Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

Finding the Right Tool for the Job

As a tool for convincing people of big ideas, a typical business presentation built from a template of bulleted lists fails in so many ways.

The reasons are plentiful. Different people start with different assumptions, learn in different ways, and need different information to make decisions. Some people are detail-oriented and some like the big picture. Some need a logical argument; others want to understand the impact on people and processes. You cannot provide all possible permutations of the information needed, yet make it easy to navigate and understand with a standard bullet list template. Yet people try, and as a result, members of the audience either become confused or angry about your presentation, or they ignore it. What could be less effective than that?

If the standard presentation template approach isn't an effective way to convince people, why do we use it? Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” And that applies here. Most PowerPoint presentations created to convince people of a new idea are about as effective as using a hammer and chisel to slice bread. It will work, sometimes, but not very often and not very well.

This is a reboot. We are starting over, and questioning the basic idea of the presentation itself.

This book is about how to effectively communicate that a change needs to happen so people will be motivated to take action. The approach we will introduce ...