Making logical steps in your presentation - and your data management

When he's making a presentation, ZL Technologies' founder and CEO Kon Leong believes in the power of making a logical segue before changing the slide.

"One thing I try to do that I believe makes a huge difference for any presenter is to build a verbal segue before changing the slide. It's more effective to set up the mind of the listener to anticipate the next slide, or even what they think it might be. The logical flow is important to maintain, and presenters sometimes overlook that when they cut to the next slide and then read. The thought process should transition into the next visual rather than the other way around."

But when it comes to the stages in managing your data, it's not the transitions but the elimination of the document that Kon believes is the most important, and the most challenging, part of the process.

For the complete interview with this data management expert about his views on how to scale that mountain of records at your company, see today's CBS Interactive article here.

Bending the failed expectations curve - 10 Questions with Jay Gardner of NetIQ

After 30 years in IT, Jay Gardner has landed as the GM and VP at NetIQ, a recent acquisition of Attachmate, privately held company that seeks to "bridge the divide between open source and proprietary source software.

Jay talked with me about getting IT value and bending the "failed expectations curve" when it comes to technology adoption.

"The failed expectations curve is really a financial picture of the business case where the Y-axis is value and the X-axis is time... There is going to be a certain amount of deterioration in the value, or at least a diminishing gain, as the adoption curve levels off and you go from the value of implementing to the value of maintaining and improving... it often comes down to the talent in the organization that makes things happen..."

Once we had covered ten questions on this topic, I also asked Jay to draw on his experience for his best recommendation on making a remarkable business presentation.

"My best recommendation is to tell a story. Always try to relate an example of what you're talking about, either a business process or a customer story. Make it memorable and credible, and unique. That's the way to get people's attention and keep it. Data can support it, but people have to be able to relate to what you're talking about in an illustration rather than bullets. When you can tell a good story, being persuasive is a natural outcome."

You can read the complete interview with Jay on the CBS Interactive site.

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(* Did you already read my interviews on cloud computing with Jimmy Harris and virtualization with Mark Egan?)

25 bullets will kill you - Cloud expert Jimmy Harris on making better presentations

Accenture's Director of Cloud Services Jimmy Harris talked with me recently for an article in TechRepublic about his ideas on cloud technology. Part of our discussion also covered his best recommendations for making more effective presentations. His first thought: cut down on the bullets.

"This is my first rule of presentations: the density of the data presented is inversely proportional to understanding. If I put up a slide with 25 bullet points on it, I'm just distracting people. No one can remember 25 things anyway.

Another mistake I hear presenters make is saying, 'I know you probably can't see this, but...'

One variation on this I've seen is the presenter who put up a detailed, hyper-convoluted chart, pointed to an indistinguishable spot, and said, 'There it is!' Not a single person had any idea what he was talking about.

To the expert making a presentation, that kind of data represents a command of information and demonstrates their credibility. To the audience, the fact that your the epidemiologist, or whatever other kind of expert you may be, already demonstrates that you know more about it than I do.

Another thing I can tell you about my own presentation approach is that it's about extending understanding through storytelling and symbols. We're brought up to remember things that way. For example, in describing the cloud, I imagine I'm trying to tell people in Asia about banking. There are two billion people there with no experience in personal banking. The question is how to create an environment in which you can economically deliver banking services to these people who have none of the infrastructure, who have never even seen a bank. So in my presentation I talk about the components of the cloud in terms of deploying bank services across multiple devices at a lower cost."

For the rest of the conversation with Jimmy on the way cloud computing changes things, see the article published this week by CBS Interactive.

Going from podium to Web

You've put together a stellar presentation for the big conference and are counting down the days. With a week to go, a tsunami/tornado/oil spill interrupts the plan and the conference is cancelled.

After hearing your practice run, your boss says, "We're going with this! Get Webex on the phone!" No problem, right?

Turning a classroom presentation into an online meeting requires some planning and rethinking. It's more than just making your delivery on a conference call.

A bicycle and a unicycle are two ways to get from here to there that seem similar, but the difference can add some new challenges. What you've done behind the podium may not translate seamlessly over to a web meeting.

Winning priority is the first major difference to consider:

Unlike a physical event, attendance on a web presentation is entirely up to you and your team. You don't have the luxury of being an alternative in a handful of speaker sessions. Your message is competing with all the normal (and ever-increasing) priorities of everyone's workday. Clicking on an invitation is a routine commitment for most people. Each reminder of the value you've promised to deliver is more important than the last, up to the final "one hour from now!" e-mail.

Read the rest of the article in today's TechRepublic.

What blindspots?

Without credibility, arguments vaporize. One of the most undervalued components in credibility is objectivity - being above any hidden agenda or influence. As clear-as-a-bell as it is when we hear someone else speaking, it's still incredibly tempting to overestimate our own objectivity.

Do media spokesmen have more or less objectivity after they've been hob-nobbing (or squirt-gun fighting) over the weekend with politicians at a beach party with the Biden's?

Does a new study that shows Ford is now "the no. 1 automaker in customer satisfaction with vehicle quality" have as much clout when you learn the study was commissioned by... Ford? (It disagrees with the most recent Consumer Reports.)

As an expert in your field, you have a claim to trusted advisor sentiments, but it's dangerous to let your bias speak when you need to remain aloof. When you put together your next presentation, make a point to cite objective, third-party sources that your audience trusts, both in the slides and the dialog. And lob the first salvo at "experts agree," and "research has shown," which are even more lame than no citation at all.

(Batteries not included)

Are you leaving the right things out?

Florida Governor Charlie Crist recently left out the pro-life section he had previously included on his web site.

(He's expected to veto a controversial ultrasound bill.)

Hyundai left out the price on advertisements for its 2011 Sonata.

(You can request an e-mail, but you have to include your phone number and yes, they will be calling you.)

A friend of mine in sales left off his resume the position he held for more than a year as the National Sales Director for a growing technology provider.

(It went bankrupt and he returned to his previous employer.)

Steve Jobs left out the part of his talk about how easily the iPhone 4 connects to the internet.

(Too many bloggers in the audience were eating up the bandwidth of the local wi-fi.)

The main thing to keep in mind about what to leave out in your presentation, resume, business plan or other communication is not what you want to leave out, but what your audience expects you to leave out (or in). That will be noticeable in its absence.

Ten Breakable Habits (slides from my live presentation)

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Ten Breakable Habits

View more presentations from Prospero Marketing Group.

Are you talking to me?

When you're giving a presentation, do you start by doing your homework on who is going to be in your audience? It may not be who you think it is if you're not sure when your microphone is on (especially when you're the British Prime Minister).

I asked Accenture's Business Operations Director Bob Kress for his top suggestion on how presenters can make their speaking more effective. His first recommendation: be familiar with your audience.

"When I'm presenting to any group, one of the most important things to understand is who the audience is and focus on their primary interests. If I'm talking to more senior people, I tend to use fewer slides and focus on business issues vs. technology. Matching the appropriate level of detail and relating it to the audience is a key piece of giving a great presentation. Using the right examples and stories is the way to make any presentation more memorable."

See the full interview in today's TechRepublic on how Bob has adapted the technology strategy at Accenture to a struggling economic climate.

When Your Job Depends on Your Presentation - my interview with Bill Keyworth

As research director at Gartner, Bill Keyworth was consistently rated as one of the top presenters. Which is a good thing, because his job depended on it.

I talked with Bill recently about cloud computing and technology marketing for an article in TechRepublic magazine. He also described some of the underlying beliefs about why his largely technical presentations have always been so well received across a variety of audiences:

"One primary thing is keeping the visuals a support mechanism and not letting them become the presentation. People are going to remember a very small percentage of what you say even two or three hours later. So what is it you want them to remember? You want them to do something differently. Everything you do should be driven by that, including your visuals.

When I was at Gartner, every presentation got a feedback score that was posted, and not being in the top twenty percent was not good. If you weren't in the top half, you should start looking for another job. At first I had no idea why I scored so well, and then someone told me my strength was my credibility. I believed in management technology and processes, and I believed it would make a difference.

Some presenters can tell a great story but can't answer the basic question of how things are run, managed or controlled. They'll explain that those details are 'coming out in the next version.' For me, non-managed is an unacceptable answer. So even when people don't remember everything I said, my belief in the importance and necessity of those management answers comes through in the credibility of my presentations. It has to come from the heart."

You can read the full interview with Bill Keyworth in today's TechRepublic article here.

Bill's newest venture, the BSM Review, features a complete panel of experts from across the IT spectrum blogging on business service management.

REthinking the WORKplace - My Interview with 37signals' Jason Fried on Better Work and Remarkable Presentations

One of the things I point out in Ten Breakable Habits is that the slides are not the presentation, and if adding visuals doesn't improve your presentation, don't use them. 37signals founder (Basecamp, Campfire, Ruby on Rails, etc.) Jason Fried talked to me recently about his web applications business and about what he's learned about presentation delivery over the course of his career as an international speaker.

Here's how Jason describes his speaking style:

"Something I've started doing more recently is speaking without slides, or if I use slides, they are just pictures with few or no words. There's certainly nothing where I'm reading or anyone is reading off the screen. I have a set of ideas I like to use for topics and I just run with them and see where it goes. I much prefer the question and answer part of things anyway. I want to be prepared, but I don't want to over-prepare or think too hard about it. I avoid getting to a place where I'm thinking about what I wanted to say."

You can see the whole interview with Jason in today's TechRepublic article here.

Jason's third book REWORK is due out next month.

Ten Breakable Habits comes out today

If you've been looking for a good book on making better presentations, Ten Breakable Habits to creating a remarkable presentation comes out today.

This is not a book about how to speak more clearly. It's about how to communicate more effectively. It will change the way you think about presenting, and make your next presentation remarkable.

Here are some early reviews:

"In Ten Breakable Habits, Jeff analyzes the traps we fall into when creating presentations but more than that, helps us identify why we fall into them."

- Jason McClay, Senior Consultant, G2G3 Group

"I recommend it to anyone who wants to make their message more memorable, from the classroom to the boardroom."

- Michael Nicoletti, Senior Manager, IBM

"Anyone who wants to discover a better way to communicate effectively can benefit from reading Ten Breakable Habits."

- Joe Ryan, Partner, Open Systems Technologies

Is there someone you'd like to send a copy of Ten Breakable Habits? More people will be giving presentations in 2010 than ever before and this is the extra edge they need. If you're one of the first 100 people to order, you can take advantage of the Buy one-Give one offer and have a second copy sent to one of your customers, your boss, friend or colleague for half-price. There are also quantity discounts available if you're distributing to your sales team.

You can find the order link at www.tenbreakablehabits.com. There's also a free PDF of the summary article that came out in TechRepublic magazine in December (over 4300 downloads so far).

Your Two Cents

Remember "letters to the editor?"

It used to be you would type up a letter in response to an article, put a 15 or 20 cent stamp on it, send it in, and watch the next couple issues to see if it was published. It was a kick to see one of your comments get picked up, and ensured your continuing interest in getting the paper. Better yet if something you wrote actually made it to the "mainstream media."

Today letters to the editor are coursing toward the same fate as the daily newspapers they still appear in. With an internet story, you don't have to hope your response is printed. It just appears in the list at the bottom of the story within a few minutes. Along with all the other ways to participate on the web, this is huge.

Sellers like eBay and amazon know dialog is part of their business. They invite you to rate the product and evaluate the transaction and the seller. We've gotten used to this idea. If you wanted to, you could make voting, commenting and providing feedback into an avocation.

What does this mean for the way we communicate in a presentation? Some people are still inclined to give a presentation like a newspaper, ignoring the fact that their listeners are more interested in, and accustomed to, a dialog than being presented with information. Because there's no shortage of information. There's your opinion, and theirs. Remember it's a microphone and not a bullhorn, and your last slide is not the conclusion; it's the beginning of the dialog.

Ten Breakable Habits (for a remarkable presentation)

Here's an excerpt from this week's TechRepublic with a preview of my new book on presentations, coming out on February 12th. If you're looking for an easy way to get your next presentation to the next level, these are the first five of my ten recommendations for do's and don'ts:

1 - Stop: Being an information resource.

Start: Being the funnel, filter, and guru.

Put away the teleprompter. Presenting is more than giving a speech. You're changing data into information, knowledge, and with a little luck, wisdom.

2 - Stop: The train - there's no track.

Start: With the end in mind.

Invest the amount of preparation time in your presentation that will make it a winning experience for you, like an athlete whose first goal is self-improvement.

3 - Stop: Trusting the human ear.

Start: Polishing your shoes.

Don't keep it simple; make it simple. Transform a complicated thought or process into something that is easy to see and appreciate.

4 - Stop: Explaining your slides.

Start: illustrating your ideas.

The images you use will create lasting impressions if they connect with your words. We're a visual culture and need the combination of content and visual emphasis.

5 - Dont: Focus on everything.

Do: Build around a unique value proposition and an unrefusable offer.

The ability to define your message in terms of a UVP and UO is the central piece of making your presentation remarkable. Keep your other points ancillary to these two.

For a list of all ten breakable habits, see the article in TechRepublic's "10 Things" column here.

You can find more details on the book at www.tenbreakablehabits.com.

The Second Agenda - Presentation Presence

Think about the first thirty seconds of a sales presentation. Is your audience ever with you from the get-go? Some are there from your first word. Most will take some convincing just to get on the same page.

Once you've developed your main points, keep in mind these three hurdles to get past the jaundiced eye:

Cynicism - overcome by confidence in the person
Skepticism - overcome by trust in experience
Fatalism - overcome by belief in the ability to influence the situation

Weave these three into your agenda outline. If you conquer these, you're on the path to a persuasive argument that begs for a call to action.