Bite the Bullet: Improving Your Presentation Strategies
Implementing a few sound strategies can make an IT manager's presentation process more predictable and painless, keep the audience's attention and help ensure approval for project goals.
> You can also use the PowerPoint AutoContent Wizard to get ideas and structure for almost any type of presentation. Click File/New in PowerPoint 2003 to see a menu of many types of presentations with content ready to be revised. PowerPoint 2007 has a new set of templates under Microsoft Office Online/Presentations. You can get a good basic structure with the template called "Presentation for Strategy Recommendation." We modified that template to create the one that accompanies this article.
Need an all-purpose PowerPoint template to walk you through the creation of a strategy-based presentation? This one should get you started.2) Identify the Pain
A colleague, Jim Endicott, is one of the best speaker coaches I know. He stresses how much is at stake in any presentation and wonders why anyone would do a slapdash job.
Never begin your presentation with flying logos or meaningless basic information about yourself, says Endicott. Nor should you start out by explaining how wonderful you, your company or your department is. The presentation is not really about you; it's about your audience. You can include credentials in your solution if you feel it's necessary, but first you need to get their attention, and nothing does it quite like understanding their needs.
The most important aspect of this entire exercise is the audience. What is important to them? Endicott suggests that you find the emotional element to grab your audience's attention. For example, you're losing money on low productivity because of poor tech support. The consequences: The situation will deteriorate until complaints reach management and the hammer comes down. The solution: We need to implement a training strategy as follows...
You will know that you have successfully identified the pain in a few short minutes, when you have the audience's undivided attention.
3) Use Visual Metaphors or Stories
The main symptom of Death by PowerPoint is a procession of endless bullets that are boring and stultifying. PowerPoint and its cousins, such as Apple's Keynote, have plenty of templates and features to enable visuals. To make your point, use creative and powerful images that show relationships in a meaningful way. The key word here is "meaningful," not random clip art to fill out the page.
To really get dramatic, videotape someone explaining how dire the problem is. Or, show photographs that prove your point, such as how outmoded or cramped a departmental area is.
