Define, discuss and decide

Someone asked me recently for a simple formula for structuring their presentation.

Now, I’m always hesitant about giving out simple formulae – because they’re generally over-simple and don’t take into account the circumstances of the presentation etc.. This brings with it the risk of a presentation be totally in-appropriate and backfiring……    on the other hand, so long as the presenter understands the limits of any simple aphorism, it can be a lot more useful than telling them to do “what’s appropriate at the time”!

Thus was born the idea of a presentation structure along the lines of Define, Discuss & Decide

• Define the problem – what are you there for? What is it that brings you and your audience together? (I mean the issues here, not such things as the office politics.) If there aren’t clear answers to this kind of question, go your separate ways without wasting any more of each other’s time!

• Discuss the issues once you’ve defined them. Don’t discuss anything you don’t need to discuss and don’t miss out anything germane to the Definition, either. There are lots of ways of doing this, such as the Disney (Dreamer, Engineer Critic) approach and they’re covered in zillions of places all over the web.

• Decide what the outcomes are. Relate your discussion back to your Definition. If you needed a decision, check you’ve got one: if you needed to disseminate information, check your audience have received it.  In other words, “decide” is just code for “decide to stop talking”  :)

Okay, I admit it’s a bit contrived, but there are a lot worse structures out there! Remember, a simplification like this isn’t a substitute for doing the necessary prep for your presentation but it might just save you if you ever find yourself ambushed and having to wing it. Structure in improvisations is always useful!