make sense of it and ask a question.

  This sort of update adds little value. It would be far better to skip the slides altogether; all they do is frustrate and distract your audience.

  Second, avoid passive writing. You want your writing to be active. There should be a subject and a verb. It should be clear who is doing what. Passive writing, where the subject is buried, falls flat. There is no action.

  Consider these two sentences:

  The furry dog bit the mailman.

  The mailman was bitten.

  The first sentence works. It is clear what happened and who did it. The dog bit the mailman. The statement moves forward. You might be wondering, “So what happened next?”

  The second sentence is flat. There is little action or energy. So the mailman was bitten. I guess that is unfortunate, but these things happen. The big question: Who bit him? Was it the dog? The neighbor? A wolf?

  The same dynamic works with business writing. Consider:

  Xenon Corporation launched a major new product this year.

  A major new product was launched this year.

  Again, the first sentence has life while the second one doesn’t.

  Passive writing doesn’t just lead to lifeless statements. It also avoids taking responsibility. This suggests that you don’t have any ownership of a particular situation. When you say, “I did not ship the product on time,” it is clear that it is your fault. You are responsible. Saying “The product was not shipped on time” communicates that someone didn’t ship on time. It isn’t clear who.

  Third, purchase a presenter or, as some people call them, a clicker. You can buy these small devices for $40 or $50. They are simple to use; just plug them into your computer. With a presenter you can advance the slides without touching your computer. This frees you up to wander the room. It also lets you put your computer out of the way. Having your own device is best; it shows people you are prepared and you know how to use it. It is well worth the money.

  18

  FIVE NOTABLE STUDIES

  * * *

  The academic world is full of interesting studies that relate to the art of presenting. Here are five worth considering as you develop your skills.

  Study 1: The Impact of Big Words

  It is widely believed that smart people use big, complex words; bright folks understand these difficult words and use them to communicate with precision. The words also subtly communicate intelligence. Only the sharpest characters use words like “erudite,” “fugacious,” “promulgate” and “embrocation.”

  Princeton researcher Daniel Oppenheimer decided to test this belief; he ran five different and interesting experiments and published his results in Applied Cognitive Psychology.1 I’ll recap three of them below.

  EXPERIMENT 1

  In the first study, Oppenheimer selected six personal statements from admission applications to a graduate program in English literature. He then created two new versions. In a “highly complex” version, he replaced every noun, adjective and verb with the longest entry in the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus. In a “moderately complex” version, he replaced every third applicable word.

  He then showed the statements to seventy-one Stanford University undergraduates and asked them to evaluate the statements for complexity and admission.

  The results were quite striking. As predicted, participants noted that the adjusted statements were more complex, with scores for “difficult to read” increasing significantly.

  Participants also found the more complex versions less appealing. On a +7 to –7 acceptance scale, participants gave the original statement an average rating of +0.67, the moderately complex version –0.17 and the highly complex version –2.1.

  EXPERIMENT 2

  In the second experiment, Oppenheimer tested the impact of word selection using two translations of an identical text.

  Oppenheimer showed thirty-nine students two different translations of the first paragraph of René Descartes’s Meditation IV. One version was more complicated than the other, in word choice and grammatical construction. He asked students to rate the intelligence of the author. He told some of the students that the passage was from Descartes.

  Students who did not know the author believed the person who wrote the simpler passage was more intelligent. On a seven-point scale, students gave the author of the complex passage a 4.0 and the author of the simple passage a 4.7.

  The students who were informed the passage was by Descartes had a similar reaction, rating the author of the complex passage 5.6 on intelligence and the author of the simple passage a 6.5.

  EXPERIMENT 3

  In the third study, Oppenheimer tested whether making a passage simpler changed perceptions.

  He loo
ked at a collection of dissertation abstracts from the Stanford sociology department and identified the ones with the highest proportion of words with nine letters or more. He then prepared a simpler version of each one, replacing every word of nine or more letters with the second-shortest entry from the Microsoft Word 2000 thesaurus.

  He showed the different abstracts to students and asked them to evaluate the complexity of the passage and the intelligence of the author.

  Participants believed the more complex version was indeed more complex, scoring it 5.6 vs. 4.9 on a seven-point scale.

  They also believed the author of the simpler version was more intelligent, with a score of 4.8 vs. 4.26.

  IMPLICATIONS

  Oppenheimer’s studies provide an important lesson. Using more big words does not make you seem smart. Instead, it has the opposite effect; if you use big words, people will think you are less intelligent.

  The fact that the findings run counter to common knowledge indicates that they are particularly important to note and remember.

  The lesson is clear: keep it simple!

  Study 2: Complexity and Choice

  One of my favorite studies was done by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, researchers at Columbia and Stanford. The duo explored the impact of choice on customer preference in a series of experiments.2

  Here are two of the interesting studies.

  EXPERIMENT 1

  In the first experiment, Iyengar and Lepper went to the grocery store and sampled jam. One day, they set up a table and opened up six different flavors of jam. Another day, they did the same thing, only this time they opened up twenty-four different flavors: raspberry, strawberry, grape, apricot and more.

  They then watched what happened. How many people stopped at the table? What did they do? Did they ultimately buy any jam?

  The results were striking. Many more people stopped at the table when there were more jams on offer. With six jams, 40 percent of people stopped. With twenty-four jams, this increased to 60 percent. A big jump!

  While the larger selection attracted more people, this interest did not translate into actual purchases. With six jams, 30 percent of the people who stopped ultimately purchased a jam. With twenty-four jams, the figure dropped to just 3 percent. In other words, very few people bought any jam.

  EXPERIMENT 2

  To further explore the impact of choice, Iyengar and Lepper invited people to participate in a taste test of chocolate. They invited people to sample Godiva chocolate and then asked them to evaluate the taste. As a thank-you gift for participating in the study, they offered people either $5 or a box of chocolate worth $5. This last element was to evaluate purchase interest.

  One group of people could choose from six different varieties of Godiva chocolate. Another group could choose from thirty varieties, an entire box of different chocolates: caramel, peanut, light chocolate, dark chocolate, cherry, etc.

  The experiment results were interesting, with three notable findings.

  People who had more options enjoyed the overall decision-making process more, with a score of 6.02 on a seven-point scale, compared to a score of 4.72 for those with fewer options.

  However, people who had more choice didn’t like the chocolate as much. They gave it a composite score of 5.46, significantly lower than the people with fewer choices: 6.28.

  In terms of purchase, the results were even more decisive. Almost 50 percent of the people faced with the limited assortment of chocolates picked the chocolate as a thank-you gift. The figure fell to just 12 percent for the people given more choice.

  IMPLICATIONS

  These choice studies by Iyengar and Lepper highlight two impor-tant points.

  First, people like complexity. In the jam study, people were drawn to the large collection of options. In the chocolate study, people thought having more options was more enjoyable.

  Second, having more options makes decisions more difficult. When confronted by complexity and extensive choice, people tend to avoid the decision and are dissatisfied when forced to choose.

  In terms of presenting, the implications are important. First, if you ask people what they want, they will tell you they want options, details and complexity. Given the choice, a senior executive will ask for more information and a longer presentation.

  Second, in reality, people don’t actually want complexity. A dense presentation with lots of details and choices is not likely to lead to agreement and action.

  Study 3: Fluency and Motivation

  Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz, two researchers from the University of Michigan, studied the impact of perceived effort on behavior change.3

  EXPERIMENT 1

  In the first study, Song and Schwarz gave people instructions for an exercise routine. They first printed the material in a simple font (Arial, 12 point) and then printed it in a hard-to-read font (Brush, 12 point). The researchers then asked study participants about how long the exercise would take and how willing they would be to do it.

  When the instructions were printed in the hard-to-read font, people thought the exercise would take longer and they were less willing to do it. With the simple font, respondents thought the exercise would take 8.23 minutes. This increased to 15.1 minutes when researchers printed the same routine in the complex font.

  Willingness to do the exercise fell from 4.5 on a seven-point scale for the simple font to just 2.9 with the more complex printing.

  EXPERIMENT 2

  Song and Schwartz then gave people a recipe to make a Japanese roll, again printing the same recipe in two different fonts.

  The researchers asked people to estimate the time needed to prepare the dish and their willingness to do so. They also asked a detailed question about the recipe to evaluate how much people remembered.

  Results were clear. When printed in the more difficult font, respondents thought the recipe would take longer (36.15 minutes vs. 22.71 minutes) and they were less willing to make it (2.85 on seven-point scale vs. 4.21). Respondents also remembered less when the recipe was printed in the hard-to-read font.

  IMPLICATIONS

  These studies illustrate a simple point. When you make something difficult to read, people believe it will be more complicated and they are less likely to do it. How we present information has a significant impact on how people receive it. People resist things that seem complex.

  Study 4: The Impact of Nonsense Math

  Kimmo Eriksson, from Sweden’s Mälardalen University, did a highly entertaining study on the impact of gibberish calculations on perceptions of quality.4

  EXPERIMENT

  Eriksson selected two published research papers and then created two versions of each paper. The first version was the actual, published paper. In the second version, he inserted an extra sentence, taken from a different paper. This additional sentence included an equation that made no sense in the context of the paper. Here is the sentence:

  A mathematical model (TPP = T0 – ƒT0d2 – ƒTPdƒ) is developed to describe sequential effects.

  He then identified two hundred people who had advanced degrees and were familiar with reviewing research reports. He sent people the different versions of the report and asked for their feedback on the quality of the research.

  People believed that the study with the irrelevant math was higher quality.

  The impact was particularly significant for people with a background in the humanities, social sciences, medicine and other related fields. Individuals with a math or technical background found the study with irrelevant math to be slightly less convincing. Even among this group, however, adding technical gibberish did little damage.

  IMPLICATIONS

  Eriksson’s study shows the power of complex analyses to strengthen an argument. People, confronted with technical formulas, are inclined to view the research as more rigorous.

  For presentations, this research suggests that there is a role for selectively using complex analyses to bolster your credibility. A formula or multivariate
regression can increase perceptions of rigor.

  Of course, using completely meaningless analyses is not a good idea. It is ethically wrong and someone might challenge the analysis.

  Study 5: Quick Judgments

  Nalini Ambady and Robert Rosenthal, two Harvard University researchers, did a fascinating analysis looking at quick judgments and behavior.5

  EXPERIMENT 1

  In the first experiment, Ambady and Rosenthal filmed thirteen college teachers and created a video featuring three silent ten-second clips of each instructor.

  The researchers then showed the clips to people and asked them to rate the instructor on a series of attributes such as likeability, professionalism, supportiveness and warmth. From this they developed a composite rating, and then compared this to end-of-semester student evaluations.

  In order to eliminate the impact of physical attractiveness, Ambady and Rosenthal had a different group of people score the attractiveness of each instructor.

  The researchers also tracked specific behaviors such as laughing, leaning forward and smiling. They then looked at how these interacted with evaluations.

  The results were very clear. By looking at three ten-second clips, participants could reliably predict end-of-semester scores, with a correlation of 0.76.

  Attractiveness had some impact on the scores, but taking out this dynamic reduced the correlation very slightly, from 0.76 to 0.74.