On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Why Your Presentations Suck -- and How to Make Them Much Better

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Why Your Presentations Suck -- and How to Make Them Much Better Michael Baldwin says weve been in a downward spiral since the first spectacular presentations were made with cave drawings 32,000 years ago. Since then, weve been subjected to boring slides cluttered with too much information and confusing or irrelevant graphics delivered by someone who is clueless as to why the audience appears to be sleeping with their eyes open. Now Baldwin, a former executive with Ogilvy Mather New York and winner of numerous copywriting awards, is providing a blueprint of how even the most technical orcomplicated informationcan be delivered so it grabs an audiences attention and boosts the presenters career. When youve got a lot of data or information to present, dont feed it to the audience with a firehose. You have to allow them to get their head around things, he says. That means you cant cram information on a slide and then just read it to the audience. The slide is supposed to enhance the presentation, which means you shouldnt use boring stock photos or charts that fail to convey a message clearly and quickly, he says. In his new book, Just Add Water, Baldwin gives suggestions on how to provide more simple,compelling presentations. The key, he says, is to start with what youre going to do to drive your audience from point A to point B. That means youve got to look at things from the audiences perspective and then determine where you want to take them. It all begins with what he calls a crystal clear objective,such as convincing the CIO that putting citizen development into play will help IT cut its application backlog, or your boss that your department deserves new equipment. To accomplish that, you need to focus on: A story. As a presenter, you may get anxious when it comes to making a presentation. But Baldwin says that by sharing the things youre passionate about, you can eliminate nervousness and help make a strong connection to the audience. Stories have the power to plant situations, scenes, characters and images in peoples minds that theyll never forget, he says. If you dont have a personal story that applies to your presentation, Baldwin suggests talking about subjects that youre passionate about. (One of Baldwins clients, a World War II history buff, used a battle story to illustrate a point.) Ensuring the logic flows.Slides must flow logically from one to the next, each building upon the one before it. Baldwin suggests beginning with index cards, and until thats done, dont go anywhere near a computer and try (read the rest here)