Vintage Whine: “This topic just isn’t interesting.”
“I never get an interesting topic.”
I hear this lament more often that I care to.
No more vintage whine or self-sabotage exists than this one, uttered in ignorance of its true meaning.
Here are two scenarios. Both are possible.
You’re assigned your case, and you skim over it.
Ugh. It’s not “interesting.”
And you find that you must write a memo on the case, analyzing it and teasing out its implications for the strategic direction of the firm, and then you must work with a group of folks you probably don’t hang out, probably don’t know . . . or even like.
You groan as you don’t recognize the company or the people in the case.
Such an “Old” Case
The case isn’t dated last week, so you think it’s “old.”
You complain that you don’t understand why you’re assigned this “boring” case instead of a “modern” case on something hip . . . say, an Apple innovation or a product you heard mentioned in a commercial during the latest Kardashian reality TV offering.
No, you don’t understand why it doesn’t seem to speak to you and your needs.
Now.
This minute.
Roll of the eyes.
“Whatever.”
Personal Competitive Advantage does not mean focusing on “me.”
Never pausing.
Never pausing to examine the central factor that your lack of understanding is the problem.
Your framework is so cramped, your context so self-circumscribed, your interests so few that it’s impossible for you to situate the case in its proper place with the tools at your disposal.
You complain that it’s not “relevant” and so you make no attempt to understand its “relevance.”
It’s not an “interesting topic.”
You never get an “interesting topic.”
That’s one scenario of how it goes.
Another scenario is the Embrace. Opening the heart and mind to the new.
Embrace the Un-interesting Topic
You’re assigned your case, and you skim over it.
And you must write a memo on the case, analyzing it and teasing out its implications for the strategic direction of the firm, and then you must work with a group of folks you don’t know and probably don’t hang out with . . . or even like.
You scratch your chin, metaphorically, and you roll up your sleeves (again, metaphorically) and you ask yourself questions like these . . .
“What can I learn from this process? How can I turn this whole process into an experience I can craft stories about to tell in my upcoming job interviews? How can I take this case, digest it, and make it part of my growing context of business knowledge?”
And as for the inevitable public group presentation, ask yourself:
A classic case and topic that initiates you into the business fold
“How can I work best with these folks in my group to produce a spectacular presentation that will then become part of my resume?
How can I help mask the internal disagreements and personality conflicts so that our audience does not suspect that several of us detest each other?
How can I make this presentation interesting for my audience?”
Remember that there are no inherently interesting topics. Every topic has potential for generating great interest, if you do your job right.
Because please understand . . . no one cares if the topic interests you.
As a professor, I certainly don’t.
I want to know what you plan to do with the topic and the case.
Your job is to infuse the topic with power and generate interest about it for your audience. And if you do that, you gain tremendous personal competitive advantage.
Crown Cork and Seal is an example of such a case that many students don’t find “interesting.” It’s a classic case that almost every MBA student must read and analyze.
The Crown Cork and Seal case is about making and selling tin cans. And how a firm with resources identical to the other major can manufacturers managed to outperform the industry by a stretch.
That’s a mystery, and a great one to solve.
And it’s an interesting topic . . . if only you embrace the case.
Asking “What’s the job market like?” is the wrong question.
Let’s say you get an answer.
What, exactly, will you do with the answer? Hmm?
What?
It’s reminiscent of the young man who came to me for advice on getting his MBA, and his first question was “What are the hot jobs?”
“Hot jobs? I don’t understand your question, exactly.”
“I ask about the hot jobs, so I can move into that concentration,” he said. He was serious.
That’s a foolish approach, and I told him so. It’s like chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. You expend energy, money, time. Fruitlessly. Or for extremely meager fruit.
Dump the “Hot Jobs” Approach
First, I don’t know what the “hot jobs” are or even what a “hot job” might consist of. Perhaps a field that has a temporary shortage of skilled candidates? If so, that shortage gets filled mighty quick.
Second, it gets filled mighty quick because there is no a lack of folks who latch onto the “hot jobs” mantra and swarm.
Third, if you base your studies on someone’s assessment of the “hot jobs,” you could end up in a program that you hate.
To top it off, when you graduate, that “job” might no longer be “hot.”
What a fine fix that would be, eh?
Make Your Own Job Market
In retrospect, I’m less critical now than I was at the time of such a question. Yes, it’s a dumb question if the purpose is to guide your study.
A much better question is “How can I create personal competitive advantage so that I win in whatever kind of market exists?”
It’s become almost cliche to “do what you love.” But there’s a good reason why successful people say this.
I recommend pursuing your passion and make it your goal to become the best at it in the entire world. Is that a foolish goal? Exaggerated ambition? Hardly.
Within the bounds of a chosen profession, there is always room for the woman or man driven by passion and a thirst for self-improvement. At the firm level, it can be called becoming “a category of one.” I direct you to the book by Joe Calloway of the same name.
Calloway’s book demonstrates how firm’s can move their brands from the commodity column into the premium brand column. You can do the same with yourself and your passion.
Become a Category of One
Let’s take the topic of cosmetic industry supply chain management. I’m not jazzed by this topic, but I guarantee that somewhere, someone is.
And that person should chase that profession insanely, becoming the finest cosmetic industry supply chain manager in the world, in both the micro and macro sense: learned in the industry, knowledgeable of the major players, and steeped in the intricacies of the specialty.
Relentless focus and study sharpens you like a surgical instrument.
And as your skills increase, the number of your viable personal competitors begins to fall off.
You increase your value to potential employers . . . you speak with far greater knowledge and surety than someone more superficially educated.
And it is this way that you find your calling. This is how you find your “blue ocean.”
It is here that you find your job market . . . not the job market.
Forget about pursuing the “hot jobs” of the moment, like the herd.
In all of this, in every bit of this, you can add value to your personal warehouse of skills by becoming a superb presenter. Every firm and every profession lacks great presenters.
Become that Category of One and showcase your skills as a powerful and competent presenter. Here’s how . . .
In earlier posts, we examined the lead-in steps for your case competition preparation – now your team is on the cusp of delivering a business presentation to win your case competition.
Recognize that your presentation differs from the written report.
Accept that your presentation is a wholly different communication mode than your final written solution.
Treat it this way, and your chances that you win your case competition increase dramatically.
How to Win Your Case Competition
The analytical competency of most case competition teams is relatively even.
Your analysis is robust and your conclusions are sound, as should be with all the entries.
With this substantive parity among competing teams, a powerful and stunning presentation delivered by a team of confident and skilled presenters will win the day most every time.
If a team lifts itself above the competition with a stunning presentation, it wins.
If you have reviewed the step-by-step preparation to this point and internalized its message, you understand that you and your teammates are not something exclusive of the presentation.
You are the presentation.
By now, you should be well on the way to transforming yourself from an average presenter into a powerful presentation meister.
You know the techniques of the masters.
You are skilled. Confident.
You have become an especially powerful and steadily improving speaker who constantly refines himself or herself along the seven dimensions we’ve discussed: Stance, Voice, Gesture, Expression, Movement, Appearance, and Passion.
Employ the Seven Secrets to Win Your Case Competition
When I coach a team how to win a case competition, the team members prepare all of their analysis, conclusions, and recommendations on their own. Here are some tips how to do this. Their combined skills, imagination, and acumen produce a product worthy of victory.
The team then creates their first draft presentation.
It is at this point that the competition is most often won or lost.
Powerful winning presentations do not spring forth unbidden or from the written material you prepare. The numbers “do not speak for themselves.”
The “power of your analysis” does not win your case competition on its own. You cannot point to your handout repeatedly as a substitute for a superb presentation.
Your case solution is not judged on its merit alone, as if the brilliance of your solution is manifest to everyone who reads it.
It is judged on how well you communicate the idea.
Powerfully. Persuasively.
Each member of your team must enter the presentation process as a tangible, active, compelling part of the presentation. And you must orchestrate your presentation so that you work seamlessly together with each other, with the visuals you present, and with the new knowledge you create.
You are performing, like a cast in a play. Ensure everyone plays the part well.
Business Case Competition Preparation is key to victory
Phase 2 of your business case competition preparation begins when you’re issued the case.
Recognize that the nature of this case may differ from what you are accustomed to.
It could be more incomplete and open-ended than the structured cases you’ve dealt with before.
In fact, it could be a contemporary real-world case with no “solution.” It could be a case crafted especially for the competition by the competition sponsor.
Business Case Competition Preparation
Your first step – your team members read the case once-through for general information and understanding.
You inventory issues.
You define the magnitude of the task at hand.
Here, you draw a philosophical and psychological box around the case. You encompass its main elements.
You make it manageable.
Business Case Competition Preparation Readies you for any Challenge
You avoid time-burn in discussions of unnecessarily open-ended questions. Your discussion proceeds on defining the problem statement.
At this point, your expertise and skills gained in years of business schooling should guide you to develop your analysis and recommendations.
The difference in acumen and skill sets among teams in a competition is usually small, so I assume that every business team will produce analytical results and recommendations that are capable of winning the competition. This includes your team, of course.
Victory or Defeat?
The quality of teams is high, and the output of analysis similar. This means that victory is rarely determined by the quality of the material itself.
Instead, victory and defeat ride on the clarity, logic, power, and persuasiveness of the public presentation of that material. I have seen great analyses destroyed or masked by bad presentations.
The Presentation is the final battlefield where the competition is won or lost.
And so we devote minimum time here on the preparation of your arguments. Many fine books can help you sharpen analysis. This post concerns how you translate your written results into a powerful presentation that is verbally and visually compelling.
We are concerned here with the key to your competition victory.
Here is your competitive edge: While 95 percent of teams will view their presentations as a simple modified version of the written paper that they submit, your team attacks the competition armed with the tools and techniques of Power Presenting.
You understand that the presentation is a distinct and different communication tool than the written analysis.
Your own business case competition preparation distinguishes you in dramatic and substantive ways. This translates into a nuanced, direct, and richly textured presentation.
One that captivates as well as persuades.
Cut ’n’ Paste Combatants
Many teams cut-and-paste their written paper/summary into the presentation, unchanged. This usually makes for a heinous presentation that projects spreadsheets and bullet points and blocks of text on a screen.
These monstrosities obscure more than they communicate. It is a self-handicap and a horrendous mistake.
Sure, at times you will see winning presentations that do this – I see them myself on occasion. This usually happens for one of several reasons, none of them having to do with the quality of the visual presentation . . .
1) Substance trumps: The business analysis and recommendation is substantially better than all other entries and overcomes deficiencies in presentation.
2) Mimicry: All entries utilize the same defective method of cutting-and-pasting the final report onto PowerPoint slides. This levels the playing field to a lowest common denominator of visual and verbal poverty.
Don’t present all the fruits of your analysis.
Too much information and too many details can cripple your initial presentation. Remember – hold back details for use and explication during the Q&A period.
A parsimonious presentation should deliver your main points.
Deciding what to leave out of your initial presentation can be as important as deciding what to include and emphasize.
Business Case Competitions usually launch in the spring, so now is the time to prepare.
The key to doing well in business case competitions is to differentiate yourselves beforehand by following your case competition guide.
Before you ever travel to the site of the competition.
Before they ever give you the sealed envelope with your business case enclosed.
This is much easier than you might imagine. You begin by consulting your case competition guide. And the guide starts with the Three Ps of Presenting.
The Three Ps of Business Presentations provide a roadmap to ready you for your competition.
Principles . . . Preparation . . . Practice
Principles.
You don’t start tuning your instrument for the first time when it’s time to perform a concert. Likewise, you don’t begin honing your presentation skills when it’s time to present.
By the time of your competition, all of your team members should be thoroughly grounded in the principles of especially powerful presentations.
The principles offered here in this case competition guide.
This part of your competition prep should already be accomplished, with only a few review sessions to ensure everyone is sharp on the Seven Secrets. These secrets are Stance . . . Voice . . . Gesture . . . Expression . . . Movement . . . Appearance . . . Passion.
Second, Preparation
Our case competition guide divides the preparation for the competition into three phases.
Phase 1: Lead-in to the Competition
You are made aware of the competition’s rules. You acknowledge and embrace the rules and what they imply. Your entire team should become intimately familiar with the parameters of the competition – think metaphorically and spacially.
Recognize that the problem has length and breadth and depth. Understand the finite limits of the context presented to you. Know what you can and cannot do. Think of it as an empty decanter that you fill with your analysis and conclusions on the day of the competition.
Later, upon receiving the actual Case, you will conduct the same process. Recognize that the Business Case has length and breadth and depth.
But now, prior to the competition, take stock of what you already know you must do. Then do most of it beforehand as the rules permit.
This includes embracing the problem situation long before you arrive on-site for a competition and before you receive the case in question. Learn the parameters of the context in which you operate. The case competition guide breaks the competition environment into discrete elements:
Competition rules
Length of presentation
Total time available (set-up, presenting, Q&A, Close-out)
Number of presenters allowed or required
Visuals permitted or required
Sources you may use, both beforehand and during the problem-solving phase
Prohibitions
You know that you are required to provide analysis of a case and your results and recommendations. Why not prepare all that you can before you arrive at the competition?
Some competitions may frown on this or forbid it . . . fine, then do it when you can, at the first point that it is permissible. This way, you spend the majority of your case analysis time filling in the content.
Follow the Business Case Competition Guide
Prepare your slide template beforehand according to the principles expounded here.
Business presentations have a small universe of scenarios and limited number of elements that comprise those scenarios. A well-prepared team composed of team members from different functional areas will have generic familiarity with virtually any case assigned in a competition.
The team should have no problems dealing with any case it is presented.
Determine beforehand who will handle – generally – the presentation tasks on your team as well as the analytic portions of your case. The following is offered as an example of how the task might be approached:
As part of this initial process, prepare your slide template with suitable logos, background, killer graphics, and charts and graphs requiring only that the numbers be filled in.
Leading into the competition, it’s essential that your team be familiar with sources of data that you may be permitted to utilize in conducting your case analysis. Market research, industry surveys, and such like.
With respect to the delivery or your presentation itself, a business case competition is not the occasion for you to polish your delivery skills. You should have honed them to razor’s edge by now.
As well, perfect your orchestration as a team before arriving at the site of the competition.
At the competition, you lift your performance to the next level in terms of application of all the principles, precepts, and hard skills you learned in business school. Finance, accounting, marketing, operations, strategy, analysis.
You apply them in a tightly orchestrated and professional presentation that pops.
If you have engaged the business case competition guide successfully during the lead-up to the competition, your taut case-cracking team will be ready when you finally receive the case.
A team ready to address the issues involved in the case problem.
It can also be lucrative, as prize money for winning teams can be substantial . . . from $1,000 all the way up to $25,000.
Sure, you’ve presented in class in front of your professor and folks that you know, but you’ve not felt pressure until you’ve competed against the finest MBAs from other schools.
How do you and your school stack up against the best of the rest?
Business School Rankings are one thing, but MBA Case Competitions offer one of the few head-to-head matchups between schools.
And all the PR in the world can’t substitute for victory over your rivals.
Who Competes in MBA Case Competition . . . and How?
Let’s take, as an example, a Finance MBA Case Competition.
These are top-notch MBA students with work experience and especially powerful motivation to not only invest in a rigorous MBA program but to test their skills publicly in the fire of MBA case competition.
Substantively, this is a talented lot.
My colleagues, who specialize in the wizardry of finance, ensure that no idle comment goes unchallenged, no misplaced decimal escapes detection. That no unusual explanation goes unexplored.
MBA Case Competition Tests Your Mettle
At the higher-level finals competition, this fine-toothed comb catches few errors . . . because few errors exist to be caught. These are superb students, imbued with a passion for the artistry of a company’s financial structure and operations.
Along this dimension, the teams are relatively well-matched.
But stylistically, much remains to improve.
And if you believe that “style” is somehow unimportant, you err fatally with regard to the success of your presentation.
By style, I mean all of the orchestrated elements of your business presentation that combine to create the desired outcome – emotional involvement with your message, a compelling story, and acceptance of your conclusions. And all explained in an especially powerful way that transmits competence and confidence.
In this sense, style becomes substance in an MBA case competition.
So, while the substantive content level of the top teams in competition is often superb, style differentiates the finest from the rest and can determine the competition winner.
To enter that top rank of presenters, note these common pathologies that afflict most teams of presenters, both MBA students and young executives.
1) Throat-clearing
I don’t mean actual clearing of the throat here. Unfortunately, many teams engage in endless introductions, expressions of gratitude to the audience, even chattiness with regard to the task at hand. Get to the point. Immediately. State your business.
Deliver a problem statement . . . and then your recommendation, up-front. With this powerful introductory method, your presentation takes on more clarity in the context of your already-stated conclusion.
2) Lack of confidence
Lack of confidence is revealed in several ways, some of them subconscious. Uptalk, a fad among young people, undermines even the best substance because of its constant plaintive beg for validation.
Dancing from foot to foot, little dances around the platform, the interjection of “you know” and “you know what I mean” wear away the power of your message like a whetstone.
3) Unreadable PowerPoint slides
The visuals are unreadable because of small fonts and insufficient contrast between numbers/letters and the background. Ugly spreadsheets dominate the screen to no purpose.
This sends the audience scrambling to shuffle through “handouts” instead of focusing attention on the points you want to emphasize. You have created a distraction.
You have created a competitor for your attention that takes focus off your presentation.
4) Ineffective interaction with visuals
Rare is the student who interacts boldly with his or her slides, touching the screen, guiding our eyes to what is important and ensuring that we understand.
Instead, we often see the dreaded laser pointer. This is one of the most useless tools devised for presentation work (unless the screen is so massive that you cannot reach an essential visual that must be pointed out).
The laser pointer divides your audience attention three ways – to the presenter, to the slide material, and to the light itself, which tends to bounce uncontrollably about the screen.
I forbid the use of laser pointers in my classes as a useless affectation.
No time for Modesty or Mediocrity
The MBA Case Competition is your chance to demonstrate a wide range of corporate business skills in a collaborative effort. You receive recognition, valuable experience, sometimes monetary reward, and perhaps an open door to corporate employment.
Work on correcting the most common errors, and you have started the journey to competition excellence.
See The Complete Guide to Business Presenting for an entire chapter on winning case competitions. You can also sign up for the LinkedIn MBA Case Competition group. This is where folks from around the world congregate to share the latest information about competiting in the top contests.
You want solid information and best practices, not generic “presentation principles” and certainly not “communication theory.”
You want to know what works and why. You want to know right from wrong, good from bad.
You want to know what is just opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone.
Think of this place as your Official College Guide to Business School Presentations, because here you’ll find answers here to the most basic questions.
What is this beast – the business presentation?
How do I stand? Where do I stand?
What do I say? How do I say it?
How do I reduce 20 pages of analysis into a four-minute spiel that makes sense and that “gets it all in?”
How should we assemble a group presentation? How do we orchestrate it?Where do I begin, and how?
How do I end my talk?
What should I do with my hands?
How do I conquer nervousness once and for all?
How can I tell “what the professor wants?”
How do I translate complicated material, such as a spreadsheet, to a PowerPoint slide so that it communicates instead of bores?
Business School Presenting answers every one of these questions. It answers many more that you haven’t even thought of yet.
You may not like the answers. You may disagree with the answers.
Fair enough. Let a thousand presentation flowers bloom across the land. Listen, consider, pick and choose your pleasure.
Or not.
2,500 Years of How to Give a Business Presentation
But you should know that I offer here the distillation of 2,500 years of public speaking and presentation secrets. Secrets developed by masters of oratory and public speaking and refined in the forge of experience.
They all have drawn upon the eternal verities of presenting. In turn, they have each contributed their own techniques to the body of wisdom.
You find those verities here.
In our modern-day world of multimedia extravaganzas, who needs business presentations? It’s all done for us now, right?
The presentation is contained in the software, and all you need do is plug in the specifics. Right?
With all of these high-tech prosthetic presentation devices, anyone can be a presentation hero!
Right? Right?
You may wish it were true, but of course you know that this is wrong. Horribly wrong.
You’ve seen enough endless, boring, unintelligible slide-a-thons to know that something is amiss here.
Why are 99 percent of business presentations so boring? Why is it that only 1 percent of corporate America seems to know how to give a business presentation in a coherent, interesting manner?
Why Bother with How to Give a Business Presentation?
If you discovered that there was one thing – business presentation skill – you could learn that would immeasurably increase your chances of getting a great job after graduation, wouldn’t that be great?
What would you think of that? Too good to be true?
And what if you discovered that this skill is something that you can develop to an especially powerful level in just a handful of weeks?
What would that be worth to you? Would it be worth the price of a book to get you started?
Think of it – business presentation skills you can learn in 4-5 weeks that can provide you lasting competitive advantage through the rest of your working life. A skill that few people take seriously.
A skill in high demand by America’s corporations.
Companies haven’t nearly enough personnel who can communicate effectively. Nor logically. Comfortably. Clearly. Cogently. This is why corporate recruiters rate business presentation skills more important in candidates than any other trait or skill.
Capable business presenting is a high-demand skill.
This is the Secret Skill You Knew They Kept from You
The Secret Skill – the edge – you’ve always sought.
You, as a business student or young executive, gain personal competitive advantagevis-à-vis your peers, just by taking presenting seriously. You gain advantage by embracing the notion that you should and can become an effective and capable business presenter.
In other words, if you actually devote yourself to the task of becoming a superb speaker and learn how to give a business presentation with competence and confidence, you lift yourself into that rarefied 1 percent of business students and executives.
And the task is not as difficult as you imagine. But it isn’t easy, either.
You actually have to change the way you do things. This can be tough.
Most of us want solutions outside of ourselves. The availability of an incredible variety of software has inculcated in us a tendency to accept the way we are and to find solutions outside ourselves. Off the shelf. In a box.
This doesn’t work. Not at all. You cannot find the secret to great business presenting outside of yourself.
You already carry it with you.
But you will have to change.
But Great Business Presentation Skills Mean Change . . .
This is about transformation.
Transforming the way we think, the way we view the world. Transforming the lens through which we peer at others, the lens through which we see ourselves. Transforming you so that you know how to give a business presentation and deliver power and impact every time.
And it begins with your uniqueness. Each of us applies our own uniqueness to the tools and verities that make for great business presentations. We mark our presentations with our own personal brand.
Your realization of uniqueness and belief in it is essential to your development as a powerful business presenter.
Yes, you are unique, and in the quest for business presentation excellence, you discover the power of your uniqueness. You strip away the layers of modern mummification. You chip away at those crusty barnacles that have formed over the years without your even realizing it.
It’s time to express that unique power in ways that support you in whatever you want to do.
Explore the truths here on how to give a business presentation and begin today to energize your personal brand and gain personal competitive advantage.
Our profession contrives business jargon and then clutches it to its breast.
It’s useful.
Especially as shorthand for keen concepts well-understood.
But the more Machiavellian among us sometimes enshrine it as a code for entry into a priesthood of the knowledgeable.
And so we have the conundrum – one man’s obfuscation is another man’s sharply drawn argument, both using “jargon.”
Who with compassion would strip a man of his outlet for facile expression, the utility of shorthand “jargon,” simply because there exist unscrupulous cads who abuse the privilege of a profession’s lexicon?
Business Jargon Struggles for Hearts and Minds?
The struggle is for clear and original expression against the encroachment of weasel-words. The struggle is for meaningful distinctions between useful locutions and the vulgarity of “jargon.”
So it’s a struggle, yes, but it’s also an internal struggle.
I’m torn, because it is my bane to be charged with teaching the lexicon, the “jargon” to vulnerable young minds. Minds to which business jargon sounds fresh and innovative, when it’s actually already stale and reified.
It’s an axiom that once something makes it into a textbook, it likely is already outdated.
But business jargon does perform valuable service. If used judiciously and properly and with clear intent to the purpose for which it was created.
If it’s wielded not to obfuscate.
If it’s wielded not to mind-taser the listener into a kind of numb dumbness.
For those of us in the profession that is home to our jargon, it serves as shorthand for many thoughts already thought, not simply a comfortable refuge. Shorthand for many debates already concluded. Many theories already expressed. Many systems already in place.
In fact, a deep vein of rich discussion lurks beneath the glib façade of most of our jargon.
And thus business jargon presents us with a dilemma – if it were not useful, it would not exist. And anything that is useful can be misused.
It should come with a warning label.
A Business Jargon Warning Label?
I provide such a warning label. But only half-heartedly.
Half-heartedly, because it is my first obligation to ensure that my charges remember the “jargon” that I serve up to them. They must imbibe deeply and, at some point during a seemingly interminable semester, they must regurgitate the jargon.
They must drink deeply from the cup of “competitive advantage.”
They must feast heartily at the table of “core competency” and ladle large portions of “market failure” and “pioneering costs” along with a light sprinkling of what some might consider the oxymoronic garnish of “business ethics.”
More insidious than the standard business jargon is the phalanx of “new” program buzzwords that march our way in endless columns, recycling ideas of old . . . and then recycling them yet again.
For those of us who bathe regularly in the sea of “competitive advantage” and “market saturation” and “pioneering costs” and “core competencies,” we cannot exercise the luxury of contempt.
Instead, we must labor as any wordsmith must labor. We must not ban the hammer because some use it to bash their thumb instead of the nail.
Just as any writer seeks and secures precision in language, the business writer must labor likewise. Constant vigilance is our only guarantor against the debasing of the language.
This is true in business and in academia as it is true in the high-minded world of the literati.
High-minded? It might be also useful to exercise constant vigilance that high-mindedness does not become high-handedness.
Humility and the hunger for clarity.
Uncommon qualities in the business and academic worlds? Perhaps, but surely they should be considered corollary to the jargon that seems pervasive and inescapable and that nettles us so naughtily.
But enough! Cast all of this aside and consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting for a jargon-free entre into the high priesthood of the finest business presenters in the corporate world!
I helped to judge a series of business presentations in a business case competition earlier this week, and I offer here several observations.
The case in question involved financial analysis and required a recommended course of action.
In terms of presentation substance, I find these types of finance-based competitions of high caliber, with fine-grained and sophisticated analysis.
And I expect it . . . these are top-notch MBA students with work experience and especially powerful motivation to not only invest in a rigorous MBA program but to put their skills to the test publicly in the fire of business case competition.
The Finance Business Case Competition
My colleagues, who specialize in the wizardry of finance, ensure that no idle comment goes unchallenged, no misplaced decimal escapes detection. That no unusual explanation goes unexplored.
At the higher-level finals competition, this fine-toothed comb catches few errors . . . because few errors exist to be caught. These are top-notch students, imbued with a passion for the artistry of a company’s financial structure and operations. Along this dimension, the teams are relatively well-matched.
But stylistically, much remains to improve.
And if you believe that “style” is somehow unimportant, you err fatally with regard to the success of your presentation.
By style, I mean all of the orchestrated elements of your business presentation that combine to create the desired outcome – emotional involvement with your message, a compelling story, and acceptance of your conclusions – all explained in an especially powerful way that transmits competence and confidence. And in this sense, style becomes substance in a business case competition.
So, while the substantive content level of the top teams in competition is often superb, style differentiates the finest from the rest and can determine the competition winner.
To enter that top rank of presenters, note these common pathologies that afflict most teams of presenters, both MBA students and young executives.
1) Throat-clearing
I don’t mean actual clearing of the throat here. Unfortunately, many teams engage in endless introductions, expressions of gratitude to the audience, even chattiness with regard to the task at hand. Get to the point. Immediately. State your business.
Deliver a problem statement . . . and then your recommendation, up-front. With this powerful introductory method, your presentation takes on more clarity in the context of your already-stated conclusion.
2) Lack of confidence
Lack of confidence is revealed in several ways, some of them subconscious. Uptalk, a fad among young people, undermines even the best substance because of its constant plaintive beg for validation. Dancing from foot to foot, little dances around the platform, the interjection of “you know” and “you know what I mean” wear away the power of your message like a whetstone.
3) Unreadable PowerPoint slides
The visuals are unreadable because of small fonts and insufficient contrast between numbers/letters and the background. Ugly spreadsheets dominate the screen to no purpose. This sends the audience scrambling to shuffle through “handouts” instead of focusing attention on the points you want to emphasize. You have created a distraction. You have created a competitor for your attention that takes focus off your presentation.
4) Ineffective interaction with visuals
Rare is the student who interacts boldly with his or her slides. Touching the screen, guiding our eyes to what is important and ensuring that we understand. Instead, we often see the dreaded laser pointer, one of the most useless tools devised for presentation work (unless the screen is so massive that you cannot reach an essential visual that must be pointed out).
The laser pointer divides your audience attention three ways – to the presenter, to the slide material, and to the light itself, which tends to bounce uncontrollably about the screen. I forbid the use of laser pointers in my classes as a useless affectation.
I have said that the business case competition no time for modesty or mediocrity.
The Business Case Competition is your chance to demonstrate a wide range of corporate business skills in a collaborative effort. You receive recognition, valuable experience, sometimes monetary reward, and perhaps an open door to corporate employment.
Work on correcting the most common errors, and you have started the journey to competition excellence.
Tomorrow, I judge a series of presentations in a business case competition.
This is where students bring to bear all of their business acumen in a public demonstration of their abilities to collaborate across a range of sub-disciplines in business.
This includes finance, marketing, operations, accounting, and strategy.
It is a tough but necessary rite of passage for the best of students. I look forward to the presentations and will review them in this space later in the week.
As a precursor, let me explain the concept of a business case competition and its parameters.
The Business Case Competition
The business case competition is an event in which business teams deliver business presentations, competing against other teams in front of a team of judges. Teams display how quickly, thoroughly, and skillfully they can ingest a case, analyze it, and then present their conclusions and recommendations to a panel of judges.
Business case competitions vary greatly in the details, and they are quite similar to business plan competitions. They do have a standard format and purpose.
The idea behind such competitions is to provide a standard case to competing teams with a given time limit and then to rate how well the teams respond with analysis, recommendations, and a presentation of same.
Each team is judged independently how well it handles the assigned case and presents its analysis and recommendations.
All teams compete under the same conditions of time limit and specific rules.
Competitions can be internal to the Business School or involve teams from several different schools.
At times, teams engage in several rounds of competition, with the final round typically judged by outside company executives.
No Time for Modesty or Mediocrity
The Case Competition is your chance to demonstrate a wide range of corporate business skills in a collaborative effort. You receive recognition, valuable experience, sometimes monetary reward, and perhaps an open door to corporate employment. The competition is a showcase for your skills.
You can also win anywhere from $1,000 to $75,000 in a single business case competition.
Business School, a chance to develop personal competitive advantage by becoming an especially powerful business presenter
If you are like most of the 1.3 million English-speaking business school population worldwide, you doubtless have issues with your business school and its treatment of presentations, which is why you’re reading this now – you might even hate presentations.
But if you have a distaste for even the thought of delivering a presentation, then this site’s for you.
One in 644 Million?
Of an estimated 644 million websites worldwide, this is the only site devoted exclusively to business school presentations.
I could be wrong about that, and I hope that I am.
Even if this is a lonely outpost today, we know that as quickly as the online community responds to the needs of its users, that could change tomorrow.
Approximately 644 million activie websites in the world
I trust you’ll let me know, so that I can link to these nooks of the web that may hold secrets that we all need. But right now, this instant, I do believe that this is it.
Business school students and young executives need credible and direct resources on presenting – solid advice and best practices, not vague generic “presentation principles” and certainly not “communication theory.”
In short, you want to know what works and why.
You Don’t Really Want to Hate Presentations
You want to know right from wrong, good from bad.
You want to know what is a matter of opinion and what, if anything, is carved in stone.
You want to know how to deliver an especially powerful presentation, because you recognize presenting as a key part of your personal professional strategy.
Here you find answers here to the most basic of questions.
What is this beast – the business presentation?
How do I stand? Where do I stand?
What do I say? How do I say it?
How do I reduce 20 pages of analysis into a four-minute spiel that makes sense and that “gets it all in?”
How should we assemble a group presentation? How do we orchestrate it?
Where do I begin, and how?
How do I end my talk?
What should I do with my hands?
How do I conquer nervousness once and for all?
How can I tell “what the professor wants?”
How do I translate complicated material, such as a spreadsheet, to a PowerPoint slide so that it communicates instead of bores?
2,500 Years of Presenting
Business School Presenting answers every one of these questions and many more that you haven’t even thought of yet.
You may not like the answers. You may disagree with the answers.
Fair enough.
Let a thousand presentation flowers bloom across the land. Listen, consider, pick and choose your pleasure. Or not.
But you should know that I offer here the distillation of 2,500 years of public speaking and presentation secrets, developed by masters of oratory and public speaking and refined in the forge of experience.
Cicero, Quintilian, Demosthenes, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama – all find their places in the pantheon of the most powerful presenters of all time.
They all have drawn upon the eternal verities of presenting, and in turn they have each contributed their own techniques to the body of wisdom. You find those verities here.
You can become an especially powerful presenter
On the other side of things, I’d like to hear your own presentation stories from your campus that illustrate challenges particular to your school and academic concentration.
The various subdisciplines in business – finance, marketing, accounting, human resources, and such like – have their special needs, even as they are all tractable to the fundamental and advanced techniques of powerful presenting.
While many definitions are about, I’d say it’s that congeries of qualities, skills, experience, and brio that sets you apart from your peers in a narrow slice of your own professional bailiwick.
It’s something peculiar to yourself and your own experience. It’s up to you to discover, build, enhance, nurture.
It’s easy to offer a laundry list of qualities that we might imagine constitutes Personal Competitive Advantage. Charisma . . . confidence . . . style . . . panache . . . smarts.
Personal Competitive Advantage surely comprises much of that . . . maybe. Because Advantage can vary from person to person, from field to field.
Gain Personal Competitive Advantage through a carefully crafted strategy
This frustrates folks.
I know this sounds vague, and there’s an excellent reason for it.
Only you can assess capabilities, intentions, and resources.
Only you can develop a winning Unique Selling Proposition.
And only you can then identify a winning position for you to carve out and make your own.
Many students feel cheated when they realize they must actually craft this position themselves rather than find it in a mythical “success manual.”
But craft it you must.
Here’s One Guide to Advantage
One way to position yourself for personal competitive advantage is to utilize the “Four Actions Framework” developed by the authors of the business bestseller Blue Ocean Strategy.
This framework involves examining the standard metrics along which you compete in your chosen profession. You then manipulate those metrics in four ways to yield something fresh and new.
Something attuned to your particular value offering.
Eliminate. Reduce. Raise. Create.
First, Eliminate . . .
. . . decide how you compete in your particular bailiwick. Identify the competitive metrics.
Personal Strategy for Competitive Advantage
Then, eliminate the metrics that don’t concern you or on which you are weak and see no low-cost way of improving.
Second, Reduce . . . lower emphasis on low-profile and low-value metrics.
Maintain your competitive presence on these dimensions, but only enough for credibility.
Third, Raise . . . emphasize the key metrics in your field that you believe are key success factors. These are metrics that most people believe are substantial and essential to their own well-being.
Fourth, Create . . . innovate and create new metrics. You thus become #1 in a new category – your own category.
Overarching all of this . . .
Inventory your present skill set, your deepest professional desires, and the raw materials now available to you. These three factors constitute your capabilities, intentions, and resources.
Evaluate whether your capabilities, intentions, and resources are consistent. Are they aligned with one another? Do they have strategic fit?
Does it make sense when you eyeball it?
These are the first steps toward crafting a Personal Competitive Advantage. Start thinking this way to lay the groundwork.
One surefire way to gain personal competitive advantage is to pledge to become an especially powerful business presenter.
In fact, it’s an open secret, very much like a football laying on the field, waiting to be picked up and run for a touchdown.
Powerful Business Presentation Skills Yield Personal Competitive Advantage
You can front-load your introduction and put the Pow! into Powerful Business Presentations to seize your audience from the first second of your show.
Or you can tiptoe into your business presentation so no one notices you.
Which would you choose?
You’d choose the introduction with Pow, of course!
But many people don’t.
Many folks in business school, in fact, simply don’t launch powerful business presentations for one excellent reason.
The Reason Why Many Business Presentations Sputter
Many folks don’t know how to begin a presentation.
Do you?
What?
“Of course I know how to begin a presentation. What kind of fool does this guy think I am?”
But do you? Really?
Does your intro have Pow? Consider for a moment . . .
Do you begin confidently and strongly? Or do you tiptoe into your presentation, like so many people in school and in the corporate world?
Do you sidle into it? Do you edge into your show with lots of metaphorical throat-clearing? Do you back into it?
Do you poke your head out instead of delivering a powerful business presentation?
Do you actually start strong with a story, but let the story spiral out of control until it overshadows your main points? Is your story even relevant? Do your tone and body language and halting manner shout “apology” to the audience?
Do you shift and dance?
Are you like a turtle poking his head out of his shell, eyeing the audience, ready to dart back to safety if you catch even a single frown? Do you crouch behind the podium like a soldier in his bunker? Do you drone through the presentation, your voice monotone, your eyes glazed, fingers crossed, actually hoping that no one notices you?
One major problem with all of this is that you exhibit horrendous body language that destroys your credibility.
Set the Stage with Your Situation Statement
You begin with your grabber . . . then follow immediately with your Situation Statement.
The Situation Statement tells your audience what they will hear. It’s the reason you and your audience are there.
What will you tell them? The audience is gathered to hear about a problem and its proposed solution . . . or to hear of success and how it will continue . . . or to hear of failure and how it will be overcome . . . or to hear of a proposed change in strategic direction.
Don’t assume that everyone knows why you are here. Don’t assume that they know the topic of your talk. Ensure that they
Personal Competitive Advantage through Powerful Business Presentations
know with a powerful Situation Statement.
A powerful situation statement centers the audience – Pow! It focuses everyone on the topic.
Don’t meander into your show with chummy talk, thanking the board for the “opportunity,” thanking the conference staff, thanking the bartender for generous pours.
Don’t tip-toe into it. Don’t be vague. Don’t clear your throat with endless apologetics or thank yous.
What do I mean by this?
You Need Pow!
Let’s say your topic is the ToughBolt Corporation’s new marketing campaign. Do not start this way:
“Good morning, how is everyone doing? Good. Good! It’s a pleasure to be here, and I’d like to thank our great board of directors for the opportunity. I’m Dana Smith and this is my team, Bill, Joe, Mary, and Sophia. Today, we’re planning on giving you a marketing presentation on ToughBolt Corporation’s situation. We’re hoping that—”
No . . . no . . . and no.
Direct and to-the-point is best. Pow!
Try starting this way:
“Today we present ToughBolt’s new marketing campaign — a campaign to regain the 6 percent market share lost in 2011 and increase our market share. By another 10 percent. A campaign to lead us into the next year to result in a much stronger and competitive market position.”
You see? This is not the best intro, but it’s solid. No “random facts.” No wasted words. No metaphorical throat-clearing.
No backing into the presentation, and no tiptoeing.
You have set the stage for a powerful business presentation.
Put the Pow into Your Powerful Business Presentation!
Now, let’s add some Pow to it. A more colorful and arresting introductory Situation Statement might be:
“As we sit here today — right now — changes in our industry attack our firm’s competitive position three ways. How we respond to these challenges now will determine Toughbolt’s future for good or ill . . . for survival . . . or collapse. Our recommended response? Aggressive growth. We now present the source of those challenges, how they threaten us, and our marketing team’s solution to regain Toughbolt’s position in the industry and to continue robust growth in market share and profitability.”
Remember in any story, there must be change. The reason we give a case presentation is that something has changed in the company’s fortunes.
We must explain this change. We must craft a response to this change.
And we must front-load our introduction with Pow! to include our recommendation.
That’s why you have assembled your team. To explain the threat or the opportunity. To provide your analysis. To recommend action!
Remember, put Pow into your beginning. Leverage the opportunity when the audience is at its most alert and attentive. Right at the start.
Craft a Situation Statement that grabs them and doesn’t let go.
For more on putting the Pow! into powerful business presentations, have a look here.
Blast into the mind . . . start your presentation with a hook or grabber, a lead sentence that seizes your audience’s attention.
Some experts estimate that you have an initial 15 seconds – maybe 20 – to hook and hold your audience as you start your presentation.
And with a kaleidoscope of modern-day distractions, you face an uphill battle. In that short window of less than a minute, while they’re sizing you up, you must blast into their minds.
So how do you go about hooking and reeling in your audience in those first crucial seconds?
Start your Presentation with Explosives
Think of your message or your story as your explosive device. To set it off properly, so it doesn’t fizzle, you need a detonator.
This is your “lead” or your “grabber.”
Your “hook.”
This is your detonator for blasting into the mind.
This is a provocative line that communicates to your listeners that they are about to hear something uncommon. Something special.
Start your presentation with this provocative line, and you create a desire in your audience to hear what comes next. The next sentence . . . and the next . . . until you are deep into your presentation and your audience is with you stride-for-stride.
But they must step off with you from the beginning. You get them to step off with you by blasting into the mind.
“Thank you, thank you very much . . .”
You don’t blast into the mind with a stock opening like this:
“Thank you very much, Bill, for that kind and generous introduction. Friends, guests, associates, colleagues, it’s a real pleasure to be here tonight with so many folks committed to our cause, and I’d like to say a special hello to a group of people who came down from Peoria to visit with us here this evening, folks who are dedicated to making our world a better place, a more sustainable world that we bequeath to our children and our children’s children. And also a shout-out to the men and women in the trenches, without whose assistance . . .”
That sort of thing.
Folks in your audience are already checking their email. In fact, they’re no longer your audience. And you’ve heard this kind of snoozer before, far too many times.
Why do people talk this way? Because it’s what they’ve heard most of their business lives. You hear it, you consider it, you shrug, and you think that this must be the way it’s done.
You come to believe that dull, monotone, stock-phrased platitudes comprise the secret formula for giving a keynote address, an after-dinner speech, or a short presentation.
You believe that a listless audience is natural.
Not at all! The key is to do a bit of mind-blasting as you start your presentation!
Mind-Blasting
You must blast into their minds to crack that hard shell of inattention. You must say something provocative, but relevant. You must grab your listeners and keep them. You must arrest their attention long enough to make it yours.
Something like this:
“The gravestone was right where the old cobbler said it would be . . . at the back of the overgrown vacant lot. And when I knelt down to brush away the moss and dirt, I could see my hand trembling. The letters etched in granite became visible one by one. My breath caught when I read the inscription–”
Or this . . .
“There were six of them, my back was against the hard brick wall, and let me tell you . . . I learned a hard lesson–”
The opening of your business presentation should be explosive . . . metaphorically speaking, of course
Or this . . .
“I was stupid, yes stupid. I was young and impetuous. And that’s the only excuse I have for what I did. I will be ashamed of it for the rest of my life–”
Or this . . .
“At the time, it seemed like a good idea . . . but then we heard the ominous sound of a grinding engine, the trash compactor starting up–”
Or this . . .
“She moved through the crowd like shimmering eel cuts the water . . . I thought that she must be a special woman. And then I knew she was when she peeled off her leather jacket . . . and, well–”
You get the idea. Each of these mind-blasters rivets audience attention on you. Your listeners want to hear what comes next. Of course, your mind-blaster must be relevant to your talk and the message you plan to convey. If you engage in theatrics for their own sake, you’ll earn the enmity of your audience, which is far worse than inattention.
So craft an initial mind-blaster to lead your audience from sentence to sentence, eager to hear your next one.
And you will have succeeded in hooking and holding your listeners in spite of themselves for outstanding personal competitive advantage.
Expression is an especially powerful technique that can imbue your presentation with gravitas and deeper meaning
Do you ever consider how you actually appear to people with regard to your facial expressions?
Many folks are seemingly oblivious to their own expressions or to a lack of expressiveness. Their faces appear dull and lifeless.
Nondescript.
In your business presentation, you communicate far more with your face than you probably realize. This can be an especially powerful source of personal competitive advantage.
Your facial expressions can reinforce your message, confuse your audience, or detract from your message. Yes, there exists something called bad expression, and at its worst, it can generate hostility in your audience.
Your Especially Powerful Communication Tool
Expression is sometimes discussed in conjunction with gesture, and indeed there is a connection. The power of expression has always been recognized as a vital communication tool, reinforcing words and even, at times, standing on their own.
Joseph Mosher was one of the giants of the early 20th Century public speech instruction, and he dares venture into territory rarely visited by today’s sterile purveyors of “business communication.”
Mosher actually addressed the personality of the speaker. These are the qualities that bring success.
[T]here is no one element of gesture which furnishes as unmistakable and effective an indication of the speaker’s thought and feeling as does the expression of the mouth and eyes. The firm-set mouth and flashing eye speak more clearly than a torrent of words; the smile is as good as, or better than, a sentence in indicating good humor; the sneering lip, the upraised brow, or the scowl need no verbal commentary.
Consider these expressions: A curl of the lip to indicate disapproval . . . or even contempt. The raising of one eyebrow to indicate doubt . . . or skepticism. Sincere furrows in the brow to indicate sincerity . . . or great concern.
Expressions Increase Power . . . or Weaken Your Message
These expressions, coupled with the appropriate words, have a tremendous impact on your audience. They increase the power of your message. They ensure that your message is clear.
Facial expressions can erase ambiguity and leave no doubt in the minds of your listeners what you are communicating. The appropriate facial expression can arouse emotion and elicit sympathy for your point of view. It’s an important component of charisma.
Our expressions can enhance our presentation . . . or cripple it, and thorough knowledge of how our expressions can lift our talk or derail it is essential to becoming a powerful business communicator. Let’s watch how . . .
Fix this one voice pathology of Uptalk and vault yourself into the upper echelon of folks who sound like they know what they’re talking about
While it does seem to be spreading like a virus, Uptalk does not spell the end of civilization.
No, the rapid spread of this debilitating voice pathology is not as alarming as, say, the spread of the Rage virus in the film 28 Days Later . . .
But . . .
Uptalk does show an incredible degradation of the language and of clear ideas, confidently expressed . . . especially in business presentations.
And as with most obstacles, there is an opportunity buried inside this one.
This infestation of uptalk offers you an valuable opportunity. For this opportunity to work for you to its maximum, you must keep it to yourself so that the gulf and the contrast between you and them is as great as can be.
If you can overcome your own tendency toward uptalk, which is a hoi-polloi kind of thing, you will have lifted yourself above the horde of uptalking babblers that seems to increase daily.
You can do this by training yourself to speak with a forthright confidence.
The Uptalk Pathology
Uptalk is the maddening rise of inflection at the end of declarative sentences that transforms simple statements into an endless stream of questioning uncertainty.
As if the speaker is contantly asking for validation. Looking for others to nod in agreement.
Yes, maddening . . . and it infests everyone exposed to this voice with doubt, unease, and irritation. It screams amateur when used in formal presentations.
It cries out: “I don’t know what I’m talking about here. I just memorized a series of sentences and I’m spitting them out now in this stupid presentation. I’m not invested in this exercise at all.”
Poet and social commentator Taylor Mali has this to say about this voice pathology . . .
Uptalk radiates weakness and uncertainty and doubt. It conveys the mood of unfinished business, as if something more is yet to come. A steady drumbeat of questioning non-questions.
You create a tense atmosphere with Uptalking that is almost demonic in its effect. This tic infests your audience with an unidentifiable uneasiness. At its worst, your audience wants to cover ears and cry “make it stop!” . . . but they aren’t quite sure at what they should vent their fury.
Uptalk = “I don’t know what I’m talking about”
In certain places abroad, this tic is known as the Australian Questioning Intonation, popular among young Australians. The Brits are less generous in their assessment of this barbarism, calling it the “moronic interrogative,” a term coined by comedian Rory McGrath.
In United States popular culture, listen for uptalk in any popular youth-oriented television show.
Reality television females, as a breed, seem unable to express themselves in any other way. Their lives appear as one big query.
But you can fix this.
In fact, you can gain an especially powerful competitive advantage simply by eliminating this pathology. If you speak with straightforward declarative sentences, with confidence and conviction, your personal presence gains power, and this power increases the more it is contrasted with the hosts of questioning babblers around you who seem unsure of anything.
For many young speakers, Uptalk is the only roadblock standing between them and a major step up in presentation power.
And recognizing that you have this awful habit is halfway to correcting it.
PowerPoint is a great tool for our business presentations . . . when we use it correctly
Microsoft’s PowerPoint multimedia software has gotten a bum rap, and this unfair reputation springs from the thousands of ugly presentations given every day from folks who don’t know how to use it.
And yet, PowerPoint is a brilliant tool.
But just as any tool – say, a hammer or saw – can contribute to the construction of a masterpiece . . . or a monstrosity, PowerPoint either contributes to the creation of an especially powerful presentation, or it becomes the weapon of choice to inflict yet another heinous public-speaking crime on a numbed audience.
PowerPoint isn’t the problem. Clueless presenters are the problem.
So just how do you use PowerPoint?
This short video reviews several of my own techniques that provide basic guidance on sound PowerPoint use.
Stories can capture powerful ideas in a few telling strokes, and stories involve your audience better than any other competing technique.
But in telling a story, we can sometimes veer off-course. We get so enamored with our own words that they build a momentum of their own, and they draw us along with their own impetus.
That’s why it’s imperative that we stay tethered to our main point.
Professional storyteller Doug Lippman calls this the Most Important Thing. I like to call it the MIP – the Most Important Point.
Christopher Witt is a competent coach for today’s executives, and he makes a powerful point about a story’s MIP. He calls it the Big Idea:
A good movie tells one simple, powerful story. If you can’t sum it up in a sentence or two, it’s not a good story – and it won’t make a good movie. The same is true for a speech. A movie tells one story. A speech develops one idea. But it’s got to be a good idea – a policy, a direction, an insight, a prescription. Something that provides clarity and meaning, something that’s both intellectually and emotionally engaging. It’s got to be what I call a Big Idea.
What is your Most Important Point? Your MIP?
Decide!
Decide and make that point the focus of your presentation story. Rivet your attention on that salient feature!
Let this be core of your story and build around it.
I urge you to focus on one point, because our tendency as business people is to include everything initially, or to add-on infinitum until the story collapses under its own weight. The military calls this “mission creep,” and we can call it “story creep.”
Simple awareness of story creep is usually sufficient guard against it.
MIP Permeates Your Presentation Story
Your MIP should run through your story, both directly and indirectly.
It informs your story and keeps you on-track as you prepare and practice your presentation. At each stage of your presentation preparation, ask yourself and members of your group if the material at hand supports your MIP.
If it does not, then it does not belong in your story.
Telling a story does not mean reliance upon emotion only. You must have substance. There must be a significant conclusion with each supporting point substantiated by research and fact and analytical rigor. This should go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway.
Actually, Ralph Waldo Emerson said it much better than I can:
Eloquence must be grounded on the plainest narrative. Afterward it may warm itself until it exhales symbols of every kind and color, and speaks only through the most poetic forms; but, first and last, it must still be at bottom a statement of fact. The orator is thereby an orator, that he keeps his feet ever on a fact. Thus only is he invincible. No gifts, no graces, no power of wit or learning or illustration will make any amends for want of this.
Presentation Stage fright can leech the energy and confidence from our business presenting
When we speak of presentation stage fright, we are really talking about the battle within ourselves as we prepare to deliver our presentation.
It’s self-confidence versus self-doubt.
Confidence is one of those elusive qualities. It’s almost paradoxical. When we have it, it’s invisible. When we don’t have it, it’s all too apparent to us.
Confidence in public speaking is hard to come by.
Or so we think.
Let’s back into this thing called confidence.
Controlling Presentation Stage Fright
Your measure of your self-confidence is really a measure of your conception of yourself. Recognize that you don’t need the validation of others in what you do.
This doesn’t mean to act in ways immature and self-indulgent and uncaring of others’ expectations. It means charting your own course with your internal moral and professional compass and having the strength of mind and purpose not to yield to kibitzers, naysayers, and kneejerk critics.
For many, the audience is your bogeyman. And after reading about the symptoms and hearing so much about handwringing over presentation stage fright, if you weren’t fearful of business speaking before, you certainly are now. For some reason many folks fear the audience. Needlessly.
But understand that they are not gathered there to harm you . . . they are gathered to hear what you have to say. And 99.99 percent of them mean you well. They want you to succeed, so that they can benefit in some way.
Seize the Command Position and act like you belong there to overcome presentation stage fright
Yes, even your fellow students want you to succeed. They want to be entertained. Please entertain us, they think. They are open to whatever new insight you can provide. And they know, for a fact, that they will be in your same place many times during their careers.
They are fellow-travelers in the business school presentation journey.
And so confidence is yours for the taking.
Confidence is not a thing. It cannot be grasped or packaged or bought. It’s a state of mind, isn’t it? It’s a feeling.
When we get right down to it, it really is just the mental context within which we perform. What does it really mean to be confident? Can you answer that direct question? Think for a moment.
See? We can’t even think of confidence outside of doing something, of performing an action.
Is it certitude?
Is it knowledge?
Is it bravery?
Is it surety?
Think of the times when you are confident. You might be confident at playing a certain sport or playing a musical instrument. It could be an activity with which you feel comfortable, through repetition or intimate familiarity.
Why are you confident?
Paradoxically, it’s the absence of uncertainty. For it’s uncertainty that makes us fearful. That, and the dread of some consequence – embarrassment or ridicule.
It should be recognized that many people do fear speaking before an audience. Presentation stage fright is so universal and it is so pervasive that we must come to grips with it.
This fear has made its way down through the ages. It has afflicted and paralyzed thousands of speakers and presenters who have come before you. Generations of speakers before you have tackled this fear. George Rowland Collins is an old master who recognized the phenomenon in 1923 and its awful effect on the would-be presenter . . .
The very first problem that faces the average man in speech-making is the problem of nervousness. To stand up before an audience without a scrap of paper or a note of any kind, to feel the eyes of dozens and even hundreds of people upon you, to sense the awful silence that awaits your own words, to know that you must depend upon yourself and yourself alone to hold the audience’s attention is as trying a task as it is possible to undertake. Most men find the task too great and shun it religiously. Those who do attempt it, voluntarily, or involuntarily, testify to the severity of the physical and mental suffering it involves.
The solution? How have centuries of speakers successfully overcome this bete noire of stage fright?
They have done it by reducing uncertainty.
Reduce your uncertainty by following the Three Ps.
Principles, Preparation, Practice
Reduce your uncertainty by applying the Three Ps: Principles, Preparation, Practice. Through these, you achieve a wealth of self-confidence. They are so utterly essential to Power Presenting that they bear repetition and constant reinforcement. They are the cornerstone upon which you build your style, your confidence, your performance pizzazz.
The 7 principles of presenting offered here at Business School Presenting™ – the “secrets” of the masters – are grouped under Stance, Voice, Gesture, Movement, Expression, Appearance and Passion. Each of these deserves its own chapter and, indeed, has its own chapter in my book The Official College Guide to Business School Presenting.
Professional presence can imbue your presentation with exceptional credibility, so eliminate that Presentation Stage Fright
Prepare your talk, then practice your talk at least 4 times, exactly as you will deliver it – without stopping.
When you apply the Three Ps, you reduce uncertainty. You are in possession of the facts. You are prepared. You know what to expect because you have been there before, and because you practice. You eliminate Presentation Stage Fright.
There is always, of course, an element of uncertainty. You cannot control everything or everybody, and this causes a tinge of anxiety, but that’s fuel for your creative engine.
By controlling the 90 percent that you can, you are more than ready to handle the 10 percent of uncertainty that awaits you.
So the key for you is to control what you can and to dismiss your fear of the rest. Recognize that this fear is what makes you human, and it is this humanity that gives us commonality with all the public speakers and presenters who have come before us.
It is their advice that we heed to our improvement.
For instance, master J. Berg Esenwein from 109 years ago:
Even when you are quaking in your boots with the ague of fear, and your teeth fain would beat “retreat,” you must assume a boldness you do not feel. For doing this there is nothing like deep stately breathing, a firm look at the dreaded audience . . . . But do not fear them. They want you to succeed, and always honor an exhibition of pluck. They are fair and know you are only one man against a thousand. . . . Look at your audience squarely, earnestly, expressively.
And banish presentation stage fright forever.
For much more on developing professional presence and achieving personal competitive advantage through business presenting, consult The Complete Guide to Business Presenting.
It’s not an easy question. How we prepare and practice can be as crucial as the substance of our show.
Your group has produced a written analysis. It’s finished.
Now, you must present before the directors of the Toughbolt Corporation.
What now?
The Key to Successful Presentation Preparation is . . .
Apply the sound method of correct Preparation – the second of the Three Ps.
Your task is clear. You must present your conclusions to an audience. Here is where I give you one of the most important gems of wisdom necessary to giving a first-rate show.
Your presentation is a completely different product than your written report. Let me repeat that, because it is so misunderstood and ignored.
Your presentation is a completely different product than your written report.
It’s a completely different mode of communication.
Do you wonder how this is possible, since you create your presentation from a written report? Since you are creating an information product from a case, how can the product be different, simply because one product is written and the other visual and vocal?
Completely different.
It is different in exactly the same way that a film is a completely different product than a novel, even if the story is supposedly the same. It is different in the way that a play read silently from the page differs from a play acted out on stage.
You operate in a different medium.
You have time constraints.
A group is receiving your message.
A group is delivering the message.
You have almost no opportunity for repeat.
You have multiple opportunities to miscommunicate.
In short, you are in a high-risk environment and you are vulnerable, far more vulnerable than you might be in a written report, where the risk is controllable. Have a look at the chart below.
These many differences between written and oral reports are, to many people, invisible.
Many folks believe that there is no difference.
And this is why those same folks believe that delivering a presentation is “easy.” It consists of little more than cutting and pasting a written report’s points onto a half-dozen cramped slides, and then reading them in public.
As absurd as this might appear in print, it actually has currency. People believe this, because they’ve not been told otherwise.
Finance people are especially prone to this habit, believing that the “numbers tell the story.” The more numbers, the better. The more obtuse the spreadsheet, the tinier the font, the more complex the chart, the more stuff packed on each slide, the better.
Such a vague, incomprehensible, numbers-heavy mess seems to be the currency of many business presentations. It’s totally wrong, and it’s totally unneccessary.
Part of your preparation is the crafting of clear, compelling, and on-point graphics that support your message . . . not obscure it. Rid your presentation of chart junk. Zero-in to achieve what I call über focus.
“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”
Perhaps you’ve said that? I’ve certainly heard it.
“How come I never get assigned an interesting topic?”
Now, whether any topic is inherently interesting or not is irrelevant to your task. It’s your duty to craft a talk that interests the audience. Cases are not assigned to you so that they will interest you. Your tasks as a project manager or consultant don’t come to you on the basis of whether they interest you.
No one cares if they “interest” you. That’s not the point.
We all would love to be spoon-fed “interesting” topics. But what’s an “interesting” topic?
I have found the following to be true:
The students who complain about never getting an interesting topic actually do get assigned inherently interesting topics. They don’t recognize them as interesting. And they invariably butcher a potentially interesting topic and miss every cue and opportunity to craft a great presentation.
Moreover, it is your job to presenting an especially powerful and scintillating presentation, regardless of the topic.
Face it. If you don’t take presenting seriously, then you won’t prepare any differently for an “interesting” topic than you would for a “boring” topic. You simply want an interesting topic for yourself . . . not so you can do a bang-up job for the audience or client.
Let’s shed that attitude.
Great presenters recognize the drama and conflict and possibilities in every case. They invariably craft an interesting presentation whether the topic concerns tenpenny nails or derivatives or soap.
Crank up Interest
How do you generate interest? Public speaking master James Winans provides several suggestions:
[I]nterest is, generally speaking, strongest in old things in new settings, looked at from new angles, given new forms and developed with new facts and ideas, with new light on familiar characters, new explanations of familiar phenomena, or new applications of old truths.
Let’s go . . .
The typical start to a presentation project is . . .
. . . procrastination.
You put it off as a daunting task. Or you put it off because you believe you can “wing it.” Or you lament that you don’t have an “interesting topic.”
Let’s say that your task is to provide a SWOT within the body of a group presentation, and your time is 4-5 minutes. What is your actual task here? Think about it. How do you usually approach the task? How do you characterize it?
Here is my guess at how you approach it.
You define your task as:
“How can I fit X amount of information into this limited time?”
In your own mind, the objective is not to communicate clearly to your audience. Your only objective is to “fit it all in.” And if you “achieve” this dubious objective, then in your mind you will have succeeded.
Unfortunately, your professor might agree with you, since many b-school professors look only for “content.” They do not evaluate whether the content has been communicated clearly and effectively. And this is what is missing – you don’t analyze how or why or in what way you can present the information in a public forum.
If a written paper has already been produced, this complicates your task. You feel the irresistible allure of cut ’n’ paste.
The result is less than stellar, and you end up trying to shovel 10 pounds of sand into a five-pound pail. The result is predictable.
Your slides are crammed with information.
You talk fast to force all the points in. You run over-time.
You fail. You fail to deliver a star-spangled presentation for lack of proper presentation preparation.
This Time, Procrustes has it Right
Take the Procrustean approach. This approach is named after Procrustes, a figure from Greek mythology. The Columbia Encyclopedia describes the myth thusly:
He forced passersby to lie on a very long bed and then stretched them to fit it. If they were too tall to fit his bed, he sawed off their legs. Using Procrustes’ own villainous methods, Theseus killed him.
Surely Procrustes was a villain, what with sawing off people’s legs or stretching them to fit an arbitrary standard. In modern-day parlance, it has retained its negative connotation with the term “Procrustean solution.”
“Procrustean solution” is the undesirable practice of tailoring data to fit its container or some other preconceived stricture. A common example from the business world is embodied in the notion that no résumé should exceed one page in length.
But in this case, let’s give Procrustes a break.
Your Procrustean Solution
Let’s take a Procrustean approach and make a better presentation. Consider this:
We have no choice in the length of our presentation. It’s four minutes. Or five minutes. That’s our Procrustean Bed. So let’s make the most of it and manipulate the situation to our benefit and to the benefit of our audience.
We’re not stretching someone or something. And we’re not hacking off legs.
We are using our mind and judgment to select what should be in our show and what should not be in our show.
And if you find the decision of what to include too difficult, then let’s do even more Procrustean manipulation. Pick only three major points that you want to make.
Only three.
Here is your task now:
Pick three points to deliver in 4-5 minutes. If you must deliver an entire SWOT, then select one strength, one weakness, one opportunity, and one threat.
Why do we do this? Here’s why:
If you try to crowbar an entire SWOT analysis into a four-minute presentation, with multiple points for each category, you overwhelm your audience. They turn off and tune you out. You will lose them, and you will fail.
Presenting too many points is worse than only one point. If you present, say, a total of 5 strengths, 3 weaknesses, 4 opportunities, and 3 threats, no one remembers it. None of it. You irritate your audience mercilessly. Your presentation presents the results of analysis, not a laundry list of facts on which you base your analysis. The SWOT is, in fact, almost raw data.
You want the audience to remember how you massage the data, analyze it, and arrange it. You want the audience to remember your conclusions.
You take information and transforming it into intelligence.
You winnow out the chaff and leave only the wheat.
You reduce the static and white noise so that the communicative signal can be heard.
You are panning for gold, washing away the detritus so the nuggets can be found. When you buy gold, you don’t buy the waste product from which it was drawn, do you? Do you buy a gold ring set in a box of sand? Of course not, and neither should you offer up bucketfuls of presentation sand when you present your analytical gold to your client.
Your job is to sift through the mountains of information available, synthesize it, compress it, make it intelligible, then present it in a way that is understandable and, if possible, entertaining. An especially powerful presentation.
Digest these presentation preparation tips and try them out in your next presentation. Watch yourself produce and deliver the most powerful presentation of your young career.
