- In this video, I'm going to give you five practical tips
for improving your work presentations.
We'll be looking at real slides
from some of the best presentation creators
to understand the types of tools they use
to build slides that are clear, engaging and persuasive.
The focus today will be on management style presentations
like those typically found in a corporate environment.
So if that sounds like something you do,
then stick around because I'm about to show you
some really easy things you can do
to make your presentations a whole lot better.
(upbeat music)
Hey everyone, my name is Paul
and I'm an instructor at The Analyst Academy,
where we teach people PowerPoint
and presentation building skills,
like what you might find at a top consulting firm
like McKinsey, Bain or BCG.
We've taught thousands of students all over the world
and professions ranging from consulting and finance
to nonprofits and education.
We've got a lot of really great stuff out
right now here on YouTube
but also on our website at theanalystacademy.com.
So, if you haven't already, be sure to check it out.
I'll include direct links to all of our best stuff
in the description below.
I'm really excited to dive into today's video
because this is a question I get a lot,
which is, what are some easy things I can do
to improve my presentations to my staff, my boss
or to upper management.
And the reason why it's so exciting
is because there's a lot of stuff here
that's really easy to do
but that most people just aren't doing.
But first, we need to define the problem.
When you present your slides,
the audience is gonna be trying to listen
to what you're saying, read what you have on the slide
and also think about what they're going to say in response.
Even if your audience is smart and engaged,
this is just too much information
for their brains to process all at once.
So what you need to do as a presentation creator
is figure out a way to make your slides
easy to understand quickly.
Now, I see a lot of advice out there that says
you should create minimalistic slides
so that your audience focuses on you
instead of on the presentation.
And that's great advice
but it's not something that can be applied in all settings.
Unless you're giving a keynote presentation,
it's likely that you need to provide
a lot of information to the audience,
sales numbers, marketing plan
or maybe a five-year strategic plan.
Plus, a lot of the time
you need to be able to send your presentation
and it's not gonna make sense to anyone
unless it has the right amount of detail.
So, that leads us to a situation
where you have to create
a dense, content-heavy presentation
but one that the audience can understand quickly
without being overloaded mentally.
In other words, you need to help the audience
process a large amount of information
as efficiently as possible.
So that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today.
Tip number one, nail the title.
The title is the most important part of your slide.
It should provide a summary of the slide content
and should help your audience understand right away
what the key takeaway is.
A big mistake people make here
is to just put the topic of your slide.
This is not something that's gonna help your audience
process the rest of the information quickly.
Instead, put a full sentence here,
one to two lines typically
and tell your audience exactly what you want them to know.
Take a look at this slide from Deloitte as an example.
The title says, retailers are in a challenging position:
They are not highly trusted
and consumers hold them accountable to ensure privacy.
And really this tells me everything I need to know
about the slide, helping me to understand their main point
quickly and efficiently.
Imagine how much harder the slide would be to understand
if the title just said something like
retailer challenges or consumer privacy and retail.
It might feel a little unnatural
to write something like this at first
but when you can make it easier on your audience
by summarizing the entire slide quickly,
you'll find it's a lot easier to hold their attention
and persuade them of your key message.
Tip number two, guide the reader.
You wanna design your slides
so that the audience understands
the highest level idea first
before diving into the details.
This is gonna give them the context they need
to understand what you're trying to tell them.
Take a look at this slide from BCG for example.
If you focus on the chart first
without having the right context,
it's hard to see what the takeaway is.
It shows VC media investments by city over time
but it's unclear what they're trying to tell me.
Is it that total VC investments are growing,
is it that Silicon Valley VC investments are growing
more than other cities or maybe it's something else.
Without the right context or guidance,
we don't know how to interpret the details of the chart.
But now read the slide title first
and then the subtitle.
With this context, I know exactly what to look for,
which is gonna make it so much easier for me.
And this is exactly how they want me to process the slide,
starting with the highest level idea, which is the title
and then working my way down through the different layers,
rather than looking at the details first
and trying to guess what the main takeaway is.
This way of communicating is based on the Pyramid Principle,
which is the idea that communication works best
when you start with your main point first,
then work your way into the details.
Notice how this slide is designed to guide me
through the different layers.
They want my eyes to naturally go
to the highest level idea first, which is the title.
So they make that the biggest and most obvious.
It's also green when the rest of the text
on the slide is black.
Then the next layer of the slide is the subtitles
and those are the next biggest text on the slide as well
and they also have these underlines
to help attract attention to them
but not so much attention
to where I look at them before I see the title.
Then the next layer is this chart on the left
and the bolded text on the right,
which again is slightly less obvious
than the subtitle or title
but still more obvious than these bullet points down here.
If you can format your slide in this way
using text, bolding, colors and shapes
to help guide the reader
through the different layers of your slide,
you're gonna help them understand your presentation quickly
and with as little effort as possible,
which is exactly what you want.
We actually did a full
top to bottom breakdown of this exact slide,
where we analyzed what they did well
and what they could have done better.
So if that's something you're interested in,
be sure to check that out,
I'll include a link in the description below.
Tip number three, add visuals to your slide.
This one might seem obvious
but it's easy to forget or misinterpret.
Remember your primary goal
isn't to make the slide look prettier.
That's important but it's not the main goal.
The main goal is to help your audience
process the information on your slide
as efficiently as possible
and visuals are a great way to do that.
One obvious visual is a chart which can help you
tell a story with your quantitative data
but another commonly overlooked visual is icons.
Icons are great for helping the audience understand the text
and titles of your slide quickly.
Take a look at this slide from PWC.
Yes the icons make the slide
look more aesthetically pleasing
but the real value comes
from the nice mental boost they provide.
Without thinking, my brain can look at these icons
and have some idea for what they represent.
That way I can skim through the slide
without having to read every single word.
Remember the problem we talked about in the beginning.
The audience is trying
to mentally do multiple things at once,
so even little stuff like this is gonna help them out.
Without the icons here,
this slide would have way too much text
but because they've bolded the main points
and connected them with easy-to-understand icons,
it's much easier for me to look at the slide
and understand what they're trying to tell me quickly.
You can see the same thing here in this slide from Bain.
Notice how they use these visuals down at the bottom
to make it easier on me
to see the country each column represents.
Obviously, I could just read the names of each country
but the flags make it that much easier for me
to process the details
and get to the main point of the slide.
It's a small and easy addition to add these visuals
but it's very effective.
Tip number four, annotate your charts.
Charts are a very common element
in management style presentations
but they're often used incorrectly.
People sometimes assume that as long as the data's there,
the insights will be clear,
which is obviously a huge mistake.
By the time you show your slides to the audience,
it's likely that you've already looked them over many times.
So you automatically know where to focus your attention
and what the insights are.
But your audience is probably looking
at your slides for the first time.
So, you need to do whatever you can
to help them see the insights quickly,
especially on your charts where people often get lost.
But thankfully, this is really easy to do.
You can add colors, arrows, circles
or even text right on top of your chart.
It's something most people forget to do
but it makes a world of difference.
On this slide from Bain,
you can see it done very effectively.
First, they used red on the columns that matter most
to help them pop a little bit more.
But then secondly, they added this little callout here
to show the top three.
And what's interesting about this
is that they're not telling us anything
we can't already see ourselves.
It's very clear what the top three brands are
just by looking at the chart
but Bain is smart and they know that anything they can do
to help make the chart easy to understand quickly,
is gonna help the audience stay engaged.
So clearly this is something that's easy to do,
you just have to remember to do it.
Tip number five, bring a perspective.
There's nothing more important
for adding life to your presentation
than bringing a perspective.
And what I mean by that is you should find ways
to show what the data in your presentation actually means,
rather than just using the presentation
as a way to show data.
Tell the audience what you see when you look at the data
or better yet, tell them what it means
for your company or their company.
Let's look at another example from BCG.
This one from a presentation on electric cars.
The slide shows a table comparing the viability
of electric cars in different markets.
And actually, it's a really simple slide,
there's just the title, which by the way,
notice that it's bright green and very obvious,
then below that is a simple table
with just a few rows and columns.
But what I want you to notice here
is the callout down at the bottom,
which says, "China provides the most favorable combination
"of energy prices and mileage for EV penetration."
If I look at this table long enough,
I could've probably reach that same conclusion myself
but they're giving me a shortcut.
They're telling me exactly what they see
when they look at the table
and in turn, what they want me to see.
They're very clearly
and very directly bringing a perspective
and it makes the slide way easier to understand.
If you remember nothing else from this video.
then remember this.
The best presentation designers don't create slides
that make them look smart.
They create slides that make their audience feel smart.
They do whatever they can to help the audience
understand the slides quickly and efficiently.
That should be your main goal.
All right, that's gonna do it for this video,
lemme know down in the comments what you think,
which tips do you think are effective,
which are less effective
and what are some tips that I missed.
If you found the video helpful, please give it a like
and if you think someone else might benefit
from learning these tips, click the Share button
to pass it along to your coworker, your team
or if you're really brave, even your boss.
And if you're serious about learning
to make better presentations,
check out our full courses at theanalystacademy.com,
where we'll teach you exactly how to create
clear, engaging and insightful slides every single time.
Thanks again for watching and hope to hear from you soon.
Be sure to also check out our next video,
where we break down a real consulting slide
to show you the tricks they use to communicate persuasively
and make sure the slide is easy to understand.
They really are masters of their craft,
so if you like this video, you'll definitely like that one.
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