Presentation Secrets: Do What you Never Thought Possible With Your Presentations

CHAPTER 1

What Is Presentation?

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Communicating with presentations
• How this book is organized
• Storytelling, slides, and delivery
• The three principles

In late 2003, I was working for a consulting company as an analyst. The firm specialized in policy advising. Our clients were Russian ministries, senators, regulators, and formerly state-run, now privatized, companies. My job was to write reports to support decision-making processes. I had almost no contact with the clients, and frankly, I didn't suffer much because of that. I was quite happy just writing. But then came “the day.” One of the firm's partners (to whom I am now very grateful) decided that it was time for me to see the big world. I had to present one of my recent reports before the firm's client.

NOTE I tried to transform my report into a presentation in a PowerPoint deck. It was a bullet-point, teleprompter-style nightmare, which is becoming rare nowadays. I remember my boss telling me to use more pictures. In 2004, “pictures” came mostly from a clip-art gallery, which came by default with Microsoft Office. Also, I had zero design skills and my taste wasn't exactly ideal. So, yes, there were a few pictures, but frankly, it would have been much better without them.

I spoke for about 30 minutes and it all went very well, or at least I thought so. Unfortunately, it turned out that the client didn't quite share my view. He didn't understand why the report was prepared, what the findings were, and why we ...