Playing with the neural responses of human brain to deliver optimal presentations

In his groundbreaking work “Thinking Fast and Slow’, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman points to two distinct thinking systems of our brain on responding to external environment.

Let’s start with an example. What is 2+2? As surely and quickly you see this question, you know the answer without any realizable effort. It was automatic! Now, let me ask you what is 256 X 139? Look inside and you will see that even without realizing, you have initiated a sequence of steps to solve it. You have started retrieving the program for multiplication from your memory and then initiated a sequence of steps to solve the problem. You have started feeling the stress of keeping the intermediate results in memory, keeping track of where you are going step by step and finally putting things together to generate the output. What you just realized are two distinct systems that our mind follows to respond to external environment. Fast and Slow.

Daniel calls these System-1 and System-2. System-1 is automatic and quick, with little or no stress and does not need any voluntary control. While System-2 is associated with allocation of memory, effortful mental activities and complex calculations. Few examples of system-1 are things like identifying one object is more distant than the others, understanding simple sentences etc. Examples of system-2 are stuff like filling out a form, focusing on a slide in a presentation etc. We are generally in a system-1 state and system-2 takes over whenever there is a requirement of focus, attention and effort. But just like a computer, beyond a certain point, if the stress is too much, our system reaches it’s limit and hangs just like a computer. With repetitions of a certain process, the dependency on system-2 reduces over time. A data scientist understands a model building process very quickly because he or she has practiced it multiple times, but a business executive keeps on asking questions to get the idea because it’s getting down to his or her system 2!

Keeping these in mind, the most effective strategy while presenting or communicating is to utilize the automatic least effort system-1 of the audience as much as possible and maximize effort to use as little of system-2 of them as possible.

So, here are some examples that will make sense to you now. You must have heard these multiple times, but this system-based response is the cognitive reason for all these points.

1)????? We try not to use an excel sheet to present facts in a meeting. Guys who are familiar with calculations get it easily, otherwise system-2 gets into play causing stress, increasing blood pressure and eventual shut down. Summarize results in an easily understandable table.

2)????? We do not use complex slides with multiple sections in small fonts. You are invoking the audience’s system-2 with lot of mental tracking and stress.

3)????? We use a very easily readable font and simple colours to prepare our slides. Complex fonts and mixed colours invoke system 2 of your audience.

4)????? Our slide headlines one after the other should tell a continuous story and pointers in a single slide should tell the story from top to down. Incoherent slides and lot of points in a slide needs lot of tracking and memory allocation causing stress.

5)????? We ideally do not continue with sessions after sessions when a client visits our office.? Try to put at least some break in between two consecutive sessions. Otherwise, you are putting client’s system 2 into test with lot of memory allocation and tracking of too much stuff.

6)????? We tend to use simple language and try to avoid technical terms depending on the audience just to play on system-1 and leave system-2 out of it as much as possible.

7) We use understandable simple visuals and graphs and not complex ones requiring system-2 to come into play.

Always think which of your actions are invoking the system-2 of your audience and avoid those. Are you going to do things differently now?