Presentation Zen
PREPARATION TIPS

(1)Turn off the computer

Even if you’ll be making slides or other visuals for an in-person or online presentation, it’s important to “go analog” in the beginning stage of preparation. The best presenters scratch out their ideas and objectives with a pen and paper. I use a large whiteboard in my office to sketch out my ideas (when I worked at Apple, I had one entire wall turned into a whiteboard!). The whiteboard works for me as I feel uninhibited and freer to be creative. I can also step back (literally) from what I have sketched out and imagine how it might flow logically when multimedia is added later. As I write down key points, assemble an outline and structure, I can draw quick ideas for visuals such as charts or photos that will later appear in the slides.

Though you may be using digital technology when you deliver your presentation, the act of speaking and connecting to an audience—to persuade, sell, or inform—is very much analog. Going analog and sketching out my ideas, creating a rough storyboard, really helps solidify and simplify my message in my own head. I then have a far easier time laying out those ideas in slides later; the analog process alone gave a clear visual image of how I want the content to flow. I glance at my notes to remind me of what visuals I thought of using at certain points and then go to stock image websites or to my own extensive library of high-quality images to find the perfect image.

(2) Prepare with the end in mind.

Before you even open up presentation software, sit down and really think about the day of your presentation. What is the real purpose of your talk? Why is it that you were asked to speak? What does the audience expect? What are the most important parts of your topic for the audience to take away from your, say, 50-minute presentation? Remember, even if you’ve been asked to share information, rarely is the mere transfer of information a satisfactory objective from the point of view of the audience. After all, the audience could always just read your book (or article, handout, etc.) if information transfer were the only purpose of the presentation. 

Content is king
Still, content comes before design. No matter how great your delivery, or how professional and beautiful your supporting visuals, if your presentation is not based on solid content, you can not succeed. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that great content alone will carry the day. It almost never does. Great content is a necessary condition, but not a sufficient one. But your presentation preparation starts with solid content (appropriate for your audience) which you then build into a winning story that you’ll use to connect with your audience. Though I am emphasizing how important content is, I also am begging you to spare your audience a “data dump.” A data dump — all too common unfortunately — is when a presenter crams too much information into the talk without making the effort to make the information or data applicable to the members of the audience.

(3) Know your audience as much as possible.

Before you begin to formulate the content of your presentation, you need to ask yourself many basic questions with an eye to becoming the best possible presenter for that particular audience. At the very least, you need to answer the basic “W questions.” 

Who is the audience? 
What are their backgrounds? How much background information about your topic can you assume they bring to the presentation? How can you let the audience know what is in it for them? How will they benefit from listening to you. What is their pain that you can help them with?

What is the purpose of the event? 
Is it to inspire? Are they looking for concrete practical information? Do they want more concepts and theory rather than advice? 

Why were you asked to speak? 
What are their expectations of you? What is their pain and how can you help?

Where is it? 
Find out everything you can about the location and logistics of the venue. 

When is it? 
Do you have enough time to prepare? What time of the day? If there are other presenters, what is the order (always volunteer to go first or last, by the way). What day of the week? All of this matters.

(4) Keep it simple

If the audience could remember only one thing, what would you want that to be? Identify that core idea, that fundamental takeaway that you want the audience to remember on that particular day. Write it down. It should be just a sentence or two. You can add 1-2 other key takeaway messages later, but make sure that this fundamental takeaway is very clear in your mind. If it’s not absolutely clear to you what you want the audience to really get out of your talk (or lesson) on that day, then how can we expect them understand our message?

Do not fall into the trap of thinking that in order for your audience to understand anything, you must tell them everything. You must decide what to include and you must exclude material that does not help your audience understand your key message. We want to simplify, but simplify does not mean dumb things down. Simple can be hard for the presenter, but it will be appreciated by the audience. Simplicity takes more forethought and planning on your part because you have to think very hard about what to include and what can be left out. What is the essence of your message? This is the ultimate question you need to ask yourself during the preparation of your presentation. Here’s a simple exercise:

Exercise
If your audience could remember only three things about your presentation, what would you want it to be? 

(1) ___________
(2) __________
(3) __________

The key word here is restraint. You can not include everything. Make the hard decisions on inclusion and exclusion long before you begin to make slides.

(5) Ask yourself “so what?” 

In Japanese I often say to myself, dakara nani? which translate roughly as “so what?” I say this often while I am preparing my material. When building the content of your presentation always put yourself in the shoes of the audience and ask “so what?” Really ask yourself the tough questions throughout the planning process. For example, is your point relevant? It may be cool, but is it important or help your story in a very important way...or is it just kind of fun to you? (You may think it is cool, but will it help the audience?) Surely you have been in an audience and wondered how what the presenter was talking about was relevant or supported his point. “So what?” you probably said to yourself. “So what?” — always be asking yourself this very important, simple question. If you can’t really answer that question, then cut that bit of content out of your talk. Use this time to really think about your audience, what they need, and how to give it to them in the way that is engaging and memorable. 

(6) Prepare with the 10-min rule in mind

Dr. John Medina introduced the 10-minute rule to a wider audience in his book Brain Rules. Studies support the idea that we tend to lose attention after 9-10 minutes in meetings, presentations or classes. You probably know this to be true from your own experience; we are not designed to just sit still and listen to a dull delivery of information, even if that information is important. So, as presenters, we need to design changes into our talks. Even if you do not have a long talk, changing the pace and using a variety of ways to share your content will help keep the engagement with your audience. Use short videos, for example, to illustrate your point from time to time. Use a variety of charts & graphs to show your point. Use examples and stories to reinforce your message and keep the audience’s attention. Use large, easy-to-see photos or diagrams. Ask questions to the audience or give a short quiz, etc. As you prepare, think of ways you can mix up the way you present your material.

(7) Develop a simple structure.

We need to have some kind of simple structure holding our presentation together. Sometimes it is effective to let the audience know the structure such as having a “Top-10” list or a “7 Ways to X” or “5 Things You Can Do to Y”, etc. But even if the structure is not obvious to the audience, the fact that you built your presentation on top of a simple structure will make the presentation go more smoothly. The audience should never feel lost or wonder where you are going with your message. Many presentations follow a Problem/Solution structure. In this case, the first part of the talk introduces the problem with necessary background information and supporting data, examples, stories and evidence. Here you explain the problem and why it should matter to the audience. Then, the second part of your talk shifts to focus on ideas for dealing with the issue you just explained. Now you can share the solutions that failed in the past and propose a new one (or explain how your idea has already worked). Here you can ask for input or questions from the audience. Remember, if you are using slides, the design of your slides can help people understand where you are and where you’re going. For example, if you have, say, five sections in your talk, you can make the title slide (Bumper Slide) for each section the same color but different from the regular slides so that they standout and let people know this is a new section.

(8) Use stories and examples to illustrate your point.

The more complicated or difficult your point, the more important it is to use an example, a hypothetical, or a true story to illustrate and make things clear. The clearer your points, the more memorable they’ll be as a result. You should try to come up with good, short, interesting stories or examples to support your major points. I have seen pretty good (though not great) presentations that had very average delivery and average graphics, but were relatively effective because the speaker told relevant stories in a clear, concise manner to support his points. Rambling streams of consciousness will not get it done; audiences need to hear (and see) your points illustrated and storytelling will help. Remember to use Stories and examples to back up your data. Data matters—and data visualizations can help a lot—but people also remember the stories associated with the data and the visualizations associated with the data. If you want your audience to remember your content, then find a way to make it relevant and memorable to them. 

(9) Prepare a proper handout

Create a handout or a leave behind (it may even be a book that you published, or a chapter from that book) that summarizes your main points or even goes deeper. This should not just be a printout of your slides. This will be a proper document, though some of your slides such as charts and graphs, important photos, etc. can be included in the document. Knowing that you have a proper document frees you from having to worry about covering an area too wide for a short presentation. It also frees you from having to put loads of text on a screen since that detailed written explanation is in your handout. (More on using handouts here on presentationzen.com.)

(10) Work on your opening and ending

The audience is likely to remember the beginning and the ending the most. This has some relation to the serial position effect. Grab attention from the beginning. Showing a surprising statistic or telling a short, compelling story that introduces your topic is more memorable than saying “Hello everyone, my name is George and today I am going to talk about healthcare and Vandelay Industries….” Instead, you could, for example, begin with a slide that shows a shocking healthcare statistic related to your key message and then follow that by telling the audience that you are now going to show them how to concretely change that statistic or avoid that medical condition. Early on you should tell them what’s in it for them.

Do not end your talk simply with Q&A. If there is a time for questions, you can still take a few moments after the last question to share a relevant and evocative story or a short video clip or some other way to both reinforce your key message and leave the stage on a high, memorable note. It may be at this time (though you can bring it up earlier as well) to be explicit with your “call to action.” What is it you want the audience to do or remember long after your presentation is finished?

(11) Have a back up plan

When I present for smaller events, I always bring two small laptops with me just in case as well as having my data on a thumb drive. But what if your projector breaks or the TV monitors do not work, and so on at a smaller event or location? Try to plan for the worst-case scenario. In my case, if things go really bad—for example in a breakout session for 75 people attending a larger conference where the projectors could not be turned on for an inexplicable reason, I have a plan where I could just use the white board to write down and share 10 highlights from my talk. It may not be as good as the multimedia aided talk I planned, but people understand and you can gain credibility by not wasting their time messing around with tech and instead going right to your plan B and engaging with your audience without delay.