Management Presentation
What to Include
General
- make a fitting problem description for the audience you present to
- management focuses on higher revenue, lower cost & risks
- keep urgency of project, but not overdo it
Audience-Specific
- understand importance of audience-specific communication
- even if this means redoing the presentation for other people
- receive insight in the way managers evaluate information & make decisions
- learn how to structure presentations for management
- Align your & audience agenda
- yours: recieve funding, provide info, enforce decision
- theirs: none (why am I here), understand / hear about issues, tell you what to do
Audience
- make sure they take away something
- what is the take-away you want?
- on average, people remember three key messages
- present right content & in the right way
- i.e. tell a story, use a top-down approach, align with examples
higher management spends more time in meetings (75%+)
- inform, decide, move forward
Top-Down
- context to make decision
- make decision and options visible
- if possible, recommendation and reasoning
- state implications of different options
Do’s
- one recommendation, with a short list of possible options
- state clearly what stakeholders have to decide about
- remove all information which is not directly relevant
Don’ts
- present recommendation without one-to-one meetings beforehand
- describe your approach
- provide many alternatives
- provide large amount of non-aggregated data (too much data)
Pyramid Principle
- top-down approach helps to deliver your argument
- facts come in a logical straightforward fashion
- if people know something, they can end the meeting early
- if someone is late, you have the important bits out front
Slides
- slides support speech, do not replace it
- focus on content, not fancy designs
- simplify graphics as much as possible
- draw slides first, then switch to PowerPoint
Find out about audience
- understand who they are and what is important to them
- think about questions brought up before
- consider conflicting interest between audience
Define objectives
- what do you expect from the meeting
- what is the information the audience should learn
- provide everything required to receive message
develop structure
- create storyline based on synthesis pyramid
create presentation
- develop presentation based on storyline
- slides should represent one core statement
- play role of stakeholder and ask if you are satisfied with presentation
Recommended Books
Resonate - Nancy Duarte
Presentation Zen - Garr Reynolds