"Life conspires to beat the rebel out of you," says Alex Bogusky of the Crispin-Porter Bogusky ad agency in this month's Fast Company.
But it's in the little rebellions where each of us has the opportunity to "be remarkable."
The battle against mediocrity is fought on many fronts. PowerPoint is one where I choose to engage (other posts here).
Just finished Garr Reynolds' phenomenal book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter)
Reading it won't make you a great presenter, but if you don't follow his lead, it's going to be difficult to become one.
If you read the book and you still think that the best way to convey information (in a presentation you deliver) is through bullet points and "eye chart" graphs, you should probably just stop reading this blog. (I'm mostly serious about that.)
Garr makes a number of solid points about why those presentations are ineffective (if you want to relay vast quantities of written info, use a word processor). He also lives in Japan, where I lived for 2 years, and relates a lot of his theories to Japanese ideas, which sits well with me.
After all, "Death by PowerPoint" as a phrase didn't come about because most people are great presenters, after all.
With each presentation, you have a chance to tell a great story.
- What is your point?
- How do they all fit together?
Want to back it up w/reams of data? Great, hand it out. And for God's sake, please don't read us the slides!
Seth Godin posted the other day on the changing nature of work and the fact that, odds are, you'll need to do even more presentations. Many of those will be where you don't have the in-person audience. Gaining attenion is even more challenging in this environment.
If Seth's right (and he usually is), and you want to be successful, you're going to need to figure out a way to get your points across in a memorable, engaging, and stimulating manner.
Standard templates, slides that don't require you (i.e.: if I can figure out the total story of the presentation just by reading the slides, what value do you add?)...these are things of the past.
I know it's far easier to just "take the template and fill out the slides."
As a checkbox exercise, you'll be done. It is probably more efficient than spending A LOT of time upfront preparing a compelling and exciting presentation.
No question.
But, it won't be more effective
Which would you rather be?
.