Life After PowerPoint!

I just came upon Speaking PowerPoint: The New Language of Business, a book by Bruce Gabrielle. Although I’ve only read the first two chapters, I’m very impressed with it. I’m write more about it when I’ve read more.

Have you  seen it? What do you think about it?

When you’re presenting a lot of technical information, you owe your audience three things:

• Explanation: What does your information mean? The facts don’t speak for themselves. It’s your responsibility to study and evaluate them, and to come to some understanding of what they mean. And then it’s job to help your audience understand them.

State your thesis or your conclusion up front. If you set out fact after fact after fact, thinking you’re building your case, you’ll lose your audience’s attention. Begin, instead, by stating the meaning of the facts and then present the facts.

• Evaluation: What is the value, the significance, or the import of the matter you’re discussing? Why should the audience — or should the audience — care about it? Is it — whatever it is (a trend, a new market, a product idea, etc.) — a good thing or a bad thing? A threat or an opportunity or a blessing in disguise? A matter of urgency or something that can be considered later? How does it rate in comparison to other matters?

What’s at stake in making an evaluation is your judgment — your professional opinion based on experience, knowledge, and careful consideration. Many presenters, especially technical presenters, are hesitant to offer their judgments. (They seem to think that doing so might compromise their objectivity.) But I think you owe your audience the benefit of your judgment.

• Recommendation: What do you recommend doing with the matter you’re discussing? In business at least, knowledge isn’t an end unto itself. Knowledge informs — or should inform — action. After you’ve understood and evaluated the information at hand, what do you think should be done about or with it?

If you’re presenting to people who have the authority to make the final decision, you may want to offer a couple of recommendations (no more than three). But you should be prepared and willing to weigh in on which option you think is best.

Answer these three questions – 1. What does it mean? 2. Why should we care? and 3. What should we do? — and your audience will thank you for it.

Do you agree or disagree?

I’ve been appalled and saddened by all the images coming out of Japan. And I keep looking at them with a sense of grim fascination. It’s like the proverbial train wreck that I can’t stop watching, only bigger and badder.

Clearly I’m not the only one fascinated (“show me more”) and appalled (“how tragic”) by the images. You can’t escape them.

Images pack a wallop like nothing else. They hit us where it gets our attention: in our emotions and our imaginations. That’s why using them in a speech or presentation can be so effective. And that’s also exactly why using images can be problematical.

Let me back up for a moment to explain why using images — espeically videos — can be an iffy thing.

Here are the dynamics that I hope a speech addresses:

• Connection
  To make the audience feel part of the experience, event, or audience — to give them a sense of belonging.
• Identity
  To help the audience know more about themselves individually or as a group — what makes them who they are, their history, their shared values and mission.
• Emotional engagement
  To stir up some feeling — excitement, curiosity, love, anger, fear, hope — about the message. To make them care about it in some way.
• Information
  To teach them something new.
• Meaning
  To help them understand, to make sense of what they’re learning or of what they already know, because facts and data on their own don’t mean much of anything.
• Assessment
  To show them the value or worth of what’s being addressed. (The cynic, Oscar Wilde said, “knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”)
• Decision
  To help them know what to do with what they’re learning. How do they use what you’re giving them? How do they decide between several different options, one of which is always to do nothing?

Different speeches / presentations have different goals, of course, so they will emphasize different dynamics. A technical briefing will be more concerned about transmitting information and meaning, for example, than a motivational speech. (Most technical talks, unfortunately, spent too much time and energy presenting information and too little making sense of it, and — to their detriment — they leave emotions completely out of the picture.)

So now let me get back to the point I tried making earlier: using images in a speech can be problematical.

Images can engage emotions so powerfully that they overwhelm every other consideration.

On their own, images do not covey information or meaning. They do not address the thing’s worth or value. And they do not provide the wisdom to help decide what can be done, what should be done.

Powerful emotions, stirred up by images, can make people willing or eager to learn and to decide. (That’s the upside.) But powerful emotions can be their own justification. They can move us so profoundly that we need do nothing else.

What do you think?

After years of working with organizations that perform an after action review following a major project or proposal, I’ve begun using the process in less formal settings both with teams and with individuals.

According to Wikipedia, “An after action review is a structured review or de-brief process for analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better, by the participants and those responsible for the project or event.”

You can use an after action review to help you understand and learn from any number of events: an interview, a meeting, a speech, a sales presentation, a performance review, a team project, a corporate retreat, even a difficult conversation that you’ve been avoiding.

To conduct an after action review, ask yourself these four questions:

1. WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN?

What were your goals, objectives, and expectations? What was on the agenda? What outcomes and outputs were intended?

Evey speech and presentation has — or should have — a goal. What did you want the audience to do as a result of listening to you?

2. WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED?

Simply describe and note what occurred without comment or judgment. You might want to start by listing events in the order they occurred. Or you could focus on the key events, themes, or issues that developed.

So many things happen before, during, and after a presentation that contribute to its success or failure. Review as many of them as possible. Then ask yourself, did your speech achieve its goal?

3. WHAT ARE THE REASONS FOR THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN AND WHAT DID HAPPEN?

The point of this inquiry is not to assign blame or to give a grade to the effort. Its purpose is to identify strengths and weaknesses, to propose solutions, and to adopt a course of action that will correct problems or improve future performance.

Analyze both the things that worked well and the things that didn’t work so well. Did your opening work?Did people laugh at your humor? Did the room set up work for you? Were you able to answer the questions people raised?

4. WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

What did you do that you want to keep doing or that you want to remember to do in the future? What do you want to do differently? What changes do you want to make?

Giving a speech is both an art and a skill. We can master it only by learning from our experience, by honestly appraising our performance, and by asking ourselves how we can improve.

What do you think? How do you review your speeches and presentations? What kind of questions do you ask yourself?

Photo courtesy of Matt Hutchinson at Flickr.