When overwhelmed people deliver underwhelming presentations

We’ve seen them and been bombarded by them, those dense presentations of data, dot points, slabs of text and diagrams with .... aarrghhh our brain is fried! Sometimes we overwhelm people, overloading them with too many ideas and messages, jamming it all in one deck or pack of information.

It doesn’t make sense. This can drown people; not save them.

So beware; if you’re overwhelmed, busy, running from meeting to meeting, struggling to get clarity in your own mind ... what you create and deliver to others may well be just as messy and overwhelming. It could turn out to be underwhelming though, disappointing, confusing.

It's then easier to just ignore and disengage.

In times of major change, when people are waiting to hear, needing to see and curious to know what the heck is going on, it’s vital we manage our own state of information overload and cognitive load so we're not just passing the chaos on to everyone else.

We’ve got to 'get our head around' our own information before we can begin to think about transferring it to others. Blog posts included 😁

Time spent making things clearer ... is time very well spent. 

"You probably can’t read this slide but ..."

How often do we hear this from a leader at a conference or meeting. It’s blah blah ... non-sense.

After the wall of data comes clichéd statements, oh and those quotes from Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Henry Ford!

When leaders are speaking it soon becomes clear whether or not they’re making sense.

The ‘Blah Blaster’ - here with 3 mouths! - is the leader who waffles on and on, losing you along the way.

Baffling with data and details or sharing screens of spreadsheets you can’t see, these leaders, speakers and presenters don’t make sense and in turn, don’t help us make sense.

Too much detail.

Missing the point.

Or the point is buried.

Making sense isn’t just about doing presentation skills training. You’ve got to help people work out

🌕 what’s going on, and

🌕 what we need to do about it.

More words don’t make more sense.

We are more than pale, male stale

Quote diversity.

For your blog, presentation, proposal or slide deck … when you want to quote someone, quote with diversity. There’s a bias here and we need to act on it to counter it.

Not all your quotations need to come from Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein or Henry Ford. It’s worth finding greater diversity. You don’t need to choose from the first 4 quotes that come up when you Google ‘innovation quotations’ or ‘leadership quotes’. It’s lazy … and biased.

Source unique quotes from podcasts, interviews, books, blogs, articles, videos. When you do Google ‘leadership quotes’, go further than the first 4 or 24. Go deeper and wider to get diversity.

If a woman, a person of colour, a person with a disability, a person of a different cultural background, an LGBTQIA person is reading your proposal or reading your blog where you quote the same old quotes that are 'pale male stale’ ... good luck with that.

And ... if they are your target market, audience or decision maker, oops .. good luck with that.

Go for greater relevance and connection to more people; not that are quick or convenient to 'copy and paste'. It’s actually not that hard ... once you notice it, and then work to remove the bias. 

Pull the Plug on Change : Bullet Points are Bullshit

"Pull the plug! Go on I dare you! Step out from behind the PowerPoint slide deck you've created."

I said this to a leader of change in a health insurance business and he said ....'No. I can't do that!!!'

But if you're 'rolling out' your communications and key messages for that change and transformation project you're working on - just as this leader was - you don't need a slide deck, a pack or a bunch of pages with boxes, arrows, chevrons and bullet points in it!

In fact those bullet points you've got there? They're bullish*t.

There. It's in print. I think bullet points are bullish*t. 

They boring, linear, impossible to memorise after about five - unless you're a memory champ - and they do little to inspire or inform, particularly during times of change. 

Most of all, bullet points often show up as a default option in PowerPoint. But you need to buck the default if you want to get engagement and understanding with your message. 

With all of the information flying around your organisation and team, you want your change messages to get a little more cut-through than the notice in the kitchen that cleanliness is everyone's responsibility!

Just because you have some key points to make about change, doesn't mean they need to be communicated as points.

Unpack your entire message across different dimensions: a story, some data, a quote, the rollout plan, where things were, what they'll be like in the future, some engaging questions, some customer insights, the trends in the industry. 

So this leader who I challenged to 'pull the plug'? We took his PowerPoint pack of bullet points and crafted some flip charts, posters, key messages, a couple of stories and some questions to have dialogue with the team. 

That's what he rolled out across the country. No PowerPoint in sight. 

He did pull the plug; and his people were so pleased he did. He stepped out from behind the pack of pages. Now he's talking, engaging, interacting and co-creating the change process with his team. That's leadership!