Collaboration Kills Communication: Why Are We Presenting?

Presentations can be the worst. Or the best. We can use decks to bring people together in a way of thinking. Presentations can inform. Group meetings can inspire.

But they don't. Almost never. So, what happens? Why can't we do this right? There are a million reasons. But, one particularly interesting case is the "group presentation."

Your boss asks your team to put together a deck for a meeting. There are usually 4 or 5 people responsible for these things. The request from your boss is simple: "Give an update on the project."

This seems simple at face value. We've all made a million presentations. But, this is a deck for the whole team - the division - the region...company...whatever. Your boss seems keen on making a good showing by highlighting your project. "Provide visibility," he says. "Oh, and Rebecca (everyone's boss's boss's boss) will be there." Great. What was once a basic presentation is now high stakes chess.

I don't care who you are or what the team looks like: this deck is going to suck - and here are 5 reasons why:

1. You Don't Know Why You Are Presenting

2. You and Your Team Are All Behind

3. Slides Aren't Collaborative

4. You Will Run Out of Time

5. You Are Afraid...or, Presenting Isn't Your Favorite Thing

Don't take this the wrong way. This is not an attack on you or your team. The conditions of team presentations are universal. We all live in this flawed reality. Let's tackle each of these. In this post, we'll look for the missing "why."

You Don't Know Why You Are Presenting

It's widely known that most meetings could be emails. You're providing an update on an important project to a hundred people. Each of these people has a different perspective on your project. Maybe they know a lot about what you're doing. Maybe they know nothing. So, there's that...you're going to be both over-explaining or under-explaining context.

Presentations need an intended target audience and a clearly defined objective. You can understand the intended goal in a simple question. "How will these people feel about the subject after seeing the deck and hearing you talk?"

Will you inspire them? What will everyone feel inspired to do? Are you going to enable some new behavior? What will you teach your co-workers?

Without a clear goal and audience, you and your team will struggle to find the right tone and approach. It will be hard to know how much detail you should show. Without knowing who's heart and mind you need to move, there's a very small chance of moving them. You're thinking, "We need to stick to the facts." And that's the right place to start - but, the audience will only lend you attention if you can connect with them. Human connection requires emotional content (thank you, Bruce Lee.)

What's Your Story Strategy?

The right story strategy is a recipe for human connection. You must start with the audience and how you want to make them feel. If you truly only need to provide an update on your project, then this needn't be a presentation in a big meeting. If it's just the facts people need, then this meeting (or at least this portion of the meeting) can become an email. Or a post or something. Right?

Simple Questions Lead to Story Strategy

But, if the bossman or bosslady needs the audience to do anything about your talk, you need a story strategy. You need to find a way to cause the audience to think and feel something new about your project. If this really is you right now, you need to go back to your boss and ask them a question. Something like, "How do we want people to think and feel about our project? Do we know how they think and feel already?"

While you're at it, ask the boss whether the audience should take any follow-on action after the talk. You need to build a linkage between your team's content and that intended audience action.

You can work back from the necessary action. Let's say your project is a new piece of technology for the company. Your boss wants to get the audience excited about some of the features you're building. Oh, and your boss wants plenty of beta users to sign up. Now you know what the deck needs to do.

Know the Audience

If your deck is going to land well, you're going to need to know which features are most interesting to the audience. And why. You don't need to share details unrelated to what's interesting. You don't need to show too much of the plan. You've got to strip it back to only what is needed to fulfill the story strategy.

Without a clear purpose, everything in your project folder could have been in the deck. Now that you know what your preso needs to do, you can leave a bunch of your information out. Sweet!

Purpose Gives Contributors Jobs to Do

OK. So, you need to inspire. Your deck will need to be clear about the problems it's solving in your organization. The talk needs to show how much better life will be once you launch. And, the last bit: you need beta users to sign up. You need to enable folks to sign up to use the features right when you tell them about it - on their phones. Right then. Strike while the iron's hot.

A clear purpose of the talk and the story strategy will lift the pressure of collaboration. Your team can work together in cycles. Iterate. You can all make each beat of the talk deliver on communicating the problem, the solution, and what to do. This approach helps distribute the load of content creation. Individual contributors don't need to fight for a "section" or "chapter" in the talk. Everyone's along for the same ride. No last minute, 11th hour slides being emailed in.

A story strategy gives you a measurement device for your deck content and signup scheme. If one element isn't on topic and delivering clarity, the whole team can work to evolve or remove it.

The "why" is important. In fact, it's kind of everything. It will take additional conversations with bosspeople to learn the purpose. But your team will quickly find themselves with ample time to focus on the right stuff and deliver.

OK. That's Part 1 in a series of entries about just how hard collaborative communication is, and how to overcome its challenges. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts - and if you've got a high stakes deck you need a hand with, don't hesitate to reach out to Secret Weapon for a hand.