Advanced Presentations by Design: Creating Communication that Drives Action [Paperback]

Professor Abela has compiled a step-by-step guide to how to plan and deliver compelling presentations. Let me dissect that praise:

* Plan: Professor Abela walks you through the important questions you need to consider before you open up PowerPoint and begin pulling your slides together. This includes analyzing your audience, enumerating your objectives for the presentation and establishing a story structure through which you can marshall and convey your evidence. This is far and away the best framework of the many I have seen for pre-design work. The great thing about Professor Abela's framework for planning is that the framework is just as useful for meetings and speeches in which you will not be speaking to slides. Clearly the objectives, story and evidence are more important than the content of your PowerPoint slides. Wouldn't it be great to have a way forward if you are left with only 5 of your scheduled 30 minutes to present or the projector breaks down? Use Professor Abela's planning framework and you'll be ready.

* Deliver: Not all venues are alike, and Professor Abela takes the best of Tufte and other visualization experts to lay out guidance for designing presentations for a ballroom and a boardroom setting. Abela provides workable guidelines for using charts and layout to visually augment your message. This book includes a number of standard charts that easily and clearly represent the basic concept you are trying to convey on each slide. As much as I enjoy Tufte, Abela's book gave me direct actionable guidance that I needed to augment my spoken message with visual evidence.

Recently I applied the "Extreme Presentations" methods to a talk at a professional conference. The presentation itself (ballroom style) stood out as more visually informative than the standard corporate fare delivered by the other presenters. More important, though, is that I had clearly mapped out the change in mindset that I wanted to see in my audience. I had properly structured my talk to marshall the appropriate evidence in sequence and make the case successfully. As I created my problem-solution and anecdote outline I actually became excited for the opportunity to make my case to my audience. Following the presentation several attendees approached me to comment that I had changed their mind on the critical insight that was my goal.

Using "Extreme Presentations" to create a presentation takes longer than the standard corporate presentation (at least my first presentations developed in this model have taken longer). The quality of the visuals and the reception by the audience really does deliver a worthy return on that time investment. It's clear to my audiences that I've taken the time to think about them, consider their interests and taken care to create a good-looking and relevant set of visuals. This quality makes it clear to my audiences that I care about them, and that goes a long way towards making the audience care about what I am communicating.

This book lays out a methodology to create presentations that make a real difference. And the method works - my company subscribes to Corporate Executive Board, a industry best practice research service that follows the methods in this book. CEB is one of the few companies that I make time to attend their presentations because they are worth my limited time. And not only is the research solid, the information is presented in a way that makes it understandable and makes an impact with executives and managers. The method is repeatable, simple, and can make a difference right away.

I know. I've given a half dozen presentations using just some of the methods and have noticed my feedback scores increase. I've had people ask me for advice on presenting. That's results.

This book isn't about presentations, flashy graphics, or even the Zen of presenting. It about communications. And it debunks a lot of presentation myths with solid research. Its worth its weight in gold (even at today's prices!) to people who need to get their point across to groups of any size.

It's not every day I see a book offering chapters with names like "Marshalling your evidence" and "Assembling the anecdotes that will illustrate your evidence". Abela answers the question "What does the evidence say about presenting evidence?" This book analyzes the building blocks of effective presentations in a way I've never seen.

Abela provides specific evidence of what's most likely to work, and why, when you want people to *act* on something you present to them. But the book is more than a recap of scientific findings: It's written from the perspective of a marketer and business manager, offering practical, evidence-based advice about how to focus on a problem your audience has, and how to show them you can help solve it. Three key topics are:

1. Structuring stories. Abela presents a SCORE method for sequencing evidence: Situation, Complication, Resolution, Example. The aforementioned "Assembling anecdotes" chapter talks about three types of stories we can use: 1) One that relates directly to our situation, 2) a hypothetical story, or 3) a more metaphorical one.

2. Using graphics. The book provides numerous examples of charts and other graphics, explaining which can help you best present your data. I've heard plenty of discussions of visual presentation -- Abela goes into more detail than most, staying focused on interpreting the hard evidence about how to engage an audience.

3. Setting goals for your presentation. Abela talks about setting measurable objectives for what you want your audience to think and do differently after your presentation.

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to present convincing evidence in a business environment.