Tag Archive for 'information overload'

What can Nordic design teach us about influencing skills?

I recently attended Nordic Innovation Week and was especially impressed by an event around what Nordic design is, how it’s regarded and how it can be used in China. As I listened to the three speakers, there were some good takeaways from an influencing and communication perspective :

Here’s what I observed:

 

Speaker 1: Lars Falk, VP of Design, China, Volvo.

Lars was talking around the context of building a design centre in China.

What he did well?

1. He made a human connection in the opening

Lars started by building rapport.

He showed his enthusiasm for the topic.

Shared his personal journey as a timeline.

He quoted Confucius “ wisdom is what you don’t know”

He contrasted the tastes of the Chinese consumers in 2011 and 2013.

He compared design tastes of different counties visually using their flags.

 

2. He set up the main content with a connecting question

So what does China want?”

This gets the audience thinking along the right lines. He answers the question in a nutshell (great material and exterior design) and then moves onto the body of his content.

 

3. Good structure for the main content

Lars divided his content into three parts; Proportions, Dimensions and Interior Design.

He used impactful visuals to make his points in each section.

 

4. Attention grabbing close

Lars used a powerful but simple pie chart showing how 96% of a car in China should be on par with the best in the world. While the final 4% should be something special for China. This one chart really summed up nicely his topic. Then he closed it out with a quote from Einstein.

 

Speaker 2: Henrik Larsson, Head of Architecture of Inter IKEA Centre China.

Henrik’s talk was around implementing Scandinavian design in China through the eyes of IKEA’s real estate developments.

 

What he did well?

1. Set the context

Henrik briefly described IKEA’s approach to building around their stores to create a more complete retail presence and their current projects with shopping centres in Beijing, Wuhan and Wuxi.

 

2. He had a clear overarching structure

Why we do it

What it is

How to do it

This helps to keep the audience’s direction on track through the 30min talk.

 

3. Soundbite messages

Henrik used short and snappy messages throughout his talk.

We unify

We save

Design makes a difference

 

4. Used a clear visual style for slides

When running through the “What is it” section, Henrik used various characteristics to explain Scandinavian design (human, modern, functional) and had a clear visual for each point. The consistency ran through the characteristics. A large picture with key words dominated each slide. Each picture was a metaphorical representation of the big idea.

 

5. Closing in reality

After abstract (and highly interesting) discussions around Nordic design, Henrik came back to reality and showed some plans from current developments. We learned about the anchor layout, how multiple attraction points are developed and key traffic pullers in each development. It was a good way to show how the principles are applied.

 

Speaker 3: Olle Carlbark Director SCA Innovation Centre in China, SCA.

Olle’s talk was based around introducing SCA and a case study of launching a product in the baby diaper market In China.

 

What he did well?

1. Set the journey

Olle opened with a quick slide showing the agenda clearly. Four sections:

This is SCA

Innovation

Relaunch Sealer

China insights

 

2. Keep self-directed information short

I was interested to learn about SCA but sometimes company profiles can drag on. Olle kept it short and used visuals to show the wide range of brands his company covered. His message “Europe’s largest forest owner” was a nice soundbite.

 

3. Case study

A case study on relaunching a product with some innovative safety features and package design that catered to local needs was capped off with a video TV commercial. Using a mixture of media is a good way to break up your delivery. All media used should be relevant and consistent in quality and message.

 

4. Close with clarity

Olle finished with a slide showing main innovation drivers in China. Three points.

 

 

Conclusion

All speeches were well structured, included personal touches and generally had very clear impactful visuals. It helped make the experience of learning about Nordic design and how it’s applied in China enjoyable and easy to digest.

 

Why are technical presentations so boring?

Well it depends who’s listening.

Obstacles when giving technical presentations to non-technical people:

  • Don’t adjust to audience’s level of understanding
  • Fear of exposure
  • The presenter’s style
  • Lack of skill in showcasing numbers
  • Forgotten storytelling skills

 

Don’t adjust to audience’s level of understanding

Giving a technical presentation to fellow technical people is easy. They see the world in a similar way to you. They understand your thinking and your acronyms. They know the context of your explanations. In short, they are much like you. It’s easier to be understood by people like us.

But what happens when you’re presenting to senior managers? I’ve seen this happen countless times. The technical presenter – whether from IT, engineering, quality assurance of finance – assume that the senior executives understand them. In fact, they often assume that because they’re senior managers they know the material BETTER than the technical presenter.

This is mostly not the case. Often the higher you go in an organisation the more distance a manager is from the heart of the technology, or techniques. A good presenter will adjust their content to match the audience’s level of understanding.

 

Fear of exposure

After ten years of working around Asia with technical professionals, I’ve come to believe that a trait of a technician is “I say too much because I know too much”. I think that these very intelligent people suffer from a fear of intellectual exposure. If they don’t show how smart they are on their subject matter expertise then they will be judged.
Often the opposite is the case. The reason why we like TED talks so much is because very intelligent people are talking on very technical topics and making them so very accessible for everyone. I think to use the analogy of you should be able to express what your presentation is about to an intelligent ten-year old. In today’s world you’re rewarded for saving people time and energy. Don’t worry we know you’re smart!

The presenter’s style

In my experience as a presentation skills educator, I’ve observed thousands of presentations from technical executives. I’ve noticed that they tend to be very process-driven. They start at the beginning and they end at the end, often going into excruciating details along the way. They tend to be deliver with a very steady and on-the-low-side energy level. They’re often completely focused on the data. This is largely due to the style of the presenter. Technical presenter’s love this style. Most audience’s don’t.

Lack of skill in showcasing numbers

Technical presentation need numbers. Often in detail. But does this mean that all the numbers should be shown all at once on one slide!

No. But why do so many presenters do this? I think it’s risk-aversion (another trait of technical presenters!). The thinking is “if I put all the numbers up, the audience will work out which ones are important”. But the presenter needs to shape the meaning. When working with numbers the law of contrast and comparison needs to be used. Presentation of numbers need to be simplified so that the data supports a particular message. This is simple to understand once you know the techniques. By judging from the amount of slides I see crammed full with charts and data tables, it’s not yet fully and widely understood.

 

Forgotten storytelling skills

What do stories have to do with technical presentations? Well, a lot. If you want to engage and hold an audience’s attention these days, you better learn story telling skills. Learn how to pace and adjust your voice and your energy levels. Learn the flow of a story. How to create tension or curiosity. And importantly how to have a morale (or message) to your story. You have to tell the story behind the numbers. That’s your job!

 

Ask us about “The Technical Presenter” Workshop which helps technical professionals communicate concisely, engagingly and memorably to non-technical audiences. Your meeting productivity will shoot up!

Warwick John Fahy and The One Minute Presenter Team

 

About the Author

Warwick helps C-level executives, working in multinational companies based in Greater China, who struggle to get their point across and influence their key stakeholders. Warwick helps the executive project their message with confidence allowing them to express their opinions powerfully and gain respect from senior managers even when under pressure.”

Warwick is the author of “The One Minute Presenter: 8 steps to successful business presentations in a short attention span world”.

Now available on Amazon.com.

Sign up to “52 Tips to more confident public speaking” newsletter at www.warwickjohnfahy.com

Don’t present like your audience has unlimited time, attention or energy

time-attention-energyOne thing you can be sure about when you are delivering your next presentation.  Your audience wish you would finish it quicker, get to the point sooner and wrap it up faster.  Your audience don’t have unlimited time, attention or energy. So don’t present like they do.

If you see people’s eyes glazing over, notice sighs and hear yawns, you are in the “dead energy zone” from which no memories emerge. Your audience is switched off and waiting for you to finish. Those who are less polite will walk out.

To become a better presenter, you need to understand how memory works.  One technique to learn is called spaced learning.  Advocated by Dr John Medina in his book Brain Rules and put into practice in a school in the UK, spaced learning stops trying to force information on the brain. Instead it aligns with how memories are actually formed.

Spaced learning uses intense learning periods of 20 minutes, interspersed with 10 minute intervals of physical exercise that requires hand-eye coordination, such as juggling, basketball and plate spinning. Sounds barmy right? But the results are amazing.  Students who took a 90 minute class on biology had a 58% pass rate. A year late taking another science subject and this time four months of conventional class study the pass rate went up to only 68%.

The technique is fast and uses “hooks” and visual cues to stimulate the learning points. How can you introduce gaps in your presentations where the audience can take abreak, move around and then be ready for a quick review when they return.  You need different versions of your presentations. Insert “check slides” which have gaps in the key messages and ask the audience to fill in the missing words.  Have handouts that ask key questions about the messages. Insert more five minute breaks (keep it to exactly 5 minutes though!) and don’t be afraid to go back to skim through your slides.  Above all, dump your text-based slides for visuals that use pictures and slogans. Make your slides resemble billboards.

Submerged with (useless) information

niagra-fallsFirst used by Shakespeare’s As You Like It, the phrase “too much of a good thing” is wise.  It’s usually used to mean “too much of a good thing is not always good”.   When it comes to information that is certainly true. Considering that the average Sunday newspaper with its numerous section pull outs and glossy magazines contains as much information as our grandfathers came across in their whole lives, it’s no wonder that we feel that information is overloading our poor brains.  It’s like the Niagara Falls pouring into an egg-cup. Massively overpowering. Ultimately pointless.

The causes of information overload are never-ending with 24-hour cable TV, the internet, video games, messaging, newspapers, magazines, blogs, wikipedia, and social networking.  It never stops. And, on the main, it’s completely useless.  It provides no productive or creative use. Sure, we all go to the web to “research”.  But three hours later we are not entirely sure which brand of MP3 player we should buy. The choice is overwhelming to the point of drowning out our ability to make decisions effectively.

So armed with this knowledge, what do most business presenters do? They prepare the most information-heavy presentations they can cram into a PowerPoint slide. Slide after slide of text. Data packed into font size 8 tables. Reams and reams of bullet points, which really don’t have a point.  Why would any presenter in their right mind do this?

Whatever the reasons, you need to start cutting down on the information you deliver to your audience. Use no more than 10 slides for a presentation.  Use graphics and pictures instead of text. Build up a photo database that you can reference while you are preparing your presentations. A picture speaks a thousand words and more importantly, it’s memorable.