{"id":3468,"date":"2016-01-22T17:30:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-22T17:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=3468"},"modified":"2016-01-22T17:30:19","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T17:30:19","slug":"your-presentation-is-pointless","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/your-presentation-is-pointless\/","title":{"rendered":"Your presentation is pointless"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Well, to be honest, most presentations are &#8211; yours might be wonderful. I like to think mine are.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The title is an over-statement, of course, just to get you to read this &#8211; but there\u2019s a serious point behind what I\u2019m saying here, so stay with me! Far, far too many people (that I meet at least) are nervous because they believe their presentation means something in it&#8217;s own right. It doesn\u2019t. They&#8217;re fearful of the judgement of a good-vs-bad presentation&#8230; which is daft in so many ways, because the presentation itself isn&#8217;t worth judging&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Your presentation doesn\u2019t mean anything on its own. It\u2019s a means to an end, not an end in itself.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_3521\" style=\"width: 235px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3521\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3521\" src=\"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/IMG_1284-e1453483719765-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"Never judge a report by it's cover... or even the contents... just its effects!\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-3521\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Never judge a report by it&#8217;s cover&#8230; or even the contents&#8230; just its effects!<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Ask yourself this. Do you judge the the success of that report you wrote by how pretty it looked? By how well typed it was? By the quality of the font? Or by how nice the binding was? Nope?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>Thought not.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>You judge the success of your reports by how much action is taken on the back of them. If the boss puts them on a shelf, doesn\u2019t read it and takes no action because of it, you\u2019ve wasted your time, no matter how pretty it is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">On the other hand, if your colleagues jump to take on board your recommendations and act upon what you\u2019ve suggested, you\u2019ve got a success on your hands. Right?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Now, before you get upset, let me point out that this doesn\u2019t mean you can give a crappy presentation any more than you can submit a report that\u2019s splattered with typos, shoddily referenced, and printed on paper with stains from coffee-cups. The point is that these things are important only when (or if) they get in the way of how well your report <b>works<\/b>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Your presentation should be judged the same way. Slick sides and so on are only important if they help you get your points over to your audience. Stunning visuals are just eye-candy if they don\u2019t take your audience somewhere. You need to get you technical stuff and delivery right, because if you don\u2019t, your audience can\u2019t get to the content and can\u2019t act on your words of wisdom\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">\u2026 but pretty technology and stunning graphics\u00a0aren\u2019t the point of your presentation. They aren\u2019t what your presentation exists for.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And as soon as you take that on board, you realise a number of helpful things are true:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">before you start to design your presentation you need to know what it\u2019s <strong>for<\/strong>; what are you trying to do&#8230; that&#8217;s potentially quite different from what it&#8217;s <em>about<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">you need to get the technicals right, so they don\u2019t get in the way &#8211; or at least you need to get them right <em>enough<\/em><\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"li1\"><span class=\"s1\">your don\u2019t need to be perfect, just good enough to get the job done. \u00a0There&#8217;s a cost benefit of any presentation just like there is for anything else at work: if you&#8217;re building a bridge for pedestrians and cycles, you&#8217;d not engineer it to be strong enough to take tanks and busses, so why fret so much about over-engineering your presentation?!<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">And with those realisations, you\u2019ll change the whole way you think about what you say and how you say it (as well as how hung up you get on the presentation itself!).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Everything boils down to two big steps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">What exactly am I trying to change, and how will I know I&#8217;ve changed it enough to be worthwhile. If you can answer those questions, you&#8217;re half way to having got your presentation sorted!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, to be honest, most presentations are &#8211; yours might be wonderful. I like to think mine are. The title is an over-statement, of course, just to get you to read this &#8211; but there\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3521,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3468"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3522,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3468\/revisions\/3522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}