One of the most difficult tasks when fashioning a presentation is the process of sorting through the myriad of available information and turning it into a coherent outline with a few main points and one clear focus. Think of your presentation as a photomosaic, a large photo composed of lots of little pictures. You know, like this. The small photos represent all the information given in your presentation, and if they’re arranged together in an effective way, a singular image is created, representing your presentation’s main focus. All the information presented should support your central focus. Here are some tips on how to focus your presentation.
A great way to start this process is by unloading anything and everything that comes to mind concerning your upcoming presentation. Avoid any attempts to create a thesis or narrow to a focus before you’ve unloaded everything that could be covered in the presentation. Jerry Weissman, author of the bestselling Presenting to Win, calls this the data dump, “an excessive, meaningless, shapeless outpouring of data without purpose or plan.”
He writes that the secret of the data dump is that it “must be part of your preparation, not the presentation.” Precisely. Don’t unload every bit of information onto your audience during the presentation. You’ll smother them with all that weight. It’s important to identify crucial information during the planning stage, so you can arrange it into an appropriate flow leading to a final focal point. Weissman writes that some executives tend to feel like they have to tell the audience every little thing and they end up saying too much. Keep it short and sweet, with only the most important information represented.
The best time to focus your presentation is during the brainstorming period before you’ve created an outline or even opened the computer. Brainstorming may sound like something tedious you were forced to do in school before you started actually working, but it’s an essential part of creating a presentation.
Arrange all the information you might use for the presentation in front of you. You may find it helpful to print out the documents, so you have a hard copy to take notes on and highlight. Organize the information into three main points if possible, and eliminate anything superfluous. Once you’ve organized a flow and thrown out the irrelevant, read through what you have and your focus, your thesis should be clear right away. If it’s not, go back, tidy up your main points so that they align more clearly and then try again to determine your focus. In the end, the flow of the presentation should be intuitive and the focus should be easily discernable.
Another effective way to narrow your presentation’s focus is by using Weissman’s WIIFY (What’s in it for you?) triggers. These phrases are intended to “remind presenters about the necessity of linking every element of their presentation to a clear audience benefit.” If you’re unsure whether or not to include a bit of information, or if you’re deciding whether one of your main points links up to your central focus, ask yourself these questions after each point (the ‘you’ here is the audience): “This is important to you because…, What does this mean to you? Why am I telling you this? Who cares? So what? And…?” These questions will weed out the ineffectual and unimportant because, in the end, what the audience cares about is the only thing that matters. When you lose the audience, you lose the presentation. Say only what’s critical, say it quickly and say it with a clear purpose in mind.
