Present Beyond Measure

4Transmit a Clear Message

“Um, can you repeat the part of the stuff where you said all about the things?”

—Homer Simpson

How often do you get a presentation meeting invitation with a title along the lines of “Campaign Overview,” “Test Results,” or “Report Review”?

When this happens, do you:

• A. Jump out of your seat shouting, “Yahtzee!” with excitement and enthusiasm?
• B. Scratch your head and reluctantly accept the invite out of obligation?
• C. Dramatically fake your disappearance?

When I used to get those invites, my typical reaction was B or C (C only worked the first time, go figure). I rarely understood what the purpose of the meeting was, what decisions were at stake, and what was expected of me.

The trouble was, I was asked to present insights at these meetings with minimal context or direction. So, I learned by watching what everyone else was doing. I would create a terrifying document that I now call the “kitchen sink presentation.”

I would scrape every metric from every dimension from every available reporting platform, throw my digits in a bunch of charts on a bunch of slides, and present them all hoping something would stick.

Then I would be mystified as to why my room was transformed into Zombieland: Corporate Edition.

Data overwhelm is one of the chief complaints I hear about from the organizational leaders who enlist me to train their practitioner teams, and the result is confused clients and frustrated executives. While the solution is simple, its execution ...