In "But Would Saks Fifth Avenue Do It?" author Murray Raphel wrote that Saks Fifth Avenue and many other well-known businesses held themselves back from their highest potential because they were so fiercely tied to their historical standards. I see this over and over again as Executives, IT presenters, and managers, sales people and entrepreneurs stick to the same old presentation conventions they've used for years.
What good is the tremendous boon of modern computer technology for far-reaching research, collection and sorting of information, and graphics and design applications if you always do things the same old way? You've been liberated from laborious research, the old hand-drawn charts and graphs, the difficulty of using photos or multi-media, and cumbersome presentation equipment. Yet you and everyone around you have fallen into the boredom trap.
Uniformity in appearance and sequence, deadly amounts of information, and scripts and other efforts to be "perfect" and slick have wrung the creative juices out of the most innovative of persons. Many executives and senior managers impose restrictions and requirements on speakers that lead to the same old stuff being presented in the same old way, over and over. In a word, this is BORING!
Tom Peters, Mark Victor Hansen, Vince Poscente, David Allen, Ken Blanchard--these well-known speakers asked themselves "how can I be different?" That's why audiences listen to them and why they have such influence on business behaviors.
You aren't Tom, Mark Victor or Ken, but you can take a page from their speaking approach--being boring is simply not allowed. Here are three quick tips to set you free!
1) Speak only with passion. If, at first glance, you don't feel passion for your topic, either find a new slant, a fresh perspective or a contrarian concept about this topic--or don't speak about it. If you're bored, you will bore your audience.
2) Plan your content on paper, a whiteboard, or with a sticky note mind map. Do NOT start with Power Point. The limitations of Power Point--sequential, fixed size, templates that place things for you--are deadly to creativity and innovative thinking.
3) Resist all pressure to put everything you are going to say on your slides. The slides are like appetizers--they whet the appetite for the full meal. You are the source of the knowledge, the inspiration and the energy around your topic. There's nothing more boring for an audience than hearing you say everything they have just read.
David Schulman, National Director of East-West Mortgage, has accepted my challenge--to get out of his same old, same old slide style, do something different and see what happens. I'll be reporting on David's success as soon as he gives the presentation.
While he's working on his new presentation, why don't you work on yours? Then click on the comment link below and tell us how it went.
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