Information is like food, or is it?
The year is 2000. A team of economists led by Hal Varian, who is now the chief economist at Google, ventured to measure the amount of information produced every year. The exercise was called How Much Information and it was repeated in 2003.
It stated that the amount of information produced in the 30 years preceding 1995 was equal to the amount of information humankind produced from the first cave painting to every bit and byte till 1965. Let that sink in!
In 2017, IBM claimed that 90% of the data in the world has been created in the two years preceding 2017. (The report is missing from the IBM website, but you can read some excerpts from it here.)
We are drowning in information. We DO NOT need any more of it, and especially when it comes to presentations. Most presentations are nothing but dumps of charts without insight. More often than not, it is raw data converted into charts.
Since we are locked out (err..in) and do not have the pleasure of being in presentations, any news channel will give you an idea of what I mean. Newsreaders are only throwing corona-related data through creatively created charts (and some of them incorrectly visualised.) All they do is read the charts out. After a few minutes, it becomes unbearable for me.
Information is Food for the Mind
Information serves exactly the same purpose as food. We eat for nutrition and pleasure (Can the foodies please say aye!) Information is no different. We consume information for nutrition and of course for pleasure.
Information is available is in abundance today. So much so, we are plagued by infobesity. Your audience does not want more of it, they crave for meaning. That is when it starts to deliver the nutrition that audiences are hungry for.
Thus if we start to look at information as food, most of the challenges that corporate presenters tackle stand addressed. Let us jump in to see what am I trying to say…Bon appetit!
1. Portion Control
None of us looks forward to the after-effects of a heavy meal or the aftermath of overeating. The impact is of utmost discomfort. Interestingly, overeating compromises on the nutritional contribution, I can assure you it takes away all the pleasure too. Anyone who has smacked every morsel off an Indian Thali would immediately relate to what I am saying. There is always MORE food in the thali than you can eat.
“It was way too long,” is the most often heard remark at the end of a presentation that is prepared like a thali. Even a 20-minute presentation can seem like an eternity if the information is not packaged to deliver meaning.
Never forget that your audience will always have less time than you, the presenter. And overstuffed is underexplained. Sharpen your message by applying what we call the secret ingredient to successful presentations — the rule of three.
2. Aroma Drives Taste
Nothing gets your taste buds in overdrive than the whiff of your favourite dish. Millions of us wake up and work only after they have had their fix of caffeine. Coffee (my poison is tea) delivers the boost that you need. Studies suggest that just the aroma of coffee is enough to stir your brain.
Presentations have their equivalent of aroma — slide design. Slide design is often ignored and most slides end up being cluttered to the point that boring presentations are often incorrectly called Death by PowerPoint.
Slide design serves a very important function — it drives interpretation. A well designed slide highlights the key message on it which amplifies what the presenter is saying.
An often ignored advantage of well-designed slides is speaker confidence. Many clients feel a marked improvement in their level of confidence when the slides are designed to communicate the messages clearly. Conversely, audiences expect and appreciate well-designed slides. And their expectations are rather specific — make them visual and reduce the text and clutter.
Just like aroma drives taste, good design drives interpretation.
3. Meals Spread Across
Our body survives and thrives when the supply of food is staggered across the day. And the amount and type of food we eat matches the time of the day. And each one of us has heard that you should eat your breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper. In essence, match the food to the needs.
Again presentations are no different. Depending on the objective that must be served, you should look at your presentation either as a bite, a snack or a meal.
An elevator pitch is a presentation format known to most of us, and many of us have made one too! That is a snack. You skim the details away to give the audience a glimpse (or a whiff, if I may indulge) of what the concept is. The audience always gets it, and if they like what they saw, they ask for more. That is the power of brevity. It stokes curiosity.
I would take this just one step further. Would you even think of serving non-vegetarian fare to a vegetarian? You’re a sadist if you say yes! However in presentations, it is all about us. What we did? Who we are? What can we do? Flip this! Talk about what you can do for your audience, rather than what can you do. And that makes all the difference.
Next time you’re getting ready to craft your next presentation, do not forget to don the chef’s hat. And for that you should have your recipe ready. Or did I mean to say your story…stay tuned.
