What type of data would you like to show?
This is a series of 10 interviews with the expert coaches during the IESE EMBA Intensive week 2013. (If you are viewing via rss, video on the blog here). The Expert Contributors are:
What questions do you have for next year’s set of expert interviews?
Chiara Ojeda who writes the Tweak Your Slides blog has recently posted a new set of visuals called Presenting As Yourself. It has powerful visuals. It provides great reminders of the important aspects of communicating with impact; communicating in a way that engages the audience and lets your message stick.
What are your favourite books, blogs, youtube videos, general resources on presentation delivery?
“We have study hall at the beginning of our meetings.” says Jeff Bezos.
Staff meetings at Amazon begin with 30 minutes of silent reading.
“The traditional kind of corporate meeting starts with a presentation. Somebody gets up in front of the room and presents with a powerpoint presentation, some type of slide show. In our view you get very little information, you get bullet points. This is easy for the presenter, but difficult for the audience. And so instead, all of our meetings are structured around a 6 page narrative memo.”
“When you have to write your ideas out in complete sentences, complete paragraphs it forces a deeper clarity.”
Why don’t you read the memos in advance?
“Time doesnt come from nowhere. This way you know everyone has the time. The author gets the nice warm feeling of seeing their hard work being read.”
“If you have a traditional ppt presentation, executives interrupt. If you read the whole 6 page memo, on page 2 you have a question but on on page 4 that question is answered.”
And so that is what we do, we just sit and read.
I love this idea. In our communications courses we talk about “think complex, speak simple”. It is hard work to prepare well enough to be able to speak simple. Most presenters are figuring out what they really want to say as they are presenting. This is a terrible waste of an audience.
These quotes come from the Charlie Rose interview with Jeff Bezos. It is available here: http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12656
NEW August 2015: View the Original email memo sent by Jeff Bezos (thanks to Pete Abilla)
P.S. If you liked this post you might also like 16 Lessons from the European HR Directors Summit and Zero Executive Presence: When I speak, People don’t listen. Why is that?
Twitter:
Main Discussion Page http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ebavs/amazon_staff_meetings_no_powerpoint/
He is now on his seventh powerpoint slide.
Each slide is interesting and well designed. He has worked hard to find good images and pithy quotes.
My neighbour leans in towards me. I lean towards him.
He whispers to me.
He says: “What is this guy telling us again?”
My neighbour fishes his iPhone out of his pocket and gets back to something that seems more important to him: reading email.
Sadly, this is a common occurrence.
Every time you show an audience a Powerpoint slide, the audience needs you to answer 4 Vital questions:
If you don’t have these 4 answers in a way that is relevant for the audience, you are not serving the audience. If you can’t answer these 4 questions, delete the slide.
If it is not adding, it subtracts. If it is not relevant to them, it is irrelevant.
Less is more.
In my 8 years as a management consultant at Accenture, preparing a presentation was synonymous with preparing the Powerpoint slides. “Hey Neill! Proposal presentation this Friday…” – I immediately opened Powerpoint and started creating slides…
A lot of powerpoint is not Great Powerpoint.
Finding great photos is easier today than ever before. Sites like Flickr.com or Google Images allow you to search through massive databases of Creative Commons images that you can use in your presentations.
There is a problem.
Most Powerpoint slides are not photos. They are mostly text.
Written text is processed in our brain via the aural pathways. Although text is read by the eyes, it is not really processed as a visual medium. We turn the shapes into sounds via a voice inside our heads and process the language through our aural processors.
You are competing with yourself.
There are two voices competing for the attention of the listener’s mind – your voice, and their own silent inner voice reading your slides aloud in their minds.
Text is not processed through the brain’s visual pathways. If you want to support your speech with visuals, use images that are processed directly through the brain’s visual channels. Use photos. Use simple line drawings like Dan Roam’s back of the Napkin visuals.
