Aren’t you supposed to be working on a PowerPoint presentation right now?
You know what I’m talking about — that PowerPoint that you’ve been avoiding. If you do a good job on it, it could unlock the funding for a major project you’ve been trying to get off the ground. Or, it could secure you a few more headcount, or maybe even score you a promotion, or heck. Maybe all it will do is get you an inch closer to one of your annual goals.
Have you ever had the realization that the thing standing between you and millions of dollars, is a PowerPoint presentation?
The simple fact is that ‘decks’ (or PowerPoints, or whatever you call them) are the language of business. Some people are great at building them. And some people are terrible at building them. But either way, they consume a lot of time. Did you know that over 30 MILLION presentations are created daily? And if your PowerPoint misses the point (or buries it) it could lead an otherwise great (and profitable) idea to the dead zone.
But here’s the problem. While 92% of people agree that presentation skills are critical to success at work, they also overwhelmingly agree that most presentations suck (to be specific, 79% agree that “most presentations are boring”). Here’s why. Most presentation software (ahem, I’m talking about you PowerPoint!) is built for people to write bullets. And boy are people good at writing bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.
Why bullets don’t work
Bullets are problematic, because they can seduce people into capturing every thought they have. Then suddenly, the presentation has turned into a ‘kitchen sink’ of everything they know about a topic, while lacking a through-line. Bullets kill. They kill your ideas, they kill the story you’re trying to tell, they kill your audiences’ attention span, they even kill businesses.
I’ve had to create presentation decks for most of my adult life — whether it was for NBC, Coca Cola, Verizon, or Amgen — I’ve created some doozies (good and bad). I’ve used everything. PowerPoint (natch), Keynote, Prezi, Haiku Deck, Canva, Evernote (presentation mode), Xtensio and my current go-to, Google Slides. I’ve secured hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for projects for myself and my clients via decks. And I realized something, working with massive Fortune 100 companies all the way to startups seeking investment.
Deck skills are never really taught
And that’s too bad. Because good decks are like magic. They open doors, and open vaults filled with money that moves business forward. It turns out, deck skills are the same as story skills. I’ve built so many decks over my career, that I created some rules and guidelines to what makes a great presentation, and I’m going to give them to you now. In fact, I promise if you follow these 5 principles of good “Deckonomics™,” you will be more effective at getting what you want.
For a great presentation, you need to follow these 5 principles:
- Your presentation must have a structure based on good storytelling.
- Your presentation should be succinct.
- Your presentation must be scannable.
- Your presentation must be sticky — meaning it must be memorable.
- Your presentation must be shareable. In other words, it has to be able to stand on its own as it’s passed from one person to the next. This means getting attaching the right meta-data for the presentation to be durable over time.
While these principles sound relatively obvious, and maybe even intuitive, let me assure you that to pull all of them off you really need to understand your material, your audience, and your intent.
The Bottom Line
I recently had the privilege of leading a full-day workshop on building better presentations at Amgen . (It was called Get To The Point — How to get more done in business with presentation structure and visuals). The sage VP who commissioned the workshop realized that in order to unlock funding that could save the lives of millions (not to mention saving 1000s of internal hours making and consuming decks with no clear call to action) they needed to build better presentations.
You may not be in the business of saving lives, but think about it. That PowerPoint you’re supposed to be working on is supposed to move your work forward. Whether you’re building it to inform or persuade, its quality will either move your project forward, or it won’t. What is moving your work forward really worth?
If you’ve been coasting on your presentations, it’s time to wake up and get better. Start with the 5 principles I outlined above (my 5Ss). When you nail the skill of great presentations, not only does your thinking and expertise shine through, you get more done. You move your business forward. And isn’t that why you’re building that presentation in the first place?
