The slides are the presentation

Grant Leboff: Simon, in the book you talk about some of the myths that are put around by people doing presentations. I think one of them that really resonates is that the slides are the presentation. I think we do now people that work very, very hard on the slides and well, that’s it, isn’t it? Can you explain, how do you get around that? Obviously the slides are important so where’s the balance?

Simon Morton: It’s a really difficult thing for people to disengage with, and I think what’s happened is over time, Power Point which is the weapon of choice for most people when it comes to presentations, is the first port of call. If somebody is asked to prepare a presentation the first thing they do is they dive into Power Point. What we spend a lot of time speaking to our clients and audiences about is – that’s not the presentation. The Power Point slides are a visual punctuation to your presentation and guess what, the presentation, that’s you. Every time you say this there will often be a few brave hands that go up and say, “I remember once I was presenting and the projector died and when that happened it was the best presentation I ever delivered.” That is a perfect case in point, Power Point slides visuals are great but it comes down to you as presenter to really deliver that presentation and all that stuff that’s happening behind you is merely punctuation to the key points that you’re sharing with your audience.

Grant Leboff: Where do you start? For a lot of people, “I’ve got to do a presentation.” So they boot up the computer and out comes the Power Point slides and they’re searching Google images… so if that’s not where you start, where do you start?

Simon Morton: Always on paper. It’s very interesting, when people come visit the studio they’ll remark on how much paper there is because we draw everything. Ideally we storyboard a presentation like you storyboard a Hollywood movie. You go back to Disney and the way the story boarded those cartoons that’s exactly how we try and do that with presentations because it’s about structure, it’s about story, it’s about knowing when to play certain visuals to help you get that message across to your audience. If you start on the slide, A; they are a couple of issues, first thing is Power Point defaults to say well, you’re doing a presentation, here’s a bunch of bullet points go and fill them up. The other option that people will do is they’ll create a Frankenstein’s monster at a presentation by going and grabbing bits and pieces from their own library and from colleagues libraries and that’s not the way to do it.

Forget the presentation, go analogue right up to the point where you know your story, you know your audience and you know what message you want to get across to them.

Grant Leboff: So, I think Power Point gives them a crutch, I go on and there’s things to do and there’s spaces to fill and whatever else so I can make the slide do something. If you start with a blank piece of paper I can imagine quite a few people freezing in the moment going, “Now what? I’ve got a paper and pen here.” If they start with paper and pen, in the mind how does it start? Where does it start for them up here?

Simon Morton: Before you start drawing out yours slides you need to create what we call the story flow which is that narrative arc, that says this is how I’m going to chapter heading wise tell my story. At a very, very high level know that if I say this element here, introduce this concept, here then I can follow it with that and follow it with that so super, super high level but once you’ve got that skeleton in place, that’s when you can start being a bit more imaginative and visual and creative. That’s the wonderful thing about doing it on paper first of all is it takes a lot more effort to draw out a bullet point than it does a simple visual that might be as simple as a venn diagram. A few circles on a slide suddenly gives you real clarity of the message you’re looking to get across and as a visual took it’s fantastic because it needs you as the presenter to explain what it means to your audience, and that’s the mark of a great Power Point slide.

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