TJ Walker says presenters cram too many points into slides when audiences remember at most five ideas. His fix: brainstorm freely, pick your top five, prepare a story or example for each, and stash extra data elsewhere.
Chapters
Pigs get slaughtered. You've heard that expression before. What it really means is don't be greedy. This is one of the biggest problems most people have when creating their PowerPoint slides, their deck, their presentation. They're greedy. They try to convey 50, 100, 200 points and show people how smart they are. Huge, huge mistake. First thing I do in every PowerPoint presentation training that I conduct with corporations, governments all over the world is I ask people, think of the best speaker you've seen in the last year, last five years. Now, tell me every single message point, number, fact, data point you remember from that presentation. Sometimes people remember nothing. They remember the stories, they remember the passion, a little humor. Sometimes they remember one point, occasionally two, sometimes three messages. Every so often, for once every six months, someone will remember five messages, five ideas from the best speaker they've seen in the last year, maybe the last five years, maybe ever. In all the years I've asked that question, I've never had anyone remember more than five ideas. So I start off with the assumption that if you can actually communicate five ideas in a PowerPoint presentation, you're going to be wildly successful. In fact, you'll be the best speaker most people in that audience have ever seen in their entire life. So it's not about aiming low, it's about aiming high. Of course, most people take the attitude of, oh, I want to be thorough and hard working and avoid criticism, so if I just put everything out, no one can accuse me of leaving anything out. That's an extraordinarily negative defensive attitude. To have to want to avoid criticism at the risk of completely failing to communicate is a sad thing indeed. That's what a lot of people do unconsciously. I believe my recommendation brainstorm on all your message points. Narrow it down to your top five. Make sure you've got a story for each one, an example for each one, a case study for each one, the facts for each one, have a slide that makes each idea come alive. Make sure you do all that. If you have lots and lots of other data, lots and lots of other messages, put that in your second PowerPoint deck that you email to people, or hand out, or put it in the notes section of your PowerPoint deck that people can only see if you email it to them, or if you hand it out, or if it's on your website. Don't be greedy. Narrow your messages down to the top five.
