How to present terrible slides and still get away with it
By: Gasper Okrslar
Tags: Presenting, Project Management, Report, Public Speaking

Remember the last time you had to present something to your boss/management/stakeholder/customer? I bet you had to fit your info into some kind of template, be it Powerpoint, Google slides, or even plain old MS Word document (Yes, I shivered as well). By working closely with the team, You and I have so much information, one more important than the other and now we need to figure out how to streamline it into one predefined slide and deliver it in 7 minutes or less. Impossible? Not really.

What is our problem?

When we have the opportunity to prepare our own format of the report, we can utilize all the knowledge we got by reading books about public speaking, articles titled “5 tips for good presentations” or “10 Powerpoint tricks to make slides effective”. All that knowledge is available and I encourage you to research it and get the best of it. What those resources (often) do not address, is the fact we are frequently not at liberty to choose our formats. Furthermore, slide/report format will not solve the problem you are actually having: How to cut down information into a necessary minimum, provide enough info to keep the audience engaged, and prevent panic mode?

Here we go 10 tips to get your audience …

Just kidding. I want to share what I’m thinking about when preparing a slide with a boatload of information that wreaks havoc in the mind of a presenter and makes the audience distracted and irritated.

I have to do bi-weekly sprint reviews, where the team reports to management what we worked on, how it went, what worked, and what did not. Most importantly, everyone is interested in what we have learned and how we will handle situations in the future. I talk about story points, burndown charts, features, lessons learned … All that in one slide. Slide, which instead of 3–5 items has 15. Plus descriptions. Panicking yet? I usually do, when I have the first draft ready.

Let’s take a deep breath and forget about the thoughts of taking a sick leave or pretending our internet connection is unstable. Let’s ignore the stuff we cannot change, such as the format, amount of info, format of the slides. Let’s focus on the stuff we can control.

Think about what needs to be done.

1. Lead the audience through

Do not read everything on the slide. Your audience is competent enough to do so. Our job is to guide them and explain what they are looking at and why that information is relevant. It is ok to tell them that. We can do that by simply stating: There is a lot of information on this slide, but I’ll get you through this. Let’s focus on the top right part where you can see the chart. One thing that stands out is X. What happened was …

2. Do not assume understanding

Your audience should know what that feature does, right? Think again. You, who prepared this slide, have detailed information about the inner workings of the feature and your team. Your audience does not (not everyone is a developer). When you bombard them with encryption issues with XY database and cache extension, the audience usually panics/stops listening, because the topic is not relatable or is too complex for a particular meeting.

How would you explain this topic to your partner/friend who works in a totally different field? If you can not do this in 3 sentences or less, go back to the drawing board. It is ok if the technical term is on the slide. After all, slides can be a part of reporting documentation which should be referenceable if someone starts browsing through Jira/Confluence.

Explain the topic in simple terms. By doing this you are not diminishing your audience. You are providing a high-level explanation. If they need details they can ask for clarifications.

3. If details are coming, explain.

Statement no1: We have missed our goal, carry over is 18 SP. Features that we worked on are… Statement no2: We have missed our goal, carry over is 18 SP. We were working with a new technology and hit some unexpected bumps. In addition to a couple of sick leaves, we were late with delivering. We have addressed this and we’ll discuss it in a couple of minutes.

Give your audience peace of mind. You have just told them your team failed. Everyone froze for a second and started to sweat with worry or anger. You lost them. Get their attention back by acknowledging the issue and explaining when more info is coming.

4. Do not glance over problems

Everyone is glad to hear the good news of success. It’s easy. There are no problems, everything is running smoothly. If that was always the case, you and I (assuming you are some sort of a project manager) would be obsolete.

Slides include information that makes people worry. Best you can do is to provide an overview of how the team handled a difficult situation.

Think about:

What did the team do as an immediate solution?

What the team learned from the experience?

What could be done differently in the particular situation?

Which aspects could be controlled and which not?

How will we avoid this in the future?

How does that impact our goal?

Acknowledge facts but focus on actionable items. Show how you are resolving the issues you are having.

5. Give as little information as possible.

Do not read this advice as: keep your cards close to the chest. Transparency is the key here. You are in a situation where a barrage of information will blow away the attention of our audience and switch them to panic mode. Present key information in short, easy-to-understand sentences and get through each in less than 45 seconds. Do not shy away from responsibilities. You (usually) have an awesome team that did their best to solve the issue. Give them credit by publicly acknowledging what went wrong and what they learned from that. Your audience (management, stakeholders) is there to help, identify issues beyond just your team and act upon trends they see in the company. Equip them with the information they need. If they need additional explanation, they will ask.

Ok, done. I think I’ve got it.

How many times have you crammed the required information in a slide, read through it, said “I’ve got this” and went on with your day?

The last time I did that, my report was a spectacular mess of incoherent questions, panic, accusations, and worst of it, blank stares.

Of course, all of the above can (and will) happen at least to some degree, but we can mitigate this.

Take 20 minutes of your precious time. Go through the slides. No. Not like that. Turn on the presenter mode. Imagine your audience is there. Go through the slides out loud. See where you stutter, where you start rambling, where you hear the utter nonsense. Mark those moments. I bet there is something you could change to mitigate this.

Go through steps 1–5 above. Sounds better? Do not be afraid to go back to the team for clarifications. If action items are missing, provide them. Try to look at the slide as you are seeing them for the first time. Come up with (difficult) questions that could be raised by the audience. Can you answer them? If not, figure out the answer. Rinse and repeat.

Now that you have polished it by yourself, it’s time for semi-public rehearsal. Especially when you are addressing a particularly difficult topic, arrange a dry run with at least one person. Let them be the tough audience representing the management team or a stakeholder. They should grill you with questions that you might actually hate such as: “I am not interested in this detail, tell me when we are expecting this to be delivered.” or “I don’t get the reasoning behind this, your explanation does not address the issue you are talking about”. There could be the worst comment of all: “I don’t get this, you lost me”. Again it is time to polish your delivery.

The point of this is to see your presentation from a different point of view. It might result in you being better prepared for different scenarios for a particular meeting or it might even direct you towards a solution you need to discuss with the team.

Is that all?

No. You and I can do all of the above and our report can still crash and burn. But at least we have avoided some of the land mines that lay ahead. Do not aim for perfection. Just be as prepared as possible for every scenario. And remember, if you don’t have the information required, do not try and weasel out of a difficult question. Be honest and respond with “I don’t have that information right now, let me check and get back to you via mail or direct message after the meeting. Would that work for you?” Rarely anyone says that this is not acceptable.

Now go. Make that presentation great, I know you can do it. And keep around for the next post. Lessons learned should be shared. :)