Sunday 22 March 2015

Clarkson endorses my plea to business presenters to ‘Kill their Darlings’

I have written before (here) about the need for ruthless editing in any business presentation and I have suggested looking to film and TV directors for inspiration.  They have a phrase ‘Killing my Darlings’ to describe the fact that, having gone to all the trouble of writing dialogue, acting it and then filming it, they go on to throw much of it away – ‘on the cutting room floor’ or whatever is the digital equivalent.

“Take a look at the ‘Deleted Scenes’ of your DVDs”, I say, and you will get the director typically saying: “this was beautifully played by both the lead actors; but it wasn’t really moving the story forward; so it had to go”. They have to be ruthless in their editing for a number of reasons and they usually end up with a better product as a result. Anyone who has ever sat through a typical business presentation will probably agree that business presenters could do well in taking inspiration from these killers of darlings.


Now, Jeremy Clarkson, who I often lean on for presentation tips, has come up with perhaps the definitive description of the benefits of killing some darlings. In his Sunday Times column on March 22 he wrote the following:

I used to work on a television show called Top Gear and every week the films were edited to a length that felt good. But every week there simply wasn’t time to fit them into the programme - so they’d have to be shortened. And without exception they were better as a result.

Whatever you happen to think of Clarkson, most people who have read his books and columns would agree he is a very talented writer. And of course he scripted most of what went out on Top Gear. Quantifying just how good he is is difficult, but I can offer this little personal insight into his skills. Many years ago he and I were the only ones left at a dinner table in South-London – possibly because no one else was interested in our somewhat anoraky chat about the inner workings of journalism. “I have been writing columns for so long”, he said, that if I am asked to write, say, 400 words, I can start writing and come to a halt, knowing that I am within two-to-three words of the 400 target”.  And on that note…. I shall come to a stop, with absolutely no idea whatsoever of how many words I have written.

Tuesday 17 March 2015

To build a reputation as an expert you need some tasty bits of trivia

If you want to get ahead in business it usually pays to display the expertise that your position implies whenever you can, everywhere from the boardroom to the conference stage. Presentation skills can help to create such a reputation and there is a trick to conveying expertise and being remembered for it: find yourself some tasty bits of trivia.

The fact is that quantity and even quality of knowledge is not necessarily going to enhance your reputation. Selecting knowledge that creates insight is what you should probably be aiming for, but even that is not necessarily going to make you memorable. To get people going away remembering and re-telling your gems of wisdom you need to be counter-intuitive and come up with a few simple one-liners that you might even go home and tell to your loved ones.

Think in terms of the little stories Sir Michael Caine used to come up with in his many chat show appearances. He claims he never actually said: “Not a lot of people know that”, but it’s exactly the sort of thing he would have said following one of his little trivia stories, so the phrase was used by all the impressionists and became attached to his persona. Nowadays the concept is exploited by Steve Wright on Radio 2 with his ‘factoids’ feature and the long-running Qi TV series is built entirely around the concept of: “I heard something quite interesting about……”.  You know the sort of thing: Fleas can jump 350 times their own body length; elephants are the only animals that cannot jump; polar bears are left-handed.

So how do you make this work in business?  Reflecting on what you say about your work to friends and family is probably a good start. I was coaching a travel market analyst in presentation skills; he was from Georgia and his latest assignment was to become the expert on all things Russian within his firm. In the initial run through of his presentation he displayed a lot of graphs and statistics, which were all very sound but left little lasting impression. When we took a break for coffee I happened to mention something about the big global online brands such as Amazon, Google and YouTube.  He responded, saying: “We have all those brands in Russia, except they are rip offs. They work on the same model and at a glance they look the same, but they are all fake versions”. 

I suggested he should use this concept in his presentation and he struggled at first to understand why it was applicable. I replied that it was not directly applicable to selling travel in his region, but he should remember his personal agenda: to become the ‘expert on all things Russian’. Telling this story and showing some pictures will give his audience a little bit of trivia they will remember and take away with them to use as chit chat at home and down the pub, as well as around the office. He could justify a small deviation like this as creating context for the hard facts and figures that follow. The audience might not remember that data, but the trivia would make them remember him as the ‘go to’ person on everything Russian. As a final convincer, I asked him if he had seen Top Gear the previous Sunday; he said he had missed it, so we looked it up on the iPlayer. Clarkson and May were visiting China and they made a very entertaining and extremely memorable feature on the fact that Western car brands such as Mini, BMW and even Rolls Royce had all been copied by rip off replicas.



So stand back, look at the bigger picture and pick out a few elements from the lighter side. That’s what is most likely to get you remembered as the serious player in your field.


Tuesday 10 March 2015

Three questions to ask yourself about the ‘Visual Aids’ in your business presentation

Before embarking on a business presentation the presenter should always review their content, asking themselves three fundamental questions about their Visual Aids. PowerPoint should certainly be included within the scrutiny; indeed that is probably where the questions need to be most probing.


1. Are my Visual Aids visual?

Without getting bogged down here in a debate about pictures vs. words, can your audience actually see the detail of your Visual Aids? How many times have you heard presenters declare: “I know you can’t really see this but….”.  Clearly it’s not visual, so it’s not aiding anyone; it may even be doing more harm than good.

Some of the business presenters I have coached remain oblivious to this point, so I end up asking them to come and join me towards the back of the room, where I ask: “Can you see anything on that screen”? 

To be sure that your Visual Aid is truly visual you therefore need to see it on the screen on which you will eventually be presenting and you need to view it from the back of the room. You may be surprised at how a Visual Aid that looked clear on your computer or the page from which you scanned it becomes quite indistinct once displayed on a big screen. 

Particular danger areas include:
  • Grey print on a white background, which can become washed out.
  • Maps and property plans with a level of detail that was designed to be read close up.
  • Graphs with thin lines – which probably need bolding – and discreet, over-detailed or even sideways-positioned legends and axis markers.

As I say, I am not going to get into a pictures vs. words debate here, but you need to bear in mind that any bullet point loses most of its impact once it tips over into two lines. Look at the pictures below – a slide written for a business pitch; it is fine for a document, but useless for presentation. Then the same slide, edited down to work effectively as a Visual Aid.




Finally, bear in mind that you can fall foul of having too many pictures, every bit as much as you can having too many words. How many times have you been presented with a slide filled with multiple illustrations, making you think ‘where am I meant to be looking?’, with the result that you lose the thread of what is being said.


2. Who are my Visual Aids aiding?

All focus with any presentation should be on the needs of the audience. So are your Visual Aids helping the audience to understand what you are saying more clearly?  If they are simply helping you to remember what to say, they are not Visual Aids, they are prompts – and these should not be on display!


3. Are my Visual Aids actually aiding anyone?

The most effective way to select Visual Aids is to start with none whatsoever – and that means no PowerPoint. Run through what you are planning to say to this particular audience and you will achieve a natural flow, in your own style – you will not find yourself being driven by whatever Visual Aids you have compiled. At certain points you will probably find yourself struggling to describe something or taking longer than you should to do so – in which case you probably need a Visual Aid. You only really want a Visual Aid on display if it is actively helping your audience – and thereby you – at this particular moment. You might be surprised at how few you really need.



There is plenty of research to prove just how important the visual sense is to communication and in particular to ensuring that messages are retained. But too many so-called Visual Aids are neither visual nor an aid to anyone.