Presenting to people who do not want to be there

The default workplace presentation delivers information in a logical order, which is a reasonable structure for a document and a poor one for an audience.

The first minute

The audience is deciding whether this concerns them. If the first minute does not answer that, subsequent minutes are delivered to people composing emails.

Which means the opening should state what this is about and why it matters to the people in the room, before any context or background.

The instinct to build toward the point is inherited from academic writing and it is precisely wrong here.

Structure that works

A shape that holds attention better than chronological or logical ordering.

The situation, briefly — the state of affairs the audience recognises.

The complication — what has changed, what is not working, what makes this a live question.

The question that follows.

The answer, stated plainly.

The support, in descending order of strength.

The important property is that the answer comes early. An audience that knows the conclusion can evaluate the argument; an audience waiting for the conclusion is doing something else.

Slides

Most slide advice is aesthetic. The functional point is more specific.

Research on multimedia learning finds that presenting the same information as spoken words and as on-screen text simultaneously impairs comprehension, because the two compete for the same processing channel.

Which is the actual reason dense text slides fail: not that they look bad, but that an audience reading cannot listen.

The implications are straightforward. Slides should carry what words cannot — images, diagrams, data — while the speaking carries the argument.

Where a slide must carry text, keep it to a phrase and give the audience a moment to read it before speaking.

And if the material genuinely requires dense text, it is a document rather than a presentation, and circulating it is more respectful of everyone's time.

Data

Where most technical presentations lose the room.

One chart, one point. A chart supporting three arguments supports none of them, because the audience does not know where to look.

State the point of the chart in the title — not "Quarterly revenue" but "Revenue fell in the third quarter" — so the audience knows what they are looking for before they start looking.

Remove everything not carrying information. Gridlines, legends where direct labelling would serve, decoration, and three-dimensional effects that distort proportion.

And give the audience time. A chart shown for four seconds while you talk over it has not been seen.

Delivery

Less important than structure and worth attending to.

Pace slows attention decay; most people speak too fast when nervous. Deliberately pausing after a key point does more for retention than emphasis does.

Reading from slides is the most common failure and is immediately noticed. If you need notes, use notes rather than putting them on the screen.

Standing still is better than pacing. Pacing is frequently anxiety being discharged and the audience reads it as such.

Questions

The part that is prepared least and matters most, because it is where the audience engages.

Anticipate the three hardest questions and prepare answers. They will be asked.

Answer the question asked rather than the one you prepared for. Audiences notice deflection immediately and it costs more credibility than a weak answer would.

Saying you do not know, and undertaking to find out, is a strong answer. Improvising is a weak one.

The length problem

Presentations expand to fill the slot, and the slot is generally longer than the content requires.

Finishing early is welcomed by every audience that has ever existed, and almost nobody does it.

A presentation covering three points well is more useful than one covering nine points thinly, and the audience will remember approximately three regardless of how many are delivered.