Slides are always saying something about you. Busy and dull. Cliched and generic? Simple and interesting? What ‘brand’ would you rather have? As Leonardo da Vinci said, and who are we to argue with the man who changed the way we see the world – “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” Short and to the point,…
It’s all about knowing your audience isn’t it? If you don’t know what will ‘fit’ for them, you’re almost always forced into a detailed presentation- or an overview presentation as Olivia Mitchell has usefully labelled such a thing. It’s a real dilemma for presenters, illustrated by the following example. I was working with a UK based…
I’ve mentioned Orwell before- See here. And it’s still my view, as a speechwriter and presentation coach, that if more speakers followed these rules than the kind of stuff we tell them on training corses, the quality of corporate presentations would improve beyond measure. They’d be- Shorter Simpler Easier to understand For a simple explanation…
Here’s a refreshing article from ‘Presentation Magazine‘- about a Venture Capitalist, the improbably named Guy Kawasaki, who has spent many of his working years as follows- “…I have to listen to hundreds of entrepreneurs pitch their companies. Most of these pitches are crap: sixty slides about a “patent pending”, “first mover advantage”, “all we have to…
You’re going to look around a house that you’re thinking of buying. It’s a a Saturday morning. You’re making a commitment. You’ve given up 2 hours of your valuable time, and you’ve left the kids with Grandma. The details of the property looked good enough, the price seemed right, and the sun is shining as…
PowerPoint slides, bullets, data, Waffle, jargon, handouts (paper), Anecdotes with no punchline, Or point to help you underline. Music, graphics, sound effects, That simply, don’t support the text. Images that make no sense, Or patronise the audience. Graphs and charts of pie or venn, The thoughts of Chairman Mao or Zen, Buddhists when your thoughts…
Holiday reading, staying in a friend’s lovely home in the green mountains north of Barcelona, Spain, I’d finished the crappy novel and trashy magazines I’d bought at the airport on the way out. What next for my idle mind while the kids were splashing in the pool? I was ‘mooching’ in the library, and I…
Who could have said this without irony? They’d have to be in Management Consulting or HR wouldn’t they? “Having finished my deck of (presumably PowerPoint) slides I shall now ping you over to Paul who will, no doubt be granular in providing you with the long-tail solutions in implementing the TOM by the TIMs through…
We’re going to ask you to look at some pretty simple things in the first part of this book. Then we’re going ask you to identify some fundamentals to work on. Again simple things that when done well will see you through. In short we’re going to ask you to look at your business and…