Презентация бизнес-проектов. Краткое руководство для менеджера

This reader-friendly series is must read for all levels of managers All managers, whether brand-new to their positions or well established in the corporate hierarchy, can use a little brushing-up now and then. The skills-based Briefcase Books Series is filled with ideas and strategies to help managers become more capable, efficient, effective, and valuable to their corporations. The ability to give a great presentation can be a tremendous career booster, while the opposite can keep a manager on a dead-end path. Presentation Skills for Managers is a practical, advice-filled book on how to create and make compelling and persuasive presentations. Besides reviewing material on preparing and delivering effective presentations, it includes new special coverage of the development and use of Powerpoint slides, something not found in most books on presentations.

Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

What Makes a Great Presentation?

Many people ask themselves the question in this chapter's title. Is it in the way you create the content? Is it in the way you put the pieces together? Is it in the way you deliver the presentation?

I know that you'd agree that there have been times when you went to a presentation or a company meeting, only to walk away feeling that it was a total waste of time. It was not a great presentation. But why?

Actually, a great presentation is a combination of the three elements: content, design, and delivery. Stay focused and use what's presented in this book and you will severely lessen the chance that your participants will walk away after one of your presentations with the feeling that it was a total waste of time. This book was specifically written to help you create a great presentation.

Content, Design, and Delivery

There are three elements to a great presentation: content, design, and delivery. Content includes the research and organization of materials. Design is the architecture of the slides and the graphical enhancements. Delivery is how you voice your message. To make the presentation great, there must be synergy of these three elements. Each of these elements carries equal weight and importance. Your presentation will not be great unless you have all three of these elements.

For example, let's say you don't do a good job researching and organizing your content, but you spend hours designing the presentation with all the bells and whistles and hours practicing your delivery. What's going to happen when you get in front of your audience? You're going to run through your presentation and it won't be interactive because you don't know more than what's on your slides. Your audience is going to pay attention to the next sound or wild animation. When someone asks you questions, you're not going to know the answers, which will severely hurt your credibility. The audience will take little or nothing back from the content of your presentation and you will look unprofessional as a presenter. By properly combining content, design, and delivery, you'll create a great presentation!

The Process

There is a process to creating that great presentation. First, you must create your content. Then, you must design for that content. Finally, you must develop your delivery strategy and style.

Content

There are some key steps to keep in mind when creating your content. First, you do your research. Then, group the information into logical categories. Finally, you create your outline. (We'll get into that in Chapter 2.)

Too often presenters don't follow those key steps. The night before a meeting, they're cramming information onto slides trying to create this great presentation. They may even be adding items to their presentation at the last minute.

To avoid the problems of late preparation and last-minute editing, think of creating the content of your presentation in terms of these three steps:

1. Do your research.

2. Group your information into logical categories.

3. Create your outline.

Design

Once you've outlined your presentation, you're ready to create your slides and add graphics, charts, and animation. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 are dedicated to helping you take your presentation from outline form to a solid complete piece of work.

Although there are other presentation programs (such as Corel Presentations, Astound Presentation, Sun Microsystem Impress, and Lotus Freelance), in this book we discuss how to create your presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. We show you how to create the proper slide, when to use images, and the proper way to use charts. We also offer insights into creating that great presentation.

Delivery

And finally, there's the delivery. You need to know the logistics of your meeting. (We cover that subject in Chapter 7.) You need to understand how to make the participants retain your message. (Just because you're talking and participants appear to be listening does not mean there is knowledge being transferred from you to them.) You need to set clear objectives in the presentation as well as state your expectations for your audience. They need to find value in your presentation. Your presentation needs to be such that what you present and how you present it causes a change in behavior of those who attend the presentation. Maybe it's a case of helping them to better understand the long-range vision of the company; if you can get them to see it in a way that helps them embrace change, improves morale, and increases productivity, your presentation has done the job. Chapters 8 and 9 will help you deliver that great presentation that gets results.

The Situation

Up to this point, we've been dealing with presentations in general. That may be the best way to begin a book on presentations, but it's the worst way to begin any presentation—and probably the best way to fail.

When you decide or find out that you're going to do a presentation, get all of the details. This advice might seem obvious, but some people immediately start thinking and/or worrying about what they'll do, getting at least one big step ahead of themselves before they really know where they're going.

The details that you should get will generally fall into four categories, which you can remember as the four P's:

• Purpose

• People

• Point

• Place

Purpose

Why are you doing this presentation? The full answer to that question is your purpose. And that full answer has two parts.

The first part is your subject area, the what of your presentation. What will you be addressing or covering? The proposed changes in the employee manual? The recent negative media reports about the new product? The update of the company intranet?

It's essential to find out how broad or narrow your scope should be and how deep you should go—aspects that depend to a great extent on the other P's. It may be just as important to find out if there's anything that you should avoid, such as a proposal that the board is still debating or a recent resignation in the department that developed the new product.

The second part of your purpose is the reason, the why of your presentation. What are you expected to do? Provide information? Help participants understand? Persuade them to agree on something? Motivate them to act? Entertain them? There may be several reasons for doing the presentation. Unless you know them all, it's not likely that you'll balance and structure your presentation appropriately.

The full answer to the why question may not come easily—or at all. Sometimes you have to ask and then ask again—and sometimes you have to figure out the rest of the answer by yourself.

Let's take an example. The CEO asks you to provide new employees with an overview of the employee manual. It may seem that your reason is simple: to inform. But there may be other reasons behind her request. She may not mention that she's concerned about low morale in the company and is hoping that you'll help the new hires understand the reasons behind certain unpopular policies. She may not mention that she suspects that the managers responsible for other aspects of the orientation program may have come across as serious and uncaring and is expecting that you'll be entertaining enough to change their image of the company.

The why of your purpose is probably as important as the what—and it often may be even more important. If it makes sense to ask, do so. If it's wiser to find out on your own, do so. You don't want to find out about hidden agendas or unexpressed expectations too late.

People

To whom are you delivering this presentation? The answer to that question may seem simple enough, especially if you know the target group. But make sure you know how much or how little they know about the subject of your presentation and why they need to know any more.

You might imagine yourself sitting among those people. Answer the following key questions:

• Why are you attending this presentation?

• How do you feel about attending it?

• What do you expect to get out of it?

If you can't imagine how those people would answer those questions, maybe you don't have a good enough sense of who they are. Find out more about them until you can answer those questions with confidence.

Point

What do you want to happen as a result of your presentation? That's the point, the objective.

How will the participants be different because of your presentation? In other words, what will be evidence that you succeeded, that you met your expectations?

If you know your purpose, why you're doing the presentation, you should have little trouble figuring out the point. (Now, as for reaching the point, well, that's where things get more complicated....)

Place

Where are you doing the presentation? And don't settle for just a room designation—unless you know all about that location. Here some questions to answer:

• How big is the room?

• What is the layout of seats and other furniture? How much can it be changed, if needed?

• Where are you going to be in that room?

• What equipment will be in that room? A screen? A microphone? (What kind?) A podium?

• Where are the electrical outlets?

• Where is the connection for the intranet and/or Internet?

• How good is the lighting and how is it controlled?

• How well does the heating and air conditioning work?

• Are there windows? If so, how many, how big, and where are they? Is the view likely to distract participants? Are there curtains?

• Is the room relatively quiet? How likely is it that there will be disruptions?

You may not need to ask all of these questions, depending on the nature of your presentation. You may already have most or all of the answers. But it's always smartest to make sure.

Finally, a question that's related to location only in that it's also a logistics issue: How much time will you have for your presentation?

Presentation Checklists

Before we move on to the chapters that get into the specifics of creating your content, designing for that content, and developing your delivery strategy and style, I think that we should start with some general guidelines for presentations. I find it helpful to use two checklists. Every time you create a presentation, I recommend that you use these checklists as guidelines for helping you to make that presentation be as effective and successful as you hope it will be.

Total Visual Checklist

The first checklist is the Total Visual Checklist. Use this one for the entire presentation. It helps you with the organization, the content, and the look of the presentation. Use this when you're reviewing your presentation as a whole.

Single Visual Checklist

For each individual slide, use the Single Visual Checklist. This will help you review the organization, understanding, look, and flow for each individual slide.

Both of these checklists include information that goes beyond what is discussed in this book. So, keep these checklists handy and refer back to them often, for every presentation.

Don't worry if you don't understand all of the terms used in these checklists. We'll cover those in our discussions. I also encourage you to customize these checklists, by adding to them points that you want to remember from the chapters that follow.

Manager's Checklist for Chapter 1

* There are three elements to a great presentation: content, design, and delivery. Content includes the research and organization of materials. Design is the architecture of the slides and the graphical enhancements. Delivery is how you voice your message.

* Create your content in three steps: do your research, group the information into logical categories, and create your outline.

* Before you begin planning, know the specifics of your situation: Why are you doing this presentation? What is your subject and what is your reason? To whom are you delivering this presentation? What do you want to happen as a result of your presentation? Where are you doing the presentation? How much time will you have for your presentation?

* Use the Total Visual Checklist to help with the organization, the content, and the look of your presentation and the Single Visual Checklist to help with the organization, understanding, look, and flow for each individual slide.

CHAPTER 2

Preparing Your Content

Once you know what your presentation is to cover, why you're doing the presentation, and who will be attending, it's time to do some research. Research comes in many forms and goes to various levels, depending on what you know about the topic and what your participants need to know. You may have to present on a topic that you know nothing about, or it may be something that's second nature to you. You may be providing a brief overview or focusing on one aspect and going into detail.

Whatever your situation, unless this is a presentation that you give with the same information to similar audiences, you must do at least some research. You show your audience a different level of respect by researching and understanding your topic. As Ron Hoff contends in I Can See You Naked: A Fearless Guide to Making Great Presentations (Andrews & McMeel, 1988) "An ill-prepared presenter sends a dramatic message to his or her audience: 'I don't think you're very important. If you were, I'd be better prepared.'"

Before You Start Your Research

Before you can start your research, there are three questions you should ask yourself:

1. What do I want my audience to gain?

2. What might they already know about my topic?

3. What is the objective of the presentation?

You should already have the answers to these questions, as I pointed out in Chapter 1, under "The Situation." But now you start taking what you know about the people and the point and translating it into specifics.

For example, the purpose of your presentation may be to enable your participants to train their subordinates on a new procedure. They should already know how to train their people and they may know something about the new procedure or about the old procedure that this new procedure is replacing. The objective is to make sure that you have provided the knowledge that they need to be able to go into the field and train their people.

Asking these three questions will help you get your thoughts together about the information you'll need in this presentation. This is the "brain dump" time before you start your research. Write down whatever thoughts come to you. Don't worry about the form or the format: the thoughts that you dump don't need to be complete. They can come in the form of comments and/or questions. Write down only main points or thoughts that need more research. If in doubt, put it down. Don't worry about organizing your thoughts at this point—just dump them!

This brain dump will be your research platform. Doing this brain dump prior to research will get you closer to the objective of your presentation and help you avoid boring your participants by providing too much information that they should already know.

Brain Dump Examples

There are four examples below to help you better understand the brain dump process.

For a presentation to subordinates, to review a recent sales promotion, here's a sample brain dump:

get final financial info; match against predetermined goals and objectives; research unforeseen issues that came up, e.g., product availability issue, fulfillment issue; collect recap from direct reports, getting their feedback on the promo, e.g., issues, competitive activity, response to marketing; compare results with results from similar promo from a different time, make sure they're as similar as possible; compare vs. budget (plan) (maybe vs. last year also?); analysis on profitability, i.e., evaluating cost of promo, marketing costs; ROI; facilitate session on gathering key learning or keys to the results (takeaways), i.e., marketing investment didn't pay off, need to look more seriously at competitors' activities; when recapping financials, need to identify and document performance issues

This is a presentation to subordinates, to train them on a new procedure. Here's a sample brain dump:

learn training materials that will be sent to team; determine some of top questions/concerns of team; be prepared to discuss change of job scope; implications of new procedure, e.g., will require additional training outside of company; manpower implications (require more or less people?)

This is a presentation to superiors, to review your subordinate's talent assessments. Here's a sample brain dump:

need to be to the point, direct; hold meeting prior to presentation reviewing talent assessments; condense to 15-minute review; get point across and tied up; prepare for questions; need results at fingertips; be able to refer to details very quickly
(Continues...) Excerpted from Presentation Skills for Managers by Jennifer Rotondo. Copyright © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc..
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Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Briefcase Books, written specifically for today's busy manager, feature eye-catching icons, checklists, and sidebars to guide managers step-by-step through everyday workplace situations. Look for these innovative design features to help you navigate through each page:

• Clear, concise definitions of presentation terms and jargon
• Tips for being smart when planning and delivering your presentation
• How-to hints of the pros for smooth, successful presentations
• Practical advice to avoid mistakes during the entire process
• Warning signs for where things could go wrong
• Actual examples of principles and practices described in the book
• Specific procedures and techniques for creating a great presentation

Proven Techniques for Designing­­and Delivering­­a Powerful Presentation Every Time

The ability to give a persuasive presentation is a tremendous career booster. Presentation Skills for Managers shows you how to create and deliver powerful presentations to any group, of any size, for any purpose. From the organization and preparation of convincing content through tips and tools for its skillful delivery, this newest Briefcase Book provides you with:

• Guidelines for selecting and using equipment tailored to your audience and subject
• Tested tips for involving your audience, and making their questions work for you
• An easy-to-follow primer for using Microsoft PowerPoint, today's most popular software package for making compelling slides and presentations

Numerous building blocks go into the creation and delivery of a presentation, and all must blend seamlessly for the presentation to succeed. Let Presentation Skills for Managers show you how to skillfully combine the three essential elements of a successful presentation­­content, design, and delivery­­into a single, compelling package, one that will work to strengthen your powers of persuasion as it enhances your career.

Jennifer and Mike Rotondo Jr. (Powder Springs, GA) founded Creative Minds, Inc., which specializes in electronic media design for business.