The Open Secret of What’s Holding Your Career

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When I look back at over 20 years of my professional career and think about the work tool that I have used
the most and also been exposed to most frequently, it has to be PowerPoint. Either as a creator or presenter
of my presentations or as the recipient of others’ content, I am connected to PowerPoint for 50-70% of my
work time. 
While the percentage of time spent with PowerPoint may not hold true for all managers, I would argue that
when it comes to career impacting events, PowerPoint is often around. We can debate whether it should be
so or not, but let us not escape the reality.

And when faced with an opportunity to make a career impact, this is what the average manager puts out: 

Actual Slide from a Business Presentation

It is amusing and inexplicable that ‘How to make impactful presentations‘ is not taught in any
undergraduate course, and even in the MBA program, it is taught like a theoretical communication course.
Take a look at the profile of the core faculty in the Communication area of India’s top business school; not
one of them has worked in the corporate world and has therefore, never personally experienced
presentation and communication issues that professionals face daily at work.
Learning how to make great presentations takes effort, and has to be developed over time. At the same
time, one can make the shift from Unacceptable to Reasonably Good with a few changes in structure and
style. 
Let me share three tips that can make a huge impact on your presentations, and therefore, your career. I
will use the earlier slide to demonstrate the changes.

1. Categorize your Content

The industry analysis slide had a lot of information, 10 bullet points. The problem with this slide is that
nobody remembers 10 points… as you walk through all of them, not only have you lost quite a bit of time
but also the audience attention. Other than, perhaps, showing off that you did a lot of work, you don’t
achieve anything by having so many bullet points on a slide.

But if you must present all of them, see if they can be grouped into fewer categories. When I reviewed the
ten points, I could see three broad ideas being shared. So, the first thing I would do is to create three
headings and place the appropriate bullet points under them.
10 Bullet points, grouped into three buckets
The three headings represent three insights that you have developed about the market. Your audience can
remember three messages. 

2. Reduce the English

Too much text on the slide creates clutter, it is difficult to go through so much content. And if you are
presenting the slide, even more the need to reduce text.

A simple method is to remove all the English words that only go towards creating full sentences.
Remember, your professional audience is very likely to be familiar with the situation. Also, our minds are
used to filling the gaps, as long as the key words / data points are presented.
Reduced words by 40% without missing anything worthwhile
Just a bit of editing caused words to be reduced by 40%. You would notice that I removed one bullet point
which was already captured by the heading, and also from the data (organised sector growing faster at 34%
as against 15% in unorganised). 

3. Tell a Visual Story

Your audience is often distracted and unwilling to give you 100% attention. Imagine you are asking them
to look at a slide that has over 100 words (after the reduction)! It is a huge challenge. 

As a presenter, it is your job to make it easier for the audience. They are not obliged to listen… it’s your
responsibility to persuade them about your proposal or sale. Remember, your career depends on this (and
every) presentation.

First step, make it simple. Think of it like a story that you want to tell someone, with three messages. One
visual rule of stories is that if you are using a chronological order or a sequence of events, we are using the
time axis, which is often presented on the x-axis, i.e. left to right. So, I changed the way the messages are
presented.
Messages positioned left to right, instead of top to bottom
Till now, was the easy part. Now, I am going to take some tough decisions. What do I want my audience to
remember, till at least the end of the presentation, and maybe even later. I will chop the content ruthlessly. 

For instance, the third message of large investments is weak: there isn’t enough data to back it up. It looks
like the first two messages are key here. I have data to support the insights. And since I have data, I will
use charts or other graphic formats, instead of text to represent the data. 
This is what I get:

Removed the third message; used charts for data-points

Look at the slides side-by-side.

When you think about your career, your business, your growth, which one would you use? And how
difficult was it to make the shift from one to the other?