PRESENTATION
ZEN
Introduction
[1] Presenting in Today’s World
Preparation
[2] Creativity, Limitations, and Constraints
[3] Planning Analog
[4] Crafting the Story
Design
[5] Simplicity: Why It Matters
[6] Presentation Design: Principles and Techniques
[7] Sample Slides
Delivery
[8] The Art of Being Completely Present
[9] Connecting With an Audience
The Next Step . . .
[10] The Journey Begins
Preparation
Developing presentation content—especially
content to be delivered with the aid of
multimedia—is a creative act
Students can become better business leaders
tomorrow by learning how to become better
design thinkers today
Valuable aptitudes for all professionals,
regardless of their discipline or their particular
task
• Design Thinking
• Design Mindfulness
• Creative Thinking
Once you realize that the preparation of a
presentation is an act requiring creativity, not
merely the assembling of facts and data in a
linear fashion, you’ll see that preparing a
presentation is a “whole-minded” activity that
requires as much right-brain thinking as it does
left-brain thinking
Left-Brain Thinking
• Your research and
background work requires
logical analysis, calculation,
& careful evidence
gathering
Right-Brain Thinking
• The transformation of your
content into presentation
form
Start with the Beginner’s Mind
• When you approach a new challenge as a true
beginner (even if you are a seasoned adult),
you need not be saddled with fear of failure or
of making mistakes
– You are not afraid of being wrong
– If you are not willing to make mistakes, then it is
impossible to be truly creative
• If you approach problems with the “expert’s
mind,” you are often blind to the possibilities
You Are Creative
• Being creative means using your whole mind
to find solutions
• Creativity means not being paralyzed by your
methods & knowledge, but being able to think
outside the box to find solutions to
unforeseen problems
– This kind of situation requires logic & analysis
(left-brain), but also big-picture thinking
(right-brain) thinking
• A presentation is an opportunity to
differentiate yourself, your cause, or your
organization
• It’s your chance to tell the story of why your
content is important & why it matters
It can be an opportunity to make a difference!
The Big Lie: “I am not creative”
Failing is fine – necessary in fact
Don’t avoid failure or risk—take a chance
A failure is in the past—it’s done & over
Take chances—stretch yourself
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never
come up with anything original”
Sir Ken Robinson
Be a Pirate
Inspiration—where to find it?
When you teach someone something important
to you, you are reminded of why it matters, &
the enthusiasm of the student—child or adult—
is infectious & can energize you
Do Not Force It
• Idling or doing nothing is important
• Most of us are obsessed with getting things
done
• We’re afraid to be unproductive
• The big ideas usually come when you are
“lazy”—when you are “wasting time”
• Sometimes you need solitude & a break for
slowing down so that you may see things
differently
• Managers who understand this & give their
staff the time they need (which they can only
do by genuinely trusting them) are the secure
managers, & the best managers
Enthusiasm
• Put your love, passion, imagination, & spirit
behind it
• Without enthusiasm, there is no creativity
The Art of Working with Restrictions
• Restrictive conditions put on creative projects
can lead to inventive solutions
How do you develop concepts & implement
them under such constraints as:
– Limited time
– Space
– Budget
Constraints & limitations are a powerful ally,
not an enemy
Creating your own self-imposed constraints,
limitations, & parameters is often fundamental
to good, creative work
Self-imposed constraints can help you formulate
clearer messages, including visual messages
As daily life becomes even more complex,
& the options & choices continue to mount,
crafting messages & making designs that are
clear, simple, & concise becomes all the more
important
Summary
• Preparing, designing, & delivering a
presentation is a creative act
• Creativity requires an open mind & a
willingness to be wrong
• Restrictions & limitations are not the enemy;
they are a great ally
• As you prepare a presentation, exercise
restraint & keep these 3 words in mind:
Simplicity – Clarity - Brevity
Preparation
• Get away from your computer
• Before you design your presentation, you
need to see the big picture & identify your
core messages—or the single core message
• Using pen & paper & sketching out rough
ideas in the early stages seems to lead to
more clarity & better, more creative results
It’s important to understand principles of
presentation creation, & design, not merely
software application rules to be obediently
followed or the tips & tricks of the day
Paper, Whiteboard, or a Stick in the Sand?
If you have the ideas,
you can do a lot without machinery.
Once you have those ideas,
the machinery starts working for you . . .
Most ideas you can do pretty darn well
with a stick in the sand.
--Alan Kay
Slowing Down to See
• Leads to greater clarity
• Time constraints can be a great motivator,
bringing a sense of urgency that stimulates
creative thinking & the discovery of solutions
to problems
• “Busyness” is that uncomfortable feeling you
have when you are feeling rushed, distracted,
& a bit unfocused & preoccupied
• Although you may be accomplishing tasks, you
wished you could do better
• In spite of your best intentions, you find it
difficult to create a state of mind that is
contemplative rather than reactionary
Busyness kills creativity
Communication suffers . . . The audience suffers
• To do something different takes a different
mindset, & it takes time & space away from
“busyness”
• This special insight & knowledge can usually
only come about when slowing down,
stopping, & seeing all sides of the issue
• One reason why so many people are
ineffective is that people today do not take
enough time to step back & really assess what
is important & what is not
• They often fail to bring anything, unique,
creative, or new to the presentation
• Solitude helps achieve greater focus & clarity,
while also allowing you to see the big picture
• Clarity & the big picture are the fundamental
elements that are missing from most
presentations
Asking the Right Questions
The current state of business & academic
presentations bring about a fair amount of
“suffering” in the form of ineffectiveness,
wasted time, & general dissatisfaction, both for
the presenter & the audience
Many of us spend too much time fidgeting with
& worrying about bullets & images on slides
during the preparation stage instead of thinking
about how to craft a story which is the most
effective, memorable, & appropriate for our
particular audience
The Wrong Questions
• Obsessing on technique & tricks & effects
• How many slides?
???
Questions We Should Be Asking
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How much time do I have?
What’s the venue like?
What time of the day?
Who is the audience?
What’s their background?
What do they expect of me?
Why was I asked to speak?
• What do I want them to do?
• What visual medium is most appropriate for
this particular situation & audience?
• What is the fundamental purpose of my talk?
• What’s the story here?
• What is my absolutely central point???
Two Questions:
• What’s Your Point?
• Why Does It Matter?
Audience Viewpoint
Why should we care?
• Use persuasion, emotion, & empathy in
addition to logical argument to persuade your
audience
– Empathy in the sense that the presenter
understands that not everyone will see what to
him is obvious, or that others may understand
well but not see why it should matter to them
When preparing material for a talk, good
presenters try to put themselves in the shoes of
their audience members & ask “So What?”
Presentation opportunities are about
contributing something & leaving something
important behind for the audience
The Elevator Test
• Check the clarity of your presentation’s core
message
– “sell” your message in 30-45 seconds
Practicing what you would do forces you to get your
message down & make your overall content tighter &
clearer
Handouts Can Set You Free
• If you create a proper handout as a leavebehind for your presentation during the
preparation phase, then you will not feel
compelled to say everything about your topic
in your talk
• Preparing a proper talk—with as much detail
as you think necessary—frees you to focus on
what is most important for your audience
Prepare a detailed document for a handout
& keep the slides simple
Three Parts of a Presentation
• The slides
only the audience will see
• The notes
only you will see
• The handout
to be taken away
Create a Document Not a Slideument
• Projected slides should be as visual as possible
& support your points quickly, efficiently, &
powerfully
– Guy Kawasaki: “10-20-30 Rule” [1:52]
– The verbal content, the verbal proof, evidence, &
appeal/emotion come mostly from your spoken
word
• Your handouts should provide at least as much
depth & scope as your live presentation
• Attempting to have slides serve both as
projected visuals & as stand-along handouts
makes for bad visuals & bad documentation
• PowerPoint is a tool for displaying visual
information, information that helps you tell
your story, make your case, prove your point,
& engage your audience
To be different & effective, use a well-written,
detailed document for your handout & welldesigned, simple, intelligent graphics for your
visuals
The Benefit of Planning Well
• Presentation preparation is about organizing
thoughts & focusing the storytelling so it’s all
clear to your audience
• If you prepare well, the preparation process
itself should help you really know your story
Summary
• Slow down your busy mind to see your
problem & goals more clearly
• Find time alone to see the big picture
• For greater focus, try turning off the computer
& going analog
• Use paper & pens or a whiteboard first to
record & sketch out your ideas
• Key Questions:
– What’s your main (core) point?
– Why does it matter?
• If your audience remembers only 1 thing,
what should it be?
• Preparing a detailed handout keeps you from
feeling compelled to cram everything into
your visuals
Preparation
• During your time “off the grid,” you
brainstormed alone or with a small group of
people
• You stepped back to get the big picture
• You identified your core message
 Clearer picture of the presentation content &
focus—even if you don’t have all the details
worked out
• The next step is to give your core message &
supporting messages a logical structure
• Structure will help bring order to your
presentation & make it easier for you to
deliver it smoothly, & for your audience to
understand your message easily
• Before you “go digital,” it is important to
remember
– What makes your ideas resonate with people?
– What makes some presentations absolutely
brilliant & others forgettable?
• If your goals is to create a presentation that is
memorable, then you need to consider at all
times how to craft messages that stick!
What Makes Messages Stick?
“Sticky” ideas have 6 key principles in common:
• Simplicity
• Unexpectedness
• Concreteness
• Credibility
• Emotion
• Stories
Made to Stick
• Most people fail to craft effective or “sticky”
messages is because of the
“Curse of Knowledge”
– The deliverer of the message can’t imagine what
it’s like to not possess his level of background
knowledge on the topic
Same Idea?
“Our mission is to become the international
leader in the space industry through maximum
team-centered innovation and strategically
targeted aerospace initiatives”
or
“. . . put a man on the moon and return him
safely by the end of the decade.”
Simplicity
• If everything is important, then nothing is
important
• Simplify—don’t dummy down—your message
to the absolute core
– What’s the key point?
– What’s the core?
– Why does (or should) it matter?
Unexpectedness
• Surprise people—it will get their interest
• To sustain interest, you have to stimulate their
curiosity
– Pose questions
– Open holes in their knowledge
– Fill those holes
• Take people on a journey
Concreteness
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Use natural speech
Give real examples
Speak of concrete images—not vague notions
Use proverbs—visualize
“Kill two birds with one stone”
or
“Let’s work toward maximizing our productivity
by increasing efficiency across many
departments”
Credibility
• If you are famous in your field, you probably
have built-in credibility
• Otherwise, we tend to support our claims with
data and statistics
– Statistics aren’t inherently helpful
– Depends on the context & the meaning
• Quotes from clients or the press help vs. your
company’s history
“Five hours of battery life”
or
“Enough battery life to watch your favorite TV
shows nonstop on your iPod during the next
flight from San Francisco to New York”
Emotions
• Make your audience feel something
– Images are one way to have audiences understand
your point better—they also feel & have a more
visceral & emotional connection to your idea
– Humans make emotional connections with
people—not abstractions
100 grams of fat
Stories
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We tell stories with words, art & music
We express ourselves through stories
We teach, we learn, & we grow through stories
Stories get our attention & are easier to
remember than lists of rules
Great ideas & great presentations
have an element of story to them
Hurricane Katrina
vs.
Story and Storytelling
• The easiest way to share a complicated idea is
through examples or by sharing a story that
underscores the point
• Stories are easier to recall for your audience
– Make it more relevant & memorable
– Reality, not fiction
• Documentaries “tell a story”
• Good stories have:
– Interesting, clear beginnings
– Provocative, engaging content in the middle
– A clear conclusion
Stories and Authenticity
• Audiences need to see (& hear) your points
illustrated in a real language
• Internalize your story—but don’t memorize it
line by line
If you don’t believe it, do not know it to be true,
how can you connect & convince others with
your words in story form?
It’s Not Just About Information
• Facts used to be difficult to possess
– Just possessing the facts used to differentiate you
• What is more important today is the ability to
synthesize the facts & give them context &
perspective
• What we want from people who present isn’t
data & information alone – we need meaning
What we want is someone who teaches us,
inspires us, or who stimulates us with
knowledge plus meaning, context, & emotion in
a way that is memorable
Information
plus emotion & visualization
plus anecdotes = Story!
Tell them “the story” of your facts
Finding Your Voice
• We pay attention to well-spoken narratives that
sound human, that are spoken in a conversational
“human voice”
– Our brain—not our conscious mind—doesn’t know
the difference between listening to a conversational
narrative & actually being in a conversation with a
person
– When you are in a conversation with someone you are
naturally more engaged because you have an
obligation to participate—you are involved
The Process
If you take the time in this part of the
preparation stage & set your ideas up in a logical
fashion in storyboard format, you can then
visualize the sequential movement of your
content narrative & the overall flow & “feel” of
the presentation
Storyboards have their origins in the movie
industry, but are used often in business, particularly
in the field of marketing & advertising
• Using Slide Sorter view, you can take your notes
and sketches & create a storyboard directly in
PowerPoint, or you can remain “analog” a while
longer & draft a storyboard on paper or by using
Post-Its or a whiteboard
Step 1: Brainstorming
– Step back, go analog, get away from the computer,
tap into the right brain & brainstorm ideas
(get “off the grid”)
– See the issue from all sides; see the big picture
– Listening to your client is the important part
– If clear themes are emerging, group items as you
go
Step 2: Grouping and Identifying the Core
– Identify the one key idea that is central (& memorable)
from the point of view of the audience
– Use “chunking” to group similar ideas while looking for a
unifying theme
– The presentation may be organized into 3 parts, so first
look for the central theme that will be the thread running
through the presentation—support the key message—the
supporting structure (the 3 parts) is there to back up the
core message & the story
– The core “takeaway” & theme are identified & the talk is
organized into 3 concrete sections
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Step 3: Storyboarding Off the Computer
– Lay out your ideas using Post-It Notes or a whiteboard
– Use Slide View Mode in PowerPoint—print out blank
slides (12 slides/sheet), which gives you essentially a
larger version of a Moleskine Storyboard—sketch out
your visuals & write down your key points in a printed
version of slideware notes
– Create a title slide, the “hook,” & the roadmap
(outline) of the talk
Step 4: Storyboarding in Slide Sorter View
– Create a blank slide using a template of your choosing
– The section slides (bumper slides) should be a different color
with enough contrast that they stand out when you see them in
the slide sorter view—these slides will serve to give visual
closure to one section & open the next section
– Add visuals that support your narrative
– Have an introduction where you introduce the issue or “the
pain” & introduce the core message
– Use the next 3 sections to support your assertions or “solve the
pain” in a way that is interesting & informative but that never
loses sight of the simple core message
– Create a simple structure first before slides are added to the
appropriate sections
Nancy Duarte—Duarte Design
Storyboards & the process of presentation design
Editing & Restraint
• Always keep the audience in mind by first
keeping your talk as short as you can & still
doing an effective job telling your story
• After you have prepared your presentation, go
back & edit—eliminate parts that are not
absolutely crucial to your overall point or
purpose of the talk
When in doubt—cut it out!
Summary
• Make your ideas sticky by keeping things simple,
using examples & stories, looking for the
unexpected, & tapping into people’s emotions
• A presentation is never just about the facts
• Brainstorm your topic away from the computer,
group the most important bits—identify the
underlying theme & be true to that theme (core
message) throughout the creation of the
presentation
• Make a storyboard of your ideas on paper—
software to lay out a solid structure that you
can see
• Show restraint at all times & bring everything
back to the core mesage
Formula for success:
1. Know your material
2. Stand front & center—talk in a real, down-to-earth
language that is conversational, yet passionate
3. Don’t let technical glitches get in your way
4. Use real, sometimes humorous, anecdotes to
illustrate your points—stories should be authentic,
relevant & support your core message