Process Excellence Coaching & Consulting

Some people may say that Process Excellence is about improving processes, not presenting anything.

That is true, but can you improve the process without explaining clearly what is the change you are proposing? Without communicating to those impacted by the change that their work will change? And here is a place for the presentation – your vehicle to guide the organization to the right decisions and to pass required information.

Let’s take a look on five key elements to make presentations efficient and effective:

1. Define goal of the presentation

Is to convince decision maker to the proposal that you have? To inform the audience about important next steps and get their support? Summarize the work you have done to let them remember you as professional and effective Project Manager? Whatever it is, be clear and open with yourself, what are you trying to achieve by the presentation or meeting that you will be leading.

2. Analyse your audience

Who are they? What is their level of knowledge about topic to be presented? What is their “job” on the meeting (decide, be informed, provide feedback…)? Maybe you can also influence who is invited to the meeting – to have only those that should be there?

3. Plan your presentation

And do it without opening PowerPoint, even if you think you have existing slides that are ‘ready to use’.

The best way is to use storyboard: plan major meeting steps on a piece of paper, plain text document, etc. – indicating main sections and major talking points or decision to be taken within them. It is important to stay on higher level (i.e. without attempting to work on the actual or existing slides) in order to make sure that overall plan fits the purpose of the meeting and the audience needs. This also a time to think about clear story behind presentation – to help your audience relate to and follow your thinking process. See storytelling resource at the bottom of the article.

4. Create appropriate slides

Make them clearly related to the plan you have just created (nothing more, nothing less) and follow good practices around amount of content, font sizes, colours, consistency between slides, etc. See the hints at the bottom of the article

5. Seek for feedback

Reach out to the people around you (especially those who can relate to the audience you will have) to check if the story flows, messages are clear, etc.

6. Be ready to pivot

I have not seen a single presentation that went perfectly according to the plan 🙂 Let’s be prepared for unexpected situations: Like what to do if one of planned participants would be missing? Which elements of the plan will be dropped first in case time of the meeting would need to be unexpectedly reduced?

Don’t forget those steps when creating your presentation (in any topic) and you will have much higher chance to be successful when delivering it. Happy and effective presenting!

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Here are two resources worth checking in this topic: