Drifting slide titles
A highly competent presentation designer asked me why I put my slide titles always at the same position (top left). Good question. My slide titles have started to drift, depending on the composition of the chart.
The Q&A visual
Many presentations end in some sort of Q&A session. During this discussion, the slide show usually comes to a standstill, and the last visual used stays on the projector for a long time. Make sure it is a useful one, since it might be the image that the audience will remember best. To be avoided:
- A completely random slide from the deck (the one that sparked the discussion for example)
- A "thank you" or "Q&A" slide
- A slide that addresses one of your weaker points (i.e., you got a touch question about the competition and did the best you could using the competitor comparison slide), move it after you used it.
- A dry list of bullet points recapping the content of your presentation using language full of abstract concepts ("ROI") and buzz words ("key competencies")
What could work: a visual that links back to a key point in your presentation. For example, if you spend 5 slides on describing how a teenager will use your mobile social network, just putting a picture of her back up will remind the audience of the story. (This time you can leave out the bullets arrows, boxes, just an image to refresh the memory).
Bullet points in a Steve Jobs presentation
Bullet points happen to the best, even Steve Jobs uses them. See the slide below from the iPad 2 launch presentation (thank you Engadget).
The good:
The good:
- They are short
- They do not have a bullet in front of them
- He has them pop up as he speaks, so you can't read ahead (good here, but not recommended for all presentations though)
The bad:
- The "volume" orphan at the bottom
- All those "dual core", "2x", "9x", "CPU" makes it a bit hard to read
- You can see Steve Jobs looking down, pausing to read them off a screen
What do you think of this alternative?
Skip to 4:03
Videos that are posted online often come with an explanation: "skip to 4:03". Think about that when designing your presentation: the audience is watching a video without a remote control or Tivo. It should be interesting from 0:00 to 15:00.
Euler's identity explained in 5 minutes
A weekend post. Talking about cramming in a lot of information in 5 minutes... This entertaining video by Oliver Humpage manages to remind me about lots of math I forgot about a long time ago. I think the speaker could actually have done a better job by cutting out even more content from the story. Maybe it would have been possible in 4 minutes...
Getting into the investor's mind
The Internet is full with layouts of investor pitches, they all go something like this:
- What's the pain
- What's the solution
- What's the revenue model
- What's the edge over the competition
- Who's the team
- What's the traction of the company
Your pitch should address all these issues, but think about your potential investor's mind when deciding about the structure. You might have to deviate from the text book approach.
Investors are constantly evaluating critical questions. And when they (think they) have answered them, they move on to the next one. Questions are not always in the order of your pitch deck.
- "That guy looks 12!" "Oh, he is 28 and already climbed Mount Everest"
- "They are doing what exactly?" "Ah, something to do with mobile payments"
- "Isn't that a Groupon me-too?"
- "That would take 5 years to develop!"
- "Great idea, but where are the dollars?"
If there is an obvious elephant in the room, you might as well address it early on in the pitch. Your audience will be calmer and more open to digest the other important points you want to make.
Far more important than sticking to the text book pitch structure.
Far more important than spending time repeating the obvious (i.e., stats on how big Facebook has become).
In New York early April
A heads up. It looks like I will be in New York April 4-7. I will be giving one or two presentations about making better presentations (VC pitching, sales). More details to follow.
Prezi not a PowerPoint killer?
I stumbled on this post on the Dutch Presentatie Blog: 3 reasons why Prezi is not a PowerPoint killer. In short (and in English):
- Non-linearity is great for conveying information, it is poor for building up the suspense of a story
- Dramatic zooming effects take away attention from the speaker to the screen (the blog speaks jokingly about "Prezi motion sickness")
- The graphical capabilities of Prezi are (still) poor (colors, fonts, shapes, data charts) when compared to other applications
I must say, I tend to agree with the assessment for the traditional stand-up presentation. Does that mean Prezi should be written off? I am not sure either. Where it could be useful:
- In the hands of highly specialized designers, rather than the mass market. It could be the basis for a great way to let people discover a product or service interactively on a web site. It would be expensive and time consuming to develop, but once it's there it should provide a great return on investment.
- For the mass market, maybe the product should be simplified to create a basic web-based presentation tool with great ability to embed things into web sites and blogs. With the advent of HTML5, I think we are going to see a dramatic shift in how web sites look. And there will be a huge market for a simple tool that can create great web content. Obviously here it is open to competition from Sliderocket, Google Docs, and others (a PC World review of PowerPoint alternatives via Tony Ramos).
I have been trying hard to get Prezi to work (see an earlier posts about Prezi and my first attempt at making one myself), and I really want Prezi to succeed against the dominant and sometimes ugly PowerPoint monster, but I have not succeeded yet. Hopefully one of you will prove me wrong in the comments.
The invisible structure
The structure of your presentation sets the flow of the story. There is no one fits all structure though. I am discussing three different types of structure here, the names are invented by me and do not refer to well established definitions.
Analytical structure. A rigorous and organized framework that cuts up the material in all the components required to solve a problem or run an analysis. Management consultants use issue trees, university text books have section headings going down three levels. It makes sure you covered everything, that there are no overlaps, and that it is very easy to find a piece of information without having to read through the entire text. Despite that this structure is too boring, and too exhaustive for a presentation, it is often used.
Logical structure. The sequence of facts that provides a rock solid proof of your point, every aspect is dealt with, the logical deductions and implications cannot be disputed. Not as exhaustive as the analytical structure, it still usually uses some sort of agenda or summary page that prepares people for the logical drill that is about to follow. Market is big, competitors s**ck, etc. Better, but lacking emotion.
Implicit structure. My preferred one for a presentation. You tell a story, the audience is captivated without a rigorous agenda page, your listeners are not aware of an underlying structure of the story. It's there, it's just hidden.
I use the analytical structure to solve the problem, the logical structure to develop the check list of points I need to cover, and then construct my story free of these rigorous frameworks. When I am done, I go back to the first two to see whether I covered everything.
The audience should enter a ride in a theme park, not completely clear about the exact path you are going to take them through.
Image from Coney Island by Julia Manzerova.
Analytical structure. A rigorous and organized framework that cuts up the material in all the components required to solve a problem or run an analysis. Management consultants use issue trees, university text books have section headings going down three levels. It makes sure you covered everything, that there are no overlaps, and that it is very easy to find a piece of information without having to read through the entire text. Despite that this structure is too boring, and too exhaustive for a presentation, it is often used.
Logical structure. The sequence of facts that provides a rock solid proof of your point, every aspect is dealt with, the logical deductions and implications cannot be disputed. Not as exhaustive as the analytical structure, it still usually uses some sort of agenda or summary page that prepares people for the logical drill that is about to follow. Market is big, competitors s**ck, etc. Better, but lacking emotion.
Implicit structure. My preferred one for a presentation. You tell a story, the audience is captivated without a rigorous agenda page, your listeners are not aware of an underlying structure of the story. It's there, it's just hidden.
I use the analytical structure to solve the problem, the logical structure to develop the check list of points I need to cover, and then construct my story free of these rigorous frameworks. When I am done, I go back to the first two to see whether I covered everything.
The audience should enter a ride in a theme park, not completely clear about the exact path you are going to take them through.
Image from Coney Island by Julia Manzerova.
Topic suggestions for the blog?
I am not suffering (yet) from Fred Wilson's blogger's block, but his call for blog topics is a good idea. What presentation design issues would you like me to discuss on these pages? Let me know in the comments.
Can I mention competitors in a VC pitch?
A post inspired by a question on Quora: how to talk about competitors in a VC pitch?
- There is no business that does not have competitors. If you say so, you just lost a lot of maturity and credibility points. Maybe there is no company that does the exact thing you do, but people have alternatives. (Before the advent of the car, people used horses to get around). Discuss them.
- There is not much point in hiding the truth. Smart investors will find out in subsequent phases of the due diligence, and when they find a big competitor at this stage, you will have lost significant integrity points.
- Find a good visualization to show your distinctiveness. Put the competitors in some sort of 2x2, or a heat map that shows on what aspects you are similar and what aspects you are different.
- Sometimes competitive differentiation is not just about product features. Maybe your competitors are not focussed enough (they are part of a larger organization), maybe you move faster than your competitors ("look at their roll outs over the past year"), maybe you focus on a different geography.
In short be honest, but have a good story at the same time.
The cliff
I have seen many presentations likes this one:
A great image of the Mohr cliffs by Christmas w/a K
- Stunning slide
- Stunning slide
- Boring slide
- Boring slide
- Boring slide
- Boring slide
- Etc.
A shame. It shows that the designers of these decks understand slide design. Why not push it through to the entire presentation?
Good VC pitch presentations
A copy of a new section I wrote for my corporate web site.
In the very beginning, the only asset a startup has is often the VC pitch deck. Here are some suggestions for designing good VC pitch presentations. In the end I will list some of the resources you can tap in. There is a lot of information and advice available about startup pitches.
Different pitches for different meetings
There are different investor presentations in a fund raising process. There is the line up in a big conference where everyone has 1 minute to pitch (not very effective). There is the 10 minute phone call, the 20 minute coffee chat. The first meeting at the VC office, the presentation to the full partner group. Prepare your story and deck for each situation. As you go through the investment process funnel, your story will shift from talking about what the company is about, to how the company will do it.
Do a pitch without a deck
Practice a 20 minute pitch without slides in front of a friend. Record yourself, listen to your self. What sequence did you use to tell your story? What examples did you use? Where did you have the urge to take a piece of paper and sketch a framework? Where were you tempted to open your laptop to show a detailed chart with financials? All this gives you a clue about the sort of visuals you need to support your natural story.
It is about you
When an investor looks at entrepreneur, 50% of the attention will go to the content of the presentation, the other 50% will be spent on making a personal assessment of you, the presenter. Are you a good person to work with, who takes input from a Board? Do you have a sense of realism? Are you fired up for the roller coaster ride or hedging by keeping your day job? Can I trust you? Can you actually sell? Can you pull it off? These are all questions that cannot be answered by the slides you are presenting, they are answered by reading in between the lines.
Explain what you do
Very early on in the presentation, tell the investors what you are actually doing. Otherwise, they will be guessing and guessing in their minds what your talk is actually about. And people who guess do not pay attention to the content of the presentation. Do not be afraid to compare yourself to existing companies technologies in the market. This does not say that you are a me too, it just serves enables investors to put you in a box and understand in what market context you are operating.
Cut the buzz words
Buzz words, jargon. Experienced investors will see through it immediately. They get bored, and you lose maturity points. Talk like a person without verbal padding.
Sell the problem not the solution
Investors need to believe that there is a big potential market out there for your product. The best way to do that is make them feel what the pain in the market is. This is much more powerful than spending a lot of time on the solution.
Use interesting slides
Ditch the bullet points. Big fonts. Big images. The last thing you want is to bore the audience. Investor pitches can usually be bold and creative, especially for the first section where you sell the problem. Remember that it is not the number of slides that counts, it is the time it takes you to go through them.
Slick does not equal good
Having very sophisticated graphics and animations usually does not add to fundability of your business. Usually, sophisticated graphics do not add much to the story (if they are just background visuals that are repeated on every slide). Even worse, they could show poor judgement (spectacular animations do not come across well in a serious VC partner room). And even worse, it could give investors the impression that you are trying dress up the bride (a bit too much). Think about that car sales man with en expensive but poor taste suit and a heavy after shave. Do you trust him?
Be realistic about the competition
Any business has competition. Talk about them. Be realistic. And show how a seed startup can beat them to it. Acknowledge that it will be difficult, but that you have good odds. You will score a lot of realism points by doing this.
Address your weakness
Address the issue that is obvious with your company. Maybe it is a junior team, maybe it is a big competitor. Not that you need to blow it out of proportion and undermine your own story. The other extreme, not addressing the elephant in the room will not get you any investment either.
Do not skip the technology
An investor audience is usually intelligent. Skipping the technology is insulting them. Skipping it shows that you are unable to explain/sell your product to an intelligent audience. And finally, at this early stage of the company, the technology is probably the only distinctive feature that you have.
Transparent, simple estimates
Data provided by market research organizations saying that the market for x will be $1bn in 5 years does not really help you. Far better is a very simple and very transparent estimate of your market. A simple multiplication of 5-10 factors that you can scribble on a white board. The same is true for the company forecast. Everyone will put $50m as a revenue target for year 5 on a slide. You need to convince an investor that this number is optimistic (points for being a fired up entrepreneur), but not totally impossible. Again, this can best be done with a simple multiplication: what would you have to believe in order for this to be true.
No live demo in short meetings
Demos can go wrong because of stupid practical issues. Demos can take time (moving around menus, setting things up). These are all the wrong ingredients for a short pitch that builds up momentum to the final slide. Instead, use a pseudo-demo with a sequence of screen shots that shows investors what the product is about. Mention that you have a live demo and invite them to a separate meeting to play around with it.
Practice, practice, practice
Steve Jobs takes 3 full time days to rehearse his keynote speeches. You should practice as well. Strangely enough, it takes practice and rehearsal to be able to be spontaneous. Time your presentation and check that you can stay safely within the time slot you have been given.
Tap into the resources available on the web
Over the past years an enormous amount of information has become available about pitching to investors. Mark Suster is essential reading (posts about raising venture capital, posts about pitching VCs.) David Rose has recorded a classic TED video on investor pitches. Dave McClure has his own distinctive style of suggesting ways to improve your pitch. I have been posting extensively about investor pitches on the blog over past 3 years, see the investor pitch category here, or browse through a deck I prepared with presentation lessons for entrepreneurs. Quora is a new question and answer site with direct participation of some the world's most famous investors, see the investor pitch section here.
In the very beginning, the only asset a startup has is often the VC pitch deck. Here are some suggestions for designing good VC pitch presentations. In the end I will list some of the resources you can tap in. There is a lot of information and advice available about startup pitches.
Different pitches for different meetings
There are different investor presentations in a fund raising process. There is the line up in a big conference where everyone has 1 minute to pitch (not very effective). There is the 10 minute phone call, the 20 minute coffee chat. The first meeting at the VC office, the presentation to the full partner group. Prepare your story and deck for each situation. As you go through the investment process funnel, your story will shift from talking about what the company is about, to how the company will do it.
Do a pitch without a deck
Practice a 20 minute pitch without slides in front of a friend. Record yourself, listen to your self. What sequence did you use to tell your story? What examples did you use? Where did you have the urge to take a piece of paper and sketch a framework? Where were you tempted to open your laptop to show a detailed chart with financials? All this gives you a clue about the sort of visuals you need to support your natural story.
It is about you
When an investor looks at entrepreneur, 50% of the attention will go to the content of the presentation, the other 50% will be spent on making a personal assessment of you, the presenter. Are you a good person to work with, who takes input from a Board? Do you have a sense of realism? Are you fired up for the roller coaster ride or hedging by keeping your day job? Can I trust you? Can you actually sell? Can you pull it off? These are all questions that cannot be answered by the slides you are presenting, they are answered by reading in between the lines.
Explain what you do
Very early on in the presentation, tell the investors what you are actually doing. Otherwise, they will be guessing and guessing in their minds what your talk is actually about. And people who guess do not pay attention to the content of the presentation. Do not be afraid to compare yourself to existing companies technologies in the market. This does not say that you are a me too, it just serves enables investors to put you in a box and understand in what market context you are operating.
Cut the buzz words
Buzz words, jargon. Experienced investors will see through it immediately. They get bored, and you lose maturity points. Talk like a person without verbal padding.
Sell the problem not the solution
Investors need to believe that there is a big potential market out there for your product. The best way to do that is make them feel what the pain in the market is. This is much more powerful than spending a lot of time on the solution.
Use interesting slides
Ditch the bullet points. Big fonts. Big images. The last thing you want is to bore the audience. Investor pitches can usually be bold and creative, especially for the first section where you sell the problem. Remember that it is not the number of slides that counts, it is the time it takes you to go through them.
Slick does not equal good
Having very sophisticated graphics and animations usually does not add to fundability of your business. Usually, sophisticated graphics do not add much to the story (if they are just background visuals that are repeated on every slide). Even worse, they could show poor judgement (spectacular animations do not come across well in a serious VC partner room). And even worse, it could give investors the impression that you are trying dress up the bride (a bit too much). Think about that car sales man with en expensive but poor taste suit and a heavy after shave. Do you trust him?
Be realistic about the competition
Any business has competition. Talk about them. Be realistic. And show how a seed startup can beat them to it. Acknowledge that it will be difficult, but that you have good odds. You will score a lot of realism points by doing this.
Address your weakness
Address the issue that is obvious with your company. Maybe it is a junior team, maybe it is a big competitor. Not that you need to blow it out of proportion and undermine your own story. The other extreme, not addressing the elephant in the room will not get you any investment either.
Do not skip the technology
An investor audience is usually intelligent. Skipping the technology is insulting them. Skipping it shows that you are unable to explain/sell your product to an intelligent audience. And finally, at this early stage of the company, the technology is probably the only distinctive feature that you have.
Transparent, simple estimates
Data provided by market research organizations saying that the market for x will be $1bn in 5 years does not really help you. Far better is a very simple and very transparent estimate of your market. A simple multiplication of 5-10 factors that you can scribble on a white board. The same is true for the company forecast. Everyone will put $50m as a revenue target for year 5 on a slide. You need to convince an investor that this number is optimistic (points for being a fired up entrepreneur), but not totally impossible. Again, this can best be done with a simple multiplication: what would you have to believe in order for this to be true.
No live demo in short meetings
Demos can go wrong because of stupid practical issues. Demos can take time (moving around menus, setting things up). These are all the wrong ingredients for a short pitch that builds up momentum to the final slide. Instead, use a pseudo-demo with a sequence of screen shots that shows investors what the product is about. Mention that you have a live demo and invite them to a separate meeting to play around with it.
Practice, practice, practice
Steve Jobs takes 3 full time days to rehearse his keynote speeches. You should practice as well. Strangely enough, it takes practice and rehearsal to be able to be spontaneous. Time your presentation and check that you can stay safely within the time slot you have been given.
Tap into the resources available on the web
Over the past years an enormous amount of information has become available about pitching to investors. Mark Suster is essential reading (posts about raising venture capital, posts about pitching VCs.) David Rose has recorded a classic TED video on investor pitches. Dave McClure has his own distinctive style of suggesting ways to improve your pitch. I have been posting extensively about investor pitches on the blog over past 3 years, see the investor pitch category here, or browse through a deck I prepared with presentation lessons for entrepreneurs. Quora is a new question and answer site with direct participation of some the world's most famous investors, see the investor pitch section here.
New web site!
Finally, I am happy with the design of my corporate web site. The previous one was still too cluttered, but now I have reached the appropriate level of minimalism.
PowerPoint 2011 for Mac review
I have been working for a few days with Microsoft Office for Mac 2011 now (affiliate link), having upgraded from the earlier version PowerPoint 2008. For me, the Mac is still a secondary machine, and testing this software is one of the key determinants whether I can move across all together to a Mac environment. All my clients use PC-based Microsoft Office software, so Keynote cannot replace office.
Initially I was a bit wary of Office 2011, having read some poor reviews on Amazon and by columnists such as David Pogue. Maybe it was because of this that I wrote this impulse post about stability issues of PowerPoint 2011.
I managed to solve the problem (after a lot of searching online). Somehow, PowerPoint 2011 can crash every time you enter slideshow mode after you have done some heavy toolbar customization. It happened to me a few times in a row. All fine, customize toolbars, crash, reset toolbars, all fine, customize toolbars, crash. At the moment I stopped the poker game (do I have the courage to add another toolbar customization or not, at the risk of having to reset all previous modifications?) at a level that I am happy with my current toolbars. So the issue remains.
For the rest, I must say that I actually like PowerPoint 2011. The differences with the PC version are minimal, someone with experience with PowerPoint on a PC can switch over instantly. The previous version (PowerPoint 2008) had a user interface that was different from the PC, and also lacked some functionality. Now there is a level playing field. (Well almost, for some reason you cannot change the spacing of the grid in PowerPoint 2011, making it hard to set a grid line exactly at 0 of your slide).
So in conclusion a great piece of software, but I am waiting for that one upgrade that will kill this toolbar customization issue.
I have not yet reviewed Word 2011 and Excel 2011 (the latter got the harshest verdict from David Pogue).
UPDATE 1: OK, there is one big difference with PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: boolean operations on shapes. On the PC version you no can join and subtract shapes. Not in the Mac version. See an earlier post where I praised shape subtract.
UPDATE 2: I think I managed to track down the source of this toolbar bug myself. Do not try to drag the straight arrow connector buttons into your customer toolbar, see a later post here.
Initially I was a bit wary of Office 2011, having read some poor reviews on Amazon and by columnists such as David Pogue. Maybe it was because of this that I wrote this impulse post about stability issues of PowerPoint 2011.
I managed to solve the problem (after a lot of searching online). Somehow, PowerPoint 2011 can crash every time you enter slideshow mode after you have done some heavy toolbar customization. It happened to me a few times in a row. All fine, customize toolbars, crash, reset toolbars, all fine, customize toolbars, crash. At the moment I stopped the poker game (do I have the courage to add another toolbar customization or not, at the risk of having to reset all previous modifications?) at a level that I am happy with my current toolbars. So the issue remains.
For the rest, I must say that I actually like PowerPoint 2011. The differences with the PC version are minimal, someone with experience with PowerPoint on a PC can switch over instantly. The previous version (PowerPoint 2008) had a user interface that was different from the PC, and also lacked some functionality. Now there is a level playing field. (Well almost, for some reason you cannot change the spacing of the grid in PowerPoint 2011, making it hard to set a grid line exactly at 0 of your slide).
So in conclusion a great piece of software, but I am waiting for that one upgrade that will kill this toolbar customization issue.
I have not yet reviewed Word 2011 and Excel 2011 (the latter got the harshest verdict from David Pogue).
UPDATE 1: OK, there is one big difference with PowerPoint 2010 for Windows: boolean operations on shapes. On the PC version you no can join and subtract shapes. Not in the Mac version. See an earlier post where I praised shape subtract.
UPDATE 2: I think I managed to track down the source of this toolbar bug myself. Do not try to drag the straight arrow connector buttons into your customer toolbar, see a later post here.
Designing board presentations
Board presentations have a typical setting. The audience is usually relatively small and consists mainly of insiders in the company. Usually, Board papers get send around a few days before the actual meeting. Board members are experienced executives with busy schedules that want to make decisions and get to the point. They will not hesitate to urge you to move on when they think they got the message. (A big difference from a conference presentation where the audience can either walk out or check email on their mobile device if the presentation is not interesting).
The basis of the Board meeting material is usually a large slide deck full of facts and analysis. The most important recommendation is to put that aside as the basis for your presentation. Strategy documents are highly structured, highly organized, highly detailed, and exhaustive. As a result, they contain too much information, do not get to the point fast enough, and are frankly boring. This is great if you want to solve a problem, it is not effective if you want to communicate the solution.
Start off with thinking about what you want your Board to decide. Board meetings are all about decisions, not about fact sharing without a purpose. Set up the agenda, and put the decisions you want taken right upfront. The presentation challenge is now how to convince the Board that your suggested decisions are the right ones.
Every Board presentation usually has a few slides that form the stage for the group discussion. Anticipate what these slides should be and spend most of your effort on these ones. Key slides are usually those that map the possible options and shows the key trade-off that is required to chose the best one. Often, I use a heat map in these situations. A heat map is a simple table with the options as columns, and criteria on the rows. You can color the cells of the table with green, orange, or red to make the trade-off visible. Another way to show trade-offs is to plot your strategic options on some sort of 2x2 matrix, or show yourself on a 2x2 matrix now, and where you want to be in the future versus competitors.
So, the difficulty of these slides is not the design of a 2x2 or a heat map, it is picking the right criteria. Right means useful to make the right trade-off, and suitable for a live discussion in the Board. It is the latter that is the most difficult. Board members usually have strong perspectives and meetings can spin out of control if they are not managed well. Good slides are an essential part of this.
The secret is to simplify the degrees of freedom and the amount of uncertainties in the decision. There are a number of ways to do this. The most powerful one is quantification. Often it is possible to boil down different strategic options down to a single number the NPV or net present value of the future profit stream for example. This number combines assumptions about market size, market growth, market share, pricing, margins, risk, investments, (and their timing). You list the NPVs of the different options, and show sensitivities only to those variables that are controversial (risk, competitive behavior), while leaving some of the obvious ones out of the equation. What matters is not so much whether you come up with the exact NPV value, what matters is that your trade-off is right, this option is more attractive than the other one by a wide margin.
Another way to simplify beyond quantification is to group similar criteria together. Can we do it, do we have the right people, etc. all can be collapsed in one factor. The best outcome of this simplification process is to get stark trade-offs between options. That makes deciding between easier.
Once you have set up the basic argument, you can support your red, yellow, and green scores with charts. Skip the charts with obvious information that everyone knows already. Do not waste to much time re-formating highly detailed charts from the fact pack, it is an internal audience after all. Do spend time though on information that might be different from the usual. Analysis that you have done beyond the standard reports, consumer feedback from the latest round of market research, new market share data, etc. Often you know beforehand what the big controversial issues will be in the meeting. Anticipate those, and prepare charts with facts to address them.
During the meeting come back all the time to your central decision map. It might even be recommended to project your slides onto a white board so that people can stand up and scribble on your charts. It is powerful way to control the dynamics in the meeting, someone who holds the pen, speaks.
So in short, the challenge with Board meetings is not so much the slide design, it is anticipating the debate and managing the discussion.
The basis of the Board meeting material is usually a large slide deck full of facts and analysis. The most important recommendation is to put that aside as the basis for your presentation. Strategy documents are highly structured, highly organized, highly detailed, and exhaustive. As a result, they contain too much information, do not get to the point fast enough, and are frankly boring. This is great if you want to solve a problem, it is not effective if you want to communicate the solution.
Start off with thinking about what you want your Board to decide. Board meetings are all about decisions, not about fact sharing without a purpose. Set up the agenda, and put the decisions you want taken right upfront. The presentation challenge is now how to convince the Board that your suggested decisions are the right ones.
Every Board presentation usually has a few slides that form the stage for the group discussion. Anticipate what these slides should be and spend most of your effort on these ones. Key slides are usually those that map the possible options and shows the key trade-off that is required to chose the best one. Often, I use a heat map in these situations. A heat map is a simple table with the options as columns, and criteria on the rows. You can color the cells of the table with green, orange, or red to make the trade-off visible. Another way to show trade-offs is to plot your strategic options on some sort of 2x2 matrix, or show yourself on a 2x2 matrix now, and where you want to be in the future versus competitors.
So, the difficulty of these slides is not the design of a 2x2 or a heat map, it is picking the right criteria. Right means useful to make the right trade-off, and suitable for a live discussion in the Board. It is the latter that is the most difficult. Board members usually have strong perspectives and meetings can spin out of control if they are not managed well. Good slides are an essential part of this.
The secret is to simplify the degrees of freedom and the amount of uncertainties in the decision. There are a number of ways to do this. The most powerful one is quantification. Often it is possible to boil down different strategic options down to a single number the NPV or net present value of the future profit stream for example. This number combines assumptions about market size, market growth, market share, pricing, margins, risk, investments, (and their timing). You list the NPVs of the different options, and show sensitivities only to those variables that are controversial (risk, competitive behavior), while leaving some of the obvious ones out of the equation. What matters is not so much whether you come up with the exact NPV value, what matters is that your trade-off is right, this option is more attractive than the other one by a wide margin.
Another way to simplify beyond quantification is to group similar criteria together. Can we do it, do we have the right people, etc. all can be collapsed in one factor. The best outcome of this simplification process is to get stark trade-offs between options. That makes deciding between easier.
Once you have set up the basic argument, you can support your red, yellow, and green scores with charts. Skip the charts with obvious information that everyone knows already. Do not waste to much time re-formating highly detailed charts from the fact pack, it is an internal audience after all. Do spend time though on information that might be different from the usual. Analysis that you have done beyond the standard reports, consumer feedback from the latest round of market research, new market share data, etc. Often you know beforehand what the big controversial issues will be in the meeting. Anticipate those, and prepare charts with facts to address them.
During the meeting come back all the time to your central decision map. It might even be recommended to project your slides onto a white board so that people can stand up and scribble on your charts. It is powerful way to control the dynamics in the meeting, someone who holds the pen, speaks.
So in short, the challenge with Board meetings is not so much the slide design, it is anticipating the debate and managing the discussion.
Small scenes showing big opportunities
Most startups pitching for VC money would pound the audience with billion dollar market forecasts produced by market research firms such as IDC or Gartner. They are important, but they do not touch the gut feel of an investor. Often, showing a small street scene without a single number in it, does the trick.
As an example, take online gambling, and let's go to Spain. Anyone who spend some time there has seen the numerous lottery stands scattered across the cities. What if all these people could get the same thrill of purchasing a lottery ticket on their mobile device, rather than standing (visibly annoyed) in a long line? The opportunity is staring you in the face, right in front of you. The VC is reminded of it every time he drives to the office, every day of the week.
If you are interested, a recent blog post by Seth Godin about why these people are not buying the ticket to win the big prize. Image credit to Paul and Jill.
As an example, take online gambling, and let's go to Spain. Anyone who spend some time there has seen the numerous lottery stands scattered across the cities. What if all these people could get the same thrill of purchasing a lottery ticket on their mobile device, rather than standing (visibly annoyed) in a long line? The opportunity is staring you in the face, right in front of you. The VC is reminded of it every time he drives to the office, every day of the week.
If you are interested, a recent blog post by Seth Godin about why these people are not buying the ticket to win the big prize. Image credit to Paul and Jill.
Images from the past
The majority of stock images are boring, why not look for real ones? The Internet offers now some interesting ways to get your hands on images from the past, great to transfer your audience to a point back in history. Here are a few of my favorite sources:
The images used here:
The images used here:
- A 1960 Paris street scene by Roger Wollstadt
- An 1960s Old Mobile ad
- A 1961 cover of Time Magazine
- A 2000 home page of Duarte Design on The Way Back Machine
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| Creative commons images on Flickr, search by date |
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| Vintage ads, watch out for copyright |
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| Vintage magazine covers |
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| Vintage websites (duarte.com ~2000) |
Notice how you skip the introduction?
Have you noticed how, whenever you start reading an article with a promise in the headline "The 18 secrets to [x]", "Why is it that [y]", you usually skip the introduction and/or skim the text to find the answer the headline promised? Introductions usually repeat the headline and contain background information such as the bio of the speaker that we do not have time for. Not the interesting stuff the reader is looking for.
Your audience wants to do the same with your presentation, except, they cannot. Taking the clicker, fast forwarding and asking you to get to the point would be rude. Instead, they start checking email on their mobile device until it gets really interesting.
Detail of an image claimed by John McNab.
Your audience wants to do the same with your presentation, except, they cannot. Taking the clicker, fast forwarding and asking you to get to the point would be rude. Instead, they start checking email on their mobile device until it gets really interesting.
Detail of an image claimed by John McNab.
Slide idea - global expansion!
A startup has the master plan to spread out across the globe. A variant on the Universal globe
How to create this text effect in PowerPoint: select the text (in a narrow font if your text is long), go to format, text effect, "can down" (somewhere in the middle right). Go back to format, select glow, glow options and set a color (I picked black).
How to create this text effect in PowerPoint: select the text (in a narrow font if your text is long), go to format, text effect, "can down" (somewhere in the middle right). Go back to format, select glow, glow options and set a color (I picked black).
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