Page 79 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

70 CREATING THE PERFECT PRESENTATION
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Picture every talk, lecture, speech, conversation, or presentation as a
rocket ship—a design elegantly simple, yet manifestly functional. The
rocket is designed with minimum air drag, moves very fast, is usually
aimed at a target, has a lot of power, and can pack a terrifi c payload.
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If more business presentations were designed like rockets, we
would waste a lot less time and get a lot more done.
Visualize a rocket. In the nose cone you have your all-important
message, your theme, which you will launch into the heads of every-
one in the audience. Now picture design lines in the fuselage of the
rocket, which lead from the “warhead” directly down into the body
of the ship. At the ends of those design lines are subtopics. Each is
connected to the nose cone, and each serves as a kind of separate fuel
pod to power the rocket on its way.
We know that we can’t try to talk about more than one thing at
a time. But if we want to talk about a lot of things, that’s all right,
too—as long as each subject is linked directly to our larger theme. In
other words, each subject is just another aspect of the big message.
This leaves no room for tangents and discourages redundancies.

DON’T SWITCH GEARS

The key to getting the biggest bang out of the rocket is to avoid
making the mistake everyone else makes. You will often hear people
say, “Now I’d like to switch gears . . .” or “Now I would like to move
on and discuss . . .” or “Let me turn now to something else . . .” Sud-
denly your audience gets the incorrect impression that you have fi ve,
six, seven themes. Do that, and all could be lost. This can be a fatal
error and must be avoided.