Page 119 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

110 DELIVERY

are no longer on the slide with your own commentary. In other words,
talk about what your audience would have otherwise had to read.

Highlight important numbers, columns, sections, or whatever you
want people to see. You can use different colors, a larger size font,
or both. Green is for good news (profi ts and upswings). Red is for
bad news, losses, or downswings.

Remove the “north” and “east” sides of a bordered slide to enlarge
the graphic and focus attention on the concept. The more radical
among us would remove the “south” and “west” borders, as well.

Be a good guide. After your roll-in, and after the next slide appears
on the screen, tell your audience what they should be looking at. As
in, “Take a look at the number at the bottom of the fi rst column.
That’s the number we are going to have to beat,” or “The cluster of
little red triangles in the upper right corner of the screen tells us that
the domestic housing market is about to tank.”
Even if your slide has color guidance indicators, your audience
may not be able to decipher them. So be sure to explain the not so
obvious. As in, “Here the orange line represents the industry aver-
age . . . the yellow line is our closest competitors . . . and we are the
green line, which as you can see, is trending up steeply as of the third
quarter of last year . . .”

Add a blank slide. Throw in a blank slide (royal blue or black)
whenever you have to spend a little time talking about something
that has nothing to do with your last slide. A couple of minutes
exploring a matter that does not sync or complement what is on the
screen is obviously not helpful. When you have covered what you
wanted to say, simply introduce your next graphic or chart with a
roll-in, and the PowerPoint marches on.
Now if we put some of these practices to work, we might start
with something like this fairly routine and nondescript operations
statement: