Nick Morgan, Public Words

The Wonderful Exception to the Power Point Rule

I've finally found the exception to the rule that Power Point is a bad tool for preparing speeches, delivering speeches, and reading them afterwards.  Most speakers misuse PP as speaker notes, to the detriment of their speaking style, and to the horror of the audience.  But Garr Reynolds proves that PP (or its equivalent) can be used by an artist to create something very special:  http://www.publicspeakingforgeeks.com/2008/07/18/the-brain-rules-for-presentations/. 

Amazingly, this presentation is 131 slides and yet I guarantee that you'll tear through them all right to the end.  All hail Garr!

Reynolds presents a very engaging, witty slide show on John Medina's new book, Brain Rules.  The book consists of 12 rules your brain runs by, and it's stuff you need to know, especially if you're a student of the craft of presenting. 

Of course, Garr focuses on one rule primarily, the one that says that your brain learns best visually, so indulge it.  But another one that caught my eye is equally important for speakers and their audiences.  Medina says that audiences don't like to be passive -- they find it boring. 

Amen, brother.  So, what do you do?  How do you engage your audience? 

Following are 7 ways to engage audiences that I have found gets them active and using their own energy to take what you say and make it their own.

1.  Get them to tell stories about who they are (in relation to your topic). 

2.  Ask them to brainstorm a problem or a solution.

3.  Get them to play games (and award prizes).

4.  Ask them to report to the group (on something you've asked them to think about, or discover, or learn).

5.  Ask them to teach others (the fastest way to ensure that an audience learns something well).

6.  Get them to design responses (to some challenge or problem you've set for them).

7.  Ask them to design a path forward (imagine what you'd want them to be doing back at their offices once the speech is over, and get them to start that activity now). 

If you're not already doing any of these things in your speeches, you're not allowing the audience to be anything but passive.  That's bad.  Turn them loose!  Get active with your audience.  The burst of energy will at first alarm you, then thrill you once you learn how to channel it successfully.  And your audiences will reward you with a vastly better reception. 

Why Do People Insist on Using Power Point?

I've fought the good fight against bad Power Point (PP) for some time now, and the forces amassed against the Microsoft Juggernaut have made some headway at the level of the debate, but not much at the practical level.  There's still a whole lot of bad PP going on. 

Let's get some things clear.  First of all, bad PP NEVER helps a speech -- whether it's a presentation to a team, or a keynote, or a Senator's filibuster.  All bad PP does is document the horror.  What do I mean by bad PP?  Anything that involves more words than pictures.  Those are speaker notes, and they should not be shown to the audience.  I gave a speech this week, and there was one speech before mine at the event.  That speaker included two columns of bullets on one slide, which he introduced by saying, "You probably can't read this, but...."  Please!

Second, PP rarely improves a bad speech.  A bad speech is just that, bad.  Whether it's because the speaker hasn't adequately prepared, and rambles, or the non-verbal conversation is at war with the verbal, or the topic is not right for the audience -- there are a million possible ways a speech can go wrong -- when it's bad, it's bad.  Of course, PP gives you something to look at if your mind is wandering, but that's like starting to study the scenery in a bad movie -- you're still not having a good time.  Worse than that, your time is being wasted.

Third, good PP (see Presentation Zen, which I've recommended before) CAN add to a good speech, under certain conditions.  First of all, the PP has to do something that the words can't do.  So, a great picture can bring something to life in a way that it takes too many words to do.  A bit of video can add emotion and context, and put you in a place that words can't do so easily.  And so on.

But, NEVER use even good PP as wallpaper, especially for a speech, such as a keynote, when inspiration is supposed to be part of the deal.  Here's what happens:  you're asking the audience to multitask, and the studies show that multitasking makes us STUPID.  So don't do it.  Of course, we're used to multitasking, and having lots of distractions, and some people think they're not being fully utilized, or pampered, unless all that's going on, but a GOOD SPEECH holds an audience WITHOUT the need for PP. 

Bottom line:  use PP with care, make it about pictures, and focus on getting the speech right first.  If people need PP to get through your speech, there's something wrong with the speech.

Presentation Zen

I just finished reading Presentation Zen, a new book on Power Point design....and more! by Garr Reynolds, on the plane back from San Francisco. 

It's a very west coast book.  It's beautiful, and applying the zen notions of simplicity and restraint to Power Point slides is a great idea.  As someone who has been working to improve business presentations and to minimize the crimes against humanity committed by business people wielding Power Point, I can only applaud Garr's point of view and welcome a fellow soldier to the cause.

I wish everyone would design slides like Garr does.  The world would be a much happier, clearer, more elegant place. 

Reynolds spends most of his time talking about design issues, and how to think about, prepare, and deliver great slides.  But he also gives some advice about presentations themselves in passing, and all of that advice is simple and good too -- for the most part.

I have to take issue with his notions of structuring a talk, and of story, however.  They're just too simple to be truly useful for most people.  He says, think in terms of three parts to a presentation -- a beginning, middle, and end.  Unfortunately, that's just not the most powerful way to think about organizing a talk.  It's far more respectful to the audience, and interesting, and powerful to begin with the question why? -- Why is this issue important, why should you care, and so on.  Then, having framed the talk in the audience's terms, go on to describe a problem that the audience has for which your information is a solution, and end by moving to "how" questions (how do I do this, how do I get started) and giving them some action to take.

Similarly, it's not enough just to tell people to use stories.  How do you tell a good story?  What's the structure?  Theme?  What works with audiences that doesn't with the printed page, and vice-versa?  There are lots of questions associated with the simple word 'story'.  If it were easy to tell good stories, every Hollywood movie would be a blockbuster, and every novel published would be a bestseller. 

There are basic stories that our culture understands and that people 'get' quickly, so it pays to use them in a deep sense when telling a new story of your own.  Joseph Campbell most famously identified the "quest" and his books are a great place to start to understand how your presentation can fit into these deep cultural stories and move your audience to action.  Great storytelling is not a simple thing.  Enlist your audience on a quest to take your business to the next level, though, and you'll be on to something.  Then, design your (few) slides to look like Garr Reynolds' and you'll get a standing O.    

What's the difference between a speech and a presentation?

Some people make a great deal out of two words -- 'speech' and 'presentation'.  I don't give speeches, they may say, only presentations.  A speech is a big deal.  A presentation is what I do in front of my team, or the Board, or some sales prospects.

OK, if that distinction helps you feel less nervous for that thing that you have to give next Wednesday, fair enough.  But it's a false disctinction.

The essential principles of speech-giving and presentation-giving are the same.  Maybe, in common parlance, speeches are more formal, or to larger audiences, or more important, than presentations.  But each is an opportunity to change the world.  Each involves putting yourself in front of some people and holding forth.  Each should be taken very seriously.

There may be a further implication in some business circles that a presentation involves Power Point, and a speech, especially a keynote speech, typically will not.  But that's to make a distinction where there is none.  Most people use Power Point badly, as a crutch, or speaker notes, not as illustrations to help the audience get a few key points of the talk.  Using Power Point badly will mar both speeches and presentations. 

So don't hide behind Power Point, and don't hide behind the terminology.  A presentation is a speech, and worth taking seriously.  Prepare it thoughtfully, rehearse it fully, and give it with passion. The only reason to give a speech is to change the world.   

How Power Point Killed Public Speaking

The origins of the use of Power Point were solidly grounded in good intentions.  Remember slides?  People put pictures on them, or graphs -- visual aids.  They were intended to act as accompaniments to lectures and presentations. 

The whole idea was that the speaker would talk for a while, and then occasionally show a slide that illustrated a point with a picture or a striking image, or made a set of numbers clear with a bar graph or a pie chart. 

Slides were time-consuming to create, and difficult to change.  So most people used them sparingly.  I once saw a speech by a National Geographic photographer that included a hundred slides, but each one was a uniquely wonderful picture he had culled from thousands, literally.  He was entitled. 

Then came Power Point.  People soon got the hang of creating slides; they were easy to make using this software, and easy to change. 

And somewhere along the line, Power Point ‘decks’ ceased being illustrative information to accompany talks.  They became speaker outlines. 

Now we have the dreaded phenomenon we have all lived through (barely) in which we watch in horrified fascination as a speaker plods through every word on slide after slide with 20 lines or more of text on them.  We wonder, as our consciousness slowly ebbs, ‘will he read every word, or will he occasionally vary the words slightly?’

And we have the Power Point Triangle of Death, where the speaker moves to the screen to point out some illegible word, drifts back to his computer, while mumbling something about the next slide, only to come to the third point of the triangle floating somewhere uneasily in between his screen position and his computer position. 

None of these moves has anything to do with the audience, communicating with whom is after all the purpose of the talk, isn’t it? 

Thus, Power Point, in the hands of most business speakers, commits the fatal sin of at once making the speaker and his talk irrelevant to the audience. 

If you’re a Power Point abuser – and more than one slide every 5 minutes qualifies you – then don’t bother to gather the audience together.  Just email them your ‘deck’ and save everyone a lot of bother.