SETTING THE GOAL
The second question I ask in my typical consulting session is “What is the goal of this presentation?”
I cannot overemphasize the importance of this question. There is nothing more important than setting the right goal.
The right goal motivates you and is worthy and achievable. So, what's the goal? The answer I typically get is “I want to tell them that…” or “I want to inform them about…” Beep! Wrong answer!
Even experienced executives fall into this trap. You may have guessed by now that the correct answer should connect the audience and the presenter, as shown in Figure 2-1. The correct answer should sound something like “I want them to give me their business card” or “I want them to believe that my plan is going to work.” A good goal is phrased as an answer to “What do I want them to do?” or sometimes “What do I want them to remember?”
I learned this principle very early in my consulting career; really, this is one of the first and most obvious principles you learn in consulting. When I started working with presentations, I was shocked to discover how quickly people tend to forget about it. We all know setting goals is important, yet we either skip this step entirely or just fill the blanks in a checklist without really thinking.
FIGURE 2-1: The goal connects the audience and the presenter.
When I say we, I include myself in this category. I can't even count how many times I caught myself skipping the goal-setting part. What's even worse, I didn't realize the mistake until after the presentation, and I am a presentation consultant! I wholeheartedly believe that having the right goal is the key to success, but even I tend to slack here. Why!?
If Goal-Setting Is Important, Why Do People Skip It?
The first reason is that people are afraid of failure and you simply cannot fail if all you want is to inform people. The possibility that your presentation will be interrupted by a tsunami or Martian invasion is relatively low. If no force majeure occurs, you will make it. You will inform your audience; they will be informed. So you have nothing to fear. This is much easier than having a challenging goal; something you might actually screw up.
Another aspect is, of course, measurability. There are many ways to quantify the results, and it's particularly easy in webcasts, arguably the fastest-growing segment when it comes to presentations. If you quantify your results, you are definitely facing your fear of failure.
In the process you become aware that the bar exists. To me, this is the most important part.
I can't even estimate the number of books written about tackling one's fear of failure. Personally, I am not very fond of jumping into the abyss. I am the “pick battles small enough to win but big enough to matter” kinda guy. I am not asking you to do the impossible. But “informing people”? Come on! You can do better that this. Just raise the bar a bit; it is set too low.
Secondly, precisely because goal setting is obvious, it is often overlooked. This is why thinking outside the box is so damn hard—you always need to consider the box. The box is easily forgotten because it's very stable and it's always there. People never say “the glass fell down and broke because of the force of gravity.” No, we tend to blame a live human being for that. Their behavior changes and is clearly visible. It takes a genius like Newton to identify the gravity and blame it for that one.
It is the same with presentations. It's easy to blame somebody's trembling voice and closed posture. “Oh, he's not confident enough. He needs more confidence!” Those are easy to spot. Asking yourself what the presenter is trying to accomplish requires conscious effort. This is work, and, let's face it, we don't like work. Not unless we choose it.
THE IMPORTANCE OF ASKING (AND ANSWERING) THE OBVIOUS QUESTIONS
I chose to ask other people obvious questions as a way to earn my living. Did you? Probably not. Do you choose to ask yourself obvious questions? If not, maybe you should. In his 2005 Stanford commencement speech, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, mentioned that every morning he looks in the mirror and asks himself, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
This is one of those obvious questions most people never ask themselves. I think one should have a list of those questions. I do. I think success and happiness in life depend on answering these questions honestly.
So, what is the goal of your presentation?
Recall and Impact
Again, the question to ask is this: What do you want from your audience? Write an answer in one clear sentence. This will be your first draft. I know it's hard. If you have multiple goals, write them all down and then choose the most important one or find a way to consolidate them in one sentence. Having multiple goals is a bad idea because:
- Sometimes they conflict and you end up accomplishing neither.
- Even if they don't conflict, there's always a risk of spreading the jam too thin.
So, just one goal, agreed?
Okay, next question. Is the goal about the audience's thinking or actions? When people scientifically measure the impact of a presentation (believe it or not some people actually do this), they mostly measure two things: recall and impact:
- Recall is whether people remember what they've been told.
- Impact is whether they act upon what they've been told.
These are different things. Moreover, these two measures may very well be in conflict.
For instance, text that's written in a fancy font that requires effort to read might be more memorable than something written in plain and unimaginative font, like Arial. You are more likely to remember a visually interesting logo than a visually dull one, right? However, when it comes to tasks, there's research suggesting that people associate the ease of reading the task with the actual task itself. So, if a slide encouraging people to complete a task is visually complex, the audience may be more likely to remember the slide, but less likely to complete the task.
In one experiment1, two groups of students were presented with instructions for an exercise. One group received the instructions in an easy-to-read font (Arial), and the second group in a difficult-to-read font (Brush Script). After reading, each group was asked to estimate how difficult they thought the exercise would be and how much time it would take. Readers in the first group assumed that the exercise would take on average 8.2 minutes to complete, whereas readers in the second group thought that it would take nearly twice as long, 15.1 minutes. The first group also thought that the exercise would flow quite naturally, and the second feared that it would be a drag.
Although recall and impact are not quite the same, they do intersect, as illustrated in Figure 2-2.
Sometimes people remember what they've been told but don't act upon it. Sometimes they act yet don't quite remember why. You can have both, but you need to plan for it. Give your audience the reasons to act, as you want them to act—and nothing else.
If certain information in your presentation doesn't contribute to the action you want from your audience, you should ask yourself if you really need this information in your speech.
Consider this great Chinese proverb “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.”
Do you want your audience to understand your presentation and act on it? I bet you do. Then don't just inform them. Involve them. Go for impact.
Sometimes—especially in the context of education—people are trained for recall. They have tests to fill out later, formulas to memorize, and so on. With Wikipedia and wireless Internet everywhere, this goal of recall is becoming increasingly obsolete. Go for impact.
FIGURE 2-2: Recall and impact are not the same.
John Kennedy said that the only reason to give a speech is to change the world. Part of his point here is definitely one of valuing impacting your audience over merely informing them. If you have an audience that will listen to you for 5, 10, 15, or 45 minutes, be sure to use this time wisely. Go for impact and involvement.
Values Are States of Motivation
Believe it or not, I've spent a great deal of my time trying to inform people and hoping that new information would change their actions. For some of them it did, but for most, it didn't. Involve your audience. Give meaning to your presentation. Give them the real goal, the goal they are likely to achieve. Granted, some people want to “just inform” because of their deep respect for the audience. They think that their audience consists of mature and intelligent people who can connect the dots themselves. They don't want people to act on emotions without proper thought. They don't want people to do the right thing for wrong reasons. I appreciate that. That is why I believe you absolutely need to give the information to support the actions. But still, go for actions. I also believe that you should connect actions to the higher level of thinking, to the level of values. I think that your presentation should have a theme beyond its contents, if possible.
As Simon Sinek, the author of the book Start with Why (watch his presentation at www.TED.com; it's brilliant!), says you need to understand and discuss, “not just what to do, but why do it.” And by “why” he doesn't mean purely logical reasons, but also and mostly emotional. It's not only “why,” but also “in the name of what.” One example is energy-saving products that also have political implications. What's your idea or product about on a larger scale? Is it about saving lives or making them easier? Both are worthwhile aspirations.
DON'T INFORM—INVOLVE!
I grew up in the Soviet Union and like the rest of the students at school I was a member of the Pioneer organization, a movement loosely modeled after Scouts. As you might expect, quite unlike Scouts, the movement was heavily politicized and once a week on Mondays we had extra 15 minutes of study, an obligatory “political information session.” Some unlucky student was appointed to inform the rest of the class about the latest political developments in the world. The struggle of international proletariat against the forces of imperialism, you know. It was a nightmare.
It was a nightmare not because we didn't believe in the communist ideology. As a matter of fact, we did and quite passionately so because if there was one thing the socialist state did well, it was indoctrinating children. The problem was that the “political information” had no real purpose; it served no real goal. We had no idea what we were supposed to do with all this information. There was no space for questions and we didn't discuss anything. We “just informed” each other.
So each and every week on Mondays for several years we had to get up and come to class 15 minutes early. For no reason. For nothing. I don't know if you remember, but 15 minutes seems like a lot when you're a little kid, especially early in the morning. We hated it. Please don't inflict this on your audience. Please don't “just inform” other people. Excite them, involve them, impact them, and engage them, but don't just inform them with empty information.
If you want to know more about the role of values in business, read Jim Collins' bestselling book From Good to Great. One of the core ideas of the book is that companies that consistently outperform market have one thing in common: they all have a strong corporate culture based on a set of values. They don't just “do business”; rather, they are doing business and promoting their values, which are the source of their market resilience. These are great companies. It is the same with presentations. If you want to go from good to great, you have to think about values.
Promoting these values might not be necessary in your routine “status update” presentation you make for your bosses. But for a conference speech, for a larger audience I think this is an absolute must. Don't just inform them and don't just ask them to do something for you. Motivate them; inspire them. Show them a vision to aspire to.
NOTE A vision is the ideal world based on your values. You can't have one and not the other. If you know your values you'll have no problem coming up with a vision. If you have a vision you will distill values from it. So, I use those two terms interchangeably.
Consider this definition of values: “Values are different states of intentionality that when activated guide behavior and create meaning.” The credit for this brilliant definition goes to Scott Bristol of www.LJMap.com, who, as I understand it, compiled it from works of Benjamin Libet and Viktor Frankl, both famous psychologists. So, values are internal emotional states. They answer the question “why?” and the answer is “because it feels right.” They are complex feelings of intentionality and motivation. When we practice our values, we perceive our life as full of purpose and meaning. It makes us happy.
NOTE The problem with mere logic (that is logic without connection to vision or values) is that people will agree and won't do anything afterwards. If you want people to do something, you need to induce an appropriate state of motivation. You can't induce the state by simply repeating “excellence, excellence” or “cooperation, cooperation;” it doesn't work. On the other hand, stories work well. If your story has a theme, you can connect with your audience. Not only you are asking them to do something that makes logical sense, but you also are connecting this task to a higher purpose they are likely to subscribe to. You are not just asking them to do something, you are making them better people in their own eyes. Isn't it great? They will be grateful to you for that.
Every Great Presentation Is About Vision
If you examine any great presentation, you will find that it is really about vision. Go search “great presentation” on Google. Better yet, check out www.tinyurl.com/top10pres. It's a list compiled by a personal acquaintance of mine, Frank Roche of www.KnowHR.com. Watch the presentations shown there. You will find that every one of them is about vision. Every single one of them. This is what makes them great. They are connecting people's actions to a higher purpose. Ten is too much for this book, so I will review the first five, and you will do the rest, deal? You have to watch them, but they are freely available on the Internet.
- Steve Jobs' presentation of Macintosh in 1984. Steve comes on stage and presents the first “computer for the rest of us,” a computer for small business owners and creative professionals. What is the presentation about? Computers? No. Well, I mean yes, but not just about computers. It's about democratization of technology. His vision is a world where technology is not only accessible to large corporations, but also to common folk—and not those “home computers” suitable for games only. Computers for business, for creating content. Almost 25 years later, we can say that Steve's vision is largely realized.
- Dick Hardt's Identity 2.0. This is a charismatic CEO of a small company delivering a humorous presentation with what seems to be one million slides. This one's difficult; his greatness is mostly in the form and not in the content. It's about having a non-boring technical presentation. The ideas he presents didn't spread but the presentation style did.
- Guy Kawasaki's Art of the Start. This rather long talk has several recurring themes. On the surface, it's about starting a business, but really it's about having guts in whatever you do and not letting bozos get in your way.
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream. This is probably the most obvious example of a person having a moral vision that came true to a very large extent.
- Lawrence Lessig's Free Culture. This one can be summarized in four sentences: “Creativity and innovation always build on the past. The past always tries to control creativity. Free societies enable the future by limiting the past. Ours is a less and less free society.” He calls to limit copyrights, but really it is about freedom of expression.
Okay, I will do another one because Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was too obvious. Let's look at Malcolm Gladwell's 2005 presentation at SXSW. The presentation is about snap judgments and first impressions. Gladwell tells multiple stories about people making good and bad judgments in different environments.
Just before the end he tells a story of an African-American named Amadou Diallo who was shot 41 times by the New York City police—by mistake. He then suggests concrete steps to reduce the amount of similar police errors. The presentation ends with a call to examine our environments where we have to make snap judgments and to eliminate those where our judgments tend to be erroneous. By doing this, he suggests we might end up with a better world.
Can you continue the list by yourself? There are still four presentations left and there are another 10 in the reader's choice list. Watch them. They are all about the values. All of them.
One final point about values/vision—don't create a vision because you need it for your presentation. Have a vision because you mean it. If you are not sure about your vision or the vision for your presentation, start writing it down or saying it out loud and see if it resonates with you on the inside.
Never try to play with the values that don't appeal to you even abstractly, just for the sake of marketing. It's a bad idea; people will see your bluff.
This is one of those exercises that people seldom do because it feels so superficial. I once heard a 2-hour long presentation in which a trainer was speaking about a mysterious exercise that completely transformed his life, made him substantially richer, and much happier. In the end, it turned out the exercise was simply to describe his perfect day. The little secret was that he did the exercise for four hours and really got to the core of what he wanted. When people first write their visions, they mostly want to finish them as soon as possible. But persistence is key.
WARNING—PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO BE LECTURED
Samuel Goldwyn, the late founder of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, famously said once: “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.” He was addressing, of course, the directors and screenwriters trying to propagate their vision at the expense of box office. From a presentation standpoint, it is crucial to understand two points about his comments:
- The audience is not interested in you telling them your vision: they want a good story. Good story contains vision, but that's like soup containing spices. You don't eat the soup for the spices. You can't eat spices alone.
- You cannot communicate values by just naming them. They are way too abstract. Tell stories and let people figure them out.
Remember you don't want your audience to merely recall your vision or values. You want to impact them with your vision and values so that they might act.