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

Focusing First on “Why”

We are going to ask you to focus first on answering the question “Why?” However, in our training sessions, most people are tempted to fire up their software and start by creating slides. Sometimes, we hear the justification, “I just wanted to start capturing some thoughts.” The trouble is that these thoughts take time and effort to lay out and build into a final presentation. Millions of hours are wasted every year around the world as very busy people start their presentations before they have clearly thought through the message they want to convey. Moreover, most books on improving presentations start with the assumption that you already know the story you want to tell. In this book, we are proposing that you work out your message first, in order to understand the problem that you aim to solve.

In this chapter you'll develop a clear understanding of the problem you need to solve, which will drive the rest of the content for the story. Everything that needs to be changed, all activities, need to link to one of the reasons “Why.” You'll also use this process to develop a better understanding of your audience. For every reason “Why,” you need to identify the individual or group in the audience it relates to.

This process is iterative. Although you start with “Why,” you'll quickly start to record notes that you will use when developing the “Who,” “What,” and “How.” Later as you work on these cells, you may identify additional reasons “Why” or need to come ...