|
The biggest mistake that consultants make when presenting data is to choose style over the presentation's structure. Instead of spending hours making flashy powerpoint slides and working on their tone they'd fair better if they worked on clarity of communication. As a business consultant I would spend weeks gathering and analysing data to make my case for change. Then typically I'd have an hour with the CEO to get his decision to move forward. Typically they'd say, they needed time to think. Time to think! I'd just spent hours putting weeks of data together and they didn't get it. Has this ever happened to you? At first I blamed the senior managers, "they're just too stupid" I'd say. Then I blamed myself, "I'm not funny enough, my suit isn't expensive enough", I even convinced myself that I wasn't old enough. Eventually I asked a friend to sit in on one of my presentations. He told me that it had nothing to do with my style or clothes; he said it was my structure. He said "Stuart, I can't understand all the slides (I had more than seventy powerpoint slides) and the information, it's just not clear what actions you want the CEO to take."
So I started to work on the structure of my presentations. From that point on I got better at engaging Senior Executives and Directors,and I was better able to help them understand where they were going wrong in their business. This of course meant more recommendations for me.
Here's what I learned: 1. Start strong, open with the problem, summarise what's going wrong in their business, and explain that the next 30 minutes is about giving them evidence to further support the case for change or investment. 2. Keep the whole presentation short, you should be able to explain the problem for any business in 30 minutes or less. 3. Before you start building your presentation write the core problem and solution in one sentence. 4. Start by writing down three main questions you want to answer during your presentation 5. Write out the answers to each question, and select the best piece of evidence to support your argument. 6. When you have planned all your points and evidence think about the logical flow of your argument, and start with the biggest issues right at the beginning. 7. Prepare your presentation on a word document not powerpoint. 8. Make sure you can explain the solution in one sentence. 9. Practice your presentation to someone who nothing about the organisation, assume that if they don't get it the CEO won't get it. 10. Now build your powerpoint slides, and limit yourself to ten. Always choose structure over style!
If you’d like to learn more about how to structure presentations that contain data, analysis or technical information get the first four steps of my system free here: First Four Steps
Stuart Corrigan is the Managing Director of Vanguard (Scotland) Ltd, a consultancy firm specialising in change mangement and service improvement.
|
