Back to some presentations from last week.One was list of ways to… it really doesn’t matter. The presenter had 7 points to be a better… whatever it was he was talking about. Seven is probably too many points for a 20-minute presentation, or any presetnation for that matter. People just can’t remember seven things unless you’ve got a really good organizational method to share.These points weren’t organized very well — almost random in nature — and another cardinal sin of point-making was racked up when he didn’t identify his points as he went through them. He got to point #4 and said so, and the heads all over the room popped up and around as everyone at the same time realized that the previous point that they recognized was point #2. Seems that he slipped in point #3 but no one noticed. That was evident when the first question was “What was point #3?” and everyone nodded. If your audience has to ask you what your point was, I’m guessing you were not as effective as you could/should have been.Then to top it off, the presenter had a few minutes left over and said he’d like to quickly give a list of ways to implement… whatever it was he was talking about. And this list had 10 MORE points. And we only got 6 of the first 7. By the end, even the best note-takers were tired, no one really felt like remembering anything. I think if you were to query the audience after the presentation about the content, they’d simply say, “There were a lot of points.” And they didn’t remember any of them. I’d rather have one point that everyone remembered than a lot of good ones that no one remembered.
Make points clear and keep their number low.
