Transcript – 4.2 – Deliver – Packs

Hi there, welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about the final part of our framework, which is all about delivering your communication. And in particular, today we're going to focus on PowerPoint presentations. Now, many people don't like PowerPoint. And I think that's partly because certainly creating slides is challenging, but actually getting the architecture of the deck, right is is difficult, particularly if you don't have a really good view of what your storyline should look like. So today, I want to take you on a journey through three steps to making sure you can package your storyline into a really powerful piece of communication. So firstly, we've got to visualize the high level structural links between the storyline and the deck. Secondly, we got to know how to test those links. And finally, we're going to make sure our slides do justice to our storyline. Let's get into it.

Now, everything we've done in other parts of the program has been focused on getting the right information in our storyline, and synthesizing our ideas so that our messaging is clear and compelling. What I want to just remind you of here is that what we do is make sure that that storyline is nailed down. It's absolutely firm, before we prepare our document, otherwise we get lost in the detail. We make all sorts of slides that we don't need. As our thinking evolves. If we can discipline ourselves to prepare that one page storyline, get it really right, then prepare a communication, we are so far ahead of the game. So what do we do once that storyline is nailed down? What we do is think about how do we connect it to the structure of our presentation. And you'll see here on the slide on the screen that Firstly, what we do is have three slides, which will be pretty common to almost any PowerPoint anyway.

There'll be the title page, there'll be a background page, and then there'll be a storyline page. Now, you can choose how much detail you want to have on that page. And you can also choose how you represent your ideas on that page, that third page, it could be that you put the storyline there, a number of our clients do that. It could be that you have a framework, it could be that you have three dot points down the down the slide, as I've done for my presentation, it could be really simple. Either way, what you're doing is alerting your audience to the high level structure of your story. And in the first three slides, you're giving them the equivalent of an executive summary of your whole presentation. And then what you're going to do is going to vary according to the size and the regularity of the shape of your storyline. If it's a very simple short presentation, we'll have three pages at the start as I head there. And then we perhaps have one page per chunk or per section of the storyline. If it's a much deeper storyline with more detail under each point, we might have some extra navigation. And we'll have perhaps a one page per doc point in storyline. And then finally, if it is a really enormous maybe 50 page deck, then we go to need to have extra layers of navigation. So firstly, let's look at this a bit more of a principled level. And then we'll dive into a couple of examples to illustrate what we're talking about. So here I've got a storyboard on the screen that's evolving.

Firstly, we have a title page that says what we're talking about. Secondly, we talk about where the story came from. That's our background page or our introduction. And that really helped us story nine stand alone. Then we have our executive summary without two to five points, highlighting the high level of our story before we then start breaking out that first section. And you'll see that there we have the message on the title of the slide that matches the message in the doc point that sits underneath part one. And that pattern of taking the language the words from the storyline, the messages from the storyline. And then using those as our titles is part of the difference in the way that we think about building a PowerPoint presentation. We want to make sure that those slides each slide has a single message that's tightly connected to the storyline. And you can see there on the screen, how that evolves, how it falls out as we work through the story.

Now, just to illustrate that from a practical perspective, I've got the coonawarra storyline here. Now this is the same storyline we use in the sowhat strategy book. So you can see this played out there and of course you can download this version when by clicking the notes below. So what we have here Is the title page, we've got our background page without context or trigger, then we've got our executive summary for the presentation, in this case, three boxes illustrating a three part story. And then you roll out to have that the message from each of those three boxes as the title for the following three pages. So if I just roll out now, into the actual presentation itself, you can see what I mean. I'll just roll through these pages quickly. You can, of course, stop the video and look more closely if that interests you. But firstly, here we have the title page with our topic title. Then we have our background page. Now I haven't used a title here for background, it doesn't seem relevant. It's not a message title. It's just introduction or background. And if I'm actually present presenting this to a roomful of people, I'm actually not going to show this slide.

This is brief, I have it as a handout, so people can read it as perhaps pre reading. Then I come to our, in this case, a more detailed version of the the storyline overview. And then what I do is I come to the first slide here, and you can see that navigator on the top right corner, just to remind me where I'm up to, I mean, the first of the three sections. Now I'm in the second. Now I'm in the third section of that storyline, just to remind the audience where we're up to within that overall story. Now I've got a slightly more complex one to show you, it's still a very regular shape. This is Transylvanian industrial product. So if you see here on the slide, again, we've got the same pattern happening, we've got the three the title page, the background page, and then the overview page, with the executive summary being formed at the very beginning of the deck. And then we're breaking down one page per point, as we go through it section by section, coming back to that chapter break, if you like as a navigator for each section of the story and rolling on until we get to the end.

Now if you look below the screen here, you'll see that there is a bundle of PowerPoint slides that you can download, that give you a series of seven different examples of very different kinds of PowerPoint packs. So some of those are simple. Some of them are complex, some of them are regular, some of them are irregular in their shape. So I think it's easier to see some illustrations, rather than just me sitting here and running through all the minutiae of the reasoning behind it, or the ways in which we've structured those decks. So what I did was I took the seven storyline patterns in the sowhat strategy, picked an example one for each pattern, and then illustrated them as a PowerPoint for you. So I hope that's a useful reference. And we'll back up what I've talked about already here. Now, the second point that I want to talk about today's making sure you know how to test the links between the storyline and your document.

Now already, you'll be very familiar with the 10 point test for storylines. We've been using that consistently throughout the presentations that we've had for you. So I'm Hope you're really familiar with that. What I have here for you today is a new one. Now this one, you'll see we've color coded it differently just to help to differentiate it from the other storyline test. This one focuses on specifically how to convert a storyline into a piece of communication be that a prose document or a PowerPoint presentation, or any other kind of communication. So the first thing we do is just confirm that the structure of the storyline matches the structure of the communication. So those first four questions there, help us remember what we're talking about there. The second piece there is about sections, that's all about making sure each section or chapter, all of our communication functions, making sure that there's a context trigger. And so what for the section, what main message for the section if you like, and then making sure that the supporting structure within each section is solid. So when we get to look at the style, we talking about making sure that the document itself absolutely shines. So we want to make sure that the signposting is clear.

The headings tell the story. They're not just topics or categories, if you like the actual messages taken from the storyline, that the visuals are right and clean and it's not cluttered on every page, and making sure that the language is clear using plain English standards. So that test is there to help you evaluate whether you've made sure that you've transferred your storyline into a PowerPoint in a really clear and compelling way. Now once you've done that, of course, you want to make sure that each of the slides in your presentation does justice to your story. line and I've got some things here to for you to think about to check. Firstly, I'd encourage you to minimize clutter and maximize whitespace storyline is all about using constraints to make sure we're very clear. And we want to make sure that we're using constraints on the pages as well make sure you don't overload them with stuff. keep it really simple, really clean and, and remember that whitespace is your friend. Secondly, have one sharp headline is the main message for each slide.

You may well need to shrink your messages a little, if they are lengthy, I'd encourage you to think about being a newspaper journalist, and shrinking those headlines into a headline like you would for a newspaper, maybe think of seven to 10 words if you can, and just pull out the essence of that message and use that as the title. You don't want the title to run on for three lines to occasionally okay, but certainly not three. So make sure your language is really tight. And it's one main message for each slide. And then thirdly, ensure each slide reads from the top left to the bottom right, our eyes when we're reading in English, are trained to read from top left to bottom right. So organize it so it's natural for your reader to follow through the slide.

Then make sure you match the content of the slide to the message. Arrange your PowerPoint around the storyline with the messages coming first, and then work out what to put on each slide. Try not to do it in reverse. And then finally, when you need to reference details of research or anything like sources, make sure you do that. So then we have three things to consider when we're building a really powerful presentation out of our storyline when we're packaging it. So it's really compelling. Thanks so much for being with me today. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Bye for now.