Presentations for accountants, actuaries and architects

….or in fact pretty much anyone who’s got a very technical subject matter that needs to be talked about….! :)

For whatever reason, we’ve spent a lot of time training engineers and other technical types recently. It wasn’t a plan, it just worked out that way – and one major issue about the types of presentation they wanted to make seemed to be constant – different cities, different people, different details – but always with one issue in common.

And that issue was “Details”.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for detailed work where it’s appropriate: I don’t want my company accountant to tell me we’ve got “quite a lot” of money owed, or that we’re “probably going to make a profit”. If I ask him a question I want a detailed answer.

The same goes for bridges – I don’t want the engineers designing them to know it’ll take “quite a lot of weight”… I want to them to know exactly what the Safe Working Load is…

But presentations aren’t the best place for that kind of detail – because along with that kind of detail comes an interest in process and (sometimes) a under-developed ability to decide which details are important from the presentation audience’s point of view.

Think about it – we’ve all sat through the type of presentation which can best be summed up (tongue in cheek) as the “What I Did On My Holidays” type. It’s like starting to show your friends the pictures of your holiday (the interesting bit), prefaced by a long, long list of details like how long you were on the plane to the resort, what the flight number was, what colour your suitcase was….(the boring details). Typically the situation’s made worse by an over-developed used of bullet points too! :)

Here’s the bad news. (Don’t take me too seriously, here! :) )

Almost no-one cares how you get to your holidays – and even if they did, listing them like that, in a presentation, doesn’t make it likely that anyone will remember anything.

Presentation audiences are much more likely to be interested in the things from a “What’s In It For Me” perspective.

If you’re presenting to them about how your insurance can save them 23% on their premium per year, don’t dilute the message telling them what kind of computer you wrote the proposal document on. Don’t spend time telling them the details of ‘how‘ – concentrate on the ‘what‘.

People might be interested in the ‘how’ once they’ve bought into the ‘what’ but unless and until they have, it’s just so much noise.

And yes, I know that’s a difficult pill to swallow for experts in technical subject matters, where details are important. As they say in the current batch of Panasonic adverts: “everything matters”. After all, you’ve put perhaps dozens or hundreds of hours into developing just one policy or designing just one bridge or writing just one little section of code… and you’re justifiably proud of it!… but all other people are going to care about (in the first instance) is whether it works for them.

Sure, if you tell me you can save me 23% on a premium I’m going to want to know how and I may very well ask for the details (in case it’s too good to be true!) but I’m not going to ask for the details unless and until I’m hooked by the “big idea”.

So if you’re into the details, if your expertise lies in what a friend of mine calls the ‘nitty-gritty’, I applaud you (I get bored with details) but remember the details of how you did X, Y or Z are the means to the end, not the end itself.

One tip which might be helpful is to think in terms of sub-headings.

In a written report you’d have your subheadings to signpost the reader through the content – but in a presentation, try thinking of those phrases as the content, rather than as signposts. Okay, I’m over-simplifying and I’ve probably horrified half of you (sorry!) but at least if you start thinking even partially like that you’re more likely to say what needs to be said…

…. and only what needs to be said.