The Communication Blog

"Okay, I want you to take your tank and turn right, no, left, wait...um..."

I’ve come close to saying that, in a slightly different fashion. As someone trying to help a client, and keep the client, a consultant may wish not to offend the client with direct language; instead, one helps the client understand why it might be that…

Aw, screw it. Enough with the nice-nice. Here’s the skinny: PowerPoint can, indeed, make the presenter look stupid, and make the audience feel like the presenter is stupid for making everyone sit through a bullet-laden, sentence fragment populated, “What, there’s a different way to do this?” presentation.

To all my clients, assoiciates, friends and others (?!?), you all know my views on this. Now, as quoted in today’s New York Times, there’s some muscle that supports my never-ending quest to rid the world of bullets, text-dense slides, and slide-reading presenters. The link to the story is at the bottom or this post, but here’s a sprinkling of it:

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint  Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He  spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint  presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal  Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal  threat.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of  control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in  the world are not bullet-izable.”

For those of you who haven’t seen the alternative universe of visual, well-designed, effective PowerPoint slides, I know it can be hard to conceive of a world where PowerPoint slides make you say, “Ooo!” instead of “Oy…”. Until I can show people that world, though, it’s so good and, concurrently, so sad, that the biggest guns of the world’s best place to be have to point out how goofy it is to use PowerPoint to disseminate critical information.

Bullets don’t really mean anything. Those small circles in front of fragments or words only exist to indicate “what follows cannot stand alone to convey what I intend.” There is enough information without context in our lives; we don’t actually need software that enables us to compose nice looking incomplete sentences and short strings of words. What we need is more exposure to presentations that work.

I realize the article has ‘war’ as its focus, but the core of the story — how to effectively, successfully, convey critical information using presentation software and technology — is relevant to every industry sector.

In General McMaster’s view, PowerPoint’s worst offense is not a chart like the spaghetti graphic, which was first uncovered by NBC’s Richard Engel, but rigid lists of bullet points (in, say, a presentation on a conflict’s causes) that take no account of interconnected political, economic and ethnic forces. “If you divorce war from all of that, it becomes a targeting exercise,” General McMaster said.

Commanders say that the slides impart less information than a five-page paper can  hold, and that they relieve the briefer of the need to polish writing to convey an analytic,  persuasive point. Imagine lawyers presenting arguments before the Supreme Court in  slides instead of legal briefs.

As you read the last words of the article, remember them as you put together your next presentation.

Hmm…might be time for me to put on a seminar, and call it…

Senior officers say the program does come in handy when the goal is not imparting  information, as in briefings for reporters.

The news media sessions often last 25 minutes, with 5 minutes left at the end for  questions from anyone still awake. Those types of PowerPoint presentations, Dr.  Hammes said, are known as “hypnotizing chickens.”

How'd they like your presentation?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?th&emc=th

Get a grip.

Know me long enough and you will know this — I firmly believe, and constantly proselytize, that we communicate more often than we realize.

A blog on the Scientific American magazine website has an interesting take on this with a post about what a strong or weak handshake conveys about us.

I’m a firm believer (gawd, here come da puns…) in good handshakes. I won’t automatically dismiss someone who doesn’t seem to have a decent grip, but it immediately puts me in a questioning mode: has no one ever taught you/mentioned to you/demonstrated for you the ‘proper’ way to shake hands?

It’s not a macho thing, truly. I’m not (always) trying to squeeze blood out of your hand’s pores, but, as the post describes, the ritual handshake transfers a sizable chunk of info to the shakers. The post contains interesting historical background on the custom, and very revealing studies conducted over the years, but I found the stories relative to women and handshaking really interesting, including this:

“However—and here’s the important part—those women who did break the gender norm by giving very firm handshakes were at a considerable advantage at getting an offer over men who gave an equally firm handshake. The authors suggest that this is because of a salience effect: prospective employers expect women, but not men, to give weak handshakes, so those who don’t shake limply stand out from the rest and make a lasting impact.”

Want to be a better communicator? Get a grip. (groan)

I’m doing the very last edits and proofing of my forthcoming book, The Way to Communicate, best described by its own slug, to wit: an enlightening method for effectively communicating in public speaking, presentation and conversational situations.

Well, what the heck, the jacket copy says it so well, here’s more: “This unique, entertaining, and personal guidance benefits anyone who wants to develop greater confidence and effectiveness in any kind of communication environment, from a one-on-one conversation to a presentation in front of packed auditorium. While many of the book’s examples take place within a business related environment, The Way to Communicate encourages development of greater awareness and empathy as a way to connect with anyone, in any situation.”

 Although it won’t be released until later this year, I’ve posted a downloadable excerpt on Scribd, with another to come next week. The current excerpt, Be Normal, is about challenges faced by executives who, as the ‘face’ of an organization, tell the organization’s story  so many times they begin a misguided effort to keep the story fresh, and end up moving away from the personal qualities and attributes that made them effective storytellers in the first place.

Hope you find something in it that resonates for you, clients, or friends.

More to come.

Steve Jobs revealed the iPad (it’s still happening as I write this), the world’s worst-kept secret.

I’m watching live picts and comments via Endgadget.

Bottom line: it is waaaaayyyy cool.

The Book

Welp, it’s all on me, but the advance reader copies of The Way to Communicate won’t go out until February 2010. I am lucky enough to have a publisher that has allowed me to design the book I’ve written (no small feat, usually, but it’s a little different for me, since I actually do design books and publications), and I needed to work out some additional layout issues, plus there’s still some editing to do. I am, as someone once aptly described a looming deadline, right up against it.

Bar Charts

Let’s look at a pie chart.

Kidding. Let’s not.

How ’bout this bar chart then?

Nope.

No charts. Say it with me: “No charts.”

I had discussions with a few clients recently, working hard to explain that the data of a bar chart is not as important in a presentation setting as is what the bar chart should be conveying. There is a difference. It’s a huge difference, and that difference is about simplifying a message to get the message across. There is nothing simple about bar charts and graphs and pie charts. Their data points and levels of data explained and compared can indeed be as complex or as basic as needed, but the charts themselves are of little interest to people who don’t create nor use them on an ongoing basis.

Use a simplified representation of data to make your point, instead of an x-and-y axis and multiple lines of different colors and little tiny numbers of dates and years and…

It’s simple, really — just show me the two or three important periods of time, say, with blocks of color and of varying height, and put the ‘data’ on top of each block, f’rinstance: Sales in 2008, $10 million, and, Sales in 2009, $11 million. If there’s something important about the time and money between those two, okay, show me that too.

REMEMBER, it’s the information that’s important, not the chart.

Move with me now

“Just act natural.”

Bite me. That advice, first proffered by gosh only knows who, is as helpful as “don’t be nervous, when you look out there just imagine that everyone in your audience is sitting there in their underpants…”, which is to say, not helpful at all. Relaxed, natural movement is something I help clients with all the time. Watch enough low-budget commercials or infomercials, and you can get a sense of how unnatural some movements can really be.

For years, I’ve stressed how hard it can be for someone who’s overcoming presentation anxiety to also be aware of how they move (or how they don’t move) as they ‘try’ to act natural, even though it’s very, very important to seem relaxed and appear normal.

Here’s a report about the connection between how we think, what we think, and how we move:
Our Bodies, Our Brains
Recent studies have shown that moving our body in certain ways can improve our ability to think. Christie Nicholson reports. In fact, body movement can become so strongly connected to the accompanying thoughts that the mere movement itself can elicit associated feelings, according to studies.

The end of my season

Last Friday was the last day of my thirteenth hawkwatch season. This is a teaser for my next post, which will be on…thirteen years of a wonderful thing.

Sally Jewell, President & CEO, REI

Attended an impressive talk last night at UC Berkeley by Sally Jewell, the CEO of REI.

She was entertaining, informative and a darn good speaker. She talked about REI’s commitment to environmental stewardship and connecting people, especially children, to nature.  Great information, good Q&A, and a good PowerPoint presentation.

The slides were clean, great photos ranging from outdoor scenes to picts of employees and their families, AND NO BULLET POINTS.

Not one slide with bullet points. When there was text, it was a single, simple, concise sentence.

Very nice.

Now, as to the suggestion to presentation venues.

When we walked in to the lecture hall last night, the ever-present title slide was up on the screen. The text was centered and stacked, with all the requisite information that at least 99% of the audience already knew: where we were; the date; the speaker’s name; the title of the lecture/presentation.

I am a strong promoter of not using title slides. There are many ways for a presenter to incorporate that redundant info into the beginning of a presentation (I’ll do a future post with specifics). I would suggest to venues that rather than have that static, overused title slide up on the screen, do this:

- A welcoming slide, something simple, dark background with white text: “The presentation will begin at (whatever time)”

- Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start, change the slide to “Tonight’s guest, (name), will be out in fifteen minutes — now is a good time to make sure your cell phone is turned off or in silent mode.”

- Five minutes before the scheduled start, change the slide to “Welcome to (name of the venue) — if you haven’t already, it’s time to turn off your cell phone or put it in silent mode. Please don’t wait any longer…do it now.”

This series of slides actually serves a purpose, as opposed to putting something on the screen simply because, well, it just seems something should be up there.

The Communication Newsletter

Here’s the article that appeared in the spring edition of the Communication newsletter; the summer edition goes later this month. The Communication newsletter is always free, and you can get it via snail mail or email. Just drop me a line with delivery info if you’re interested.

Clarity,  Context, and Vision

It’s intimidating to move forward with sales, marketing or growth plans in this dark economic climate. You need vision to find your way through these tough times.

Visual context
Whenever you use visual context to present data and information, your audience has a greater opportunity to understand your message. If your information is complex or obscure, it’s important to present it in a way that everyone can understand.

Detailed explanations and formulae explaining how heated water produces steam may be accurate, but more people will understand the process when graphics or an animation are used to show that as the temperature of water rises, it energizes molecules, the water boils and creates steam.

Visual context is certainly effective for presentations in general, but it can also be used in many other formats and situations to insure a better grasp of business, operations and processes, customers, or of dynamics in the marketplace.

Visual context to show what you know and what you don’t know
The “what you know and what you don’t know” phrase received wide exposure over the last few years, but as a business and engineering concept it’s been around for ages.

I’m a vociferous proponent of applying reverse engineering to anything that needs to be understood, from “How do I put on a trade show?” to “How can I convince everyone that I’m a space alien?”. Car companies and electronics manufacturers acquire their competitors’ products and take them down to the tiniest screws. Successful businesses do the same, and the really good ones do it to themselves.

The know/don’t know approach can be analogous to reverse engineering, disassembling something, having all the pieces laid out in front of you, then reassembling everything to understand how it works. A few years ago a TV series followed the head of London’s Heathrow airport as he left his office to work for a short period in every operational position, from janitorial to ticket counter.

He found it rewarding, eye-opening, and occasionally frustrating. He found out what he didn’t know.

Many executives and managers can’t undertake the same internal trip, but by doing an internal operations audit and then taking that data and giving it context, what’s known and unknown can be remarkably revealing…when presented well.

For all the 3-D effects, colors and perspectives you can use to design a bar chart, it’s still a bar chart. Most audiences would prefer to look at just about anything than a bar chart. Take that chart’s data and give it real-world, effective context, and the difference can be staggering.

If you need to demonstrate the effectiveness of a new shipping system, don’t just put up a bar chart. Take the time-to-ship data of the old and the new systems and use animated stop watches (on separate slides, not side-by-side) and show the difference. It’s such a strong visual concept I venture you envisioned it as you were reading about it.

Include visuals of what’s happening in other departments during the before and after comparisons, and you’ve created a more informative, overall vision of how the new system affects everything.

Context provides vision
Don’t fixate on my specific example. What’s important is realizing the contextual value that well-chosen pictures, graphics, or movement add to any presentation, study, evaluation or report. Visually formulating and presenting information gives everyone, including yourself, the greatest opportunity to understand, and, in understanding, there is clarity of vision.

 And in times of darkness, vision is important, wouldn’t you agree?