A presentation about presentations provided a good kickstart for TheMarketResearchEvent today! Gene Zelazny of McKinsey & Co. gave a compelling talk about making the most of your business presentation.
He spent an appropriate amount of time discussing how Defining the Situation First was the single MOST important aspect of a good presentation. By first defining what you want impact you want the audience to haveas a result of the presentation in 1 sentence, everything else flows easily from there.
This framework for thinking about presentations reminded me of a 1-day Duarte Design workshop I attended last summer - I still remember how impactful the workshop was. The instructor claimed that once you first get clarity on WHAT the audience should DO as as a result of what you're presenting, the more clarity you will have in creating the story...and slide deck.
Zelazny also went on to show how important it is to "turn the story upside down" when structuring the presentation. In other words, giving the recommendations first instead of trying to detail the process of getting there.
A few resources he provided were www.powerframeworks.com as well as his 2 books, Say it With Charts and Say it With Presentations. All of these give simple design visuals to help when you're developing graphics for presentations.
