The answer to this question depends fi rst on whether you are using ballroom or confer- ence room style, and second on whether you are designing your presentation primarily to be presented live or to be read by others without the presenter. As we mentioned before, ballroom style slides should have very little text, while conference room style slides can have lots more. The amount of text on a conference room style slide will depend on whether your material will be presented live or not. Live presentations can have less text, because the information is conveyed through the presenter ’ s commentary. Stand - alone presentations need a lot more text, to avoid any ambiguity (since the presenter is not there in the room to clarify things).
One way to add this text is to use callout boxes: boxes of text with arrows that point from them to the relevant graphic on the page (see Figure 8.15 for an example of a using call - out boxes). If your presentation document is going to be used both for a live presentation and a stand - alone document, you should seriously consider making two versions of the document — one for the presentation and one for takeaway. The Extreme Presentation method makes your presentations shorter, so this becomes easier to do, and often it is just a case of creating the stand - alone version fi rst, and then deleting some of the callout boxes for the live version. 15
15 Annotating a graphic using callouts for important conclusions increase the memorability of those conclusions (Myers - Levy &
Peracchio, 1995) .
15 Annotating a graphic using callouts for important conclusions increase the memorability of those conclusions (Myers - Levy &
Peracchio, 1995) .
FIGURE 8.15. Callout Box Example
44
23
17
12 Animals
Vegetables
Fruit
Super Heroes
Animals are clear winners this year
Superheroes line needs to be reinvigorated Revenue - $ millions, 2008
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The Lifecycle of a High- Performance Workforce
High Performance Workforce
• Efficiency begins at point of impact
• Employees with right skills can have huge impact
• Fast, reliable information and systems required to source and deploy workforce
Challenges for a High Performance Workforce
• Engage
• Develop
• Deploy
• Reward
Engage
• Cookie-cutter workforce is pure fantasy
• Finding people with right skills requires information,
judgment, vision, and resources
• How do you know what kind of worker you need at a given moment?
1. Plan: Set corporate objectives
2. Engage and select employees
3. Equip: Provide needed tools
Any questions?
Develop
• Some employees find their place in the organization right away; others need help
• Learning doesn’t stop once a worker gets to work
• System needed for setting goals, training, and tracking results
4. Set expectations 5. Encourage growth 6. Assess current skills 7. Identify knowledge
gaps
8. Continual training
Deploy
• Rubber hits the road when a supplied, trained, connected workforce gets to work
• Monitoring takes a constant flow of information
9. Put people in motion 10. Manage complexity 11. Provide support
Reward
• Keeping good employees takes new challenges and greater rewards
• Investments in highly productive employees can really pay off
12. Provide incentives 13. Create opportunities 14. Analyze
performance against objectives
FIGURE 8.16. Bad Example: HR Presentation
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It is possible that, if you combine graphics and text well in a stand - alone presenta- tion document, its effectiveness can be equal to that of a spoken presentation, so long as the audience takes the time to study it. 16 But, of course, that is the question — will they take the time to study it? Which is why an in - person presentation is more reliably effective: because your audience is present and therefore has already chosen to invest their time in your message.
But is there such a thing as too much text, even in a conference room style slide? In the Introduction to this book, we saw how presenting typical bullet - list slides along with a verbal explanation is worse than speaking without slides at all or presenting slides with- out speaking because audiences have diffi culty listening to you and reading the slide at the same time. Won ’ t this be just the same for conference room style slides, even if they pass the squint test?
I think that the answer is No — because of the squint test. When you present a bullet - list slide, your audience does not know what is on that slide until they read at least a few of the bullets. So they are going to start reading those bullets as soon as you show them the slide, even if you are trying to explain something to them. When you show them a well - designed slide that passes the squint test, though, as soon as they see the slide they have some idea of what it is about, and therefore they do not have to read all the details and they can focus on what you are saying.
Look at the sequence of slides in Figure 8.16 . There are twelve slides in this presentation.
If you squint at any of these pages, you see lots of bullets, but nothing beyond that. What this is, in fact, is a presentation on the stages in the human resources (HR) process in a typical company: hiring, developing, deploying, and rewarding.
Figure 8.17 shows a much more interesting and effective way to present the same informa- tion. The HR process is clearly evident here. It starts at the top left, with new employees being engaged by the company; you can see them walking through the door. Through several steps of on - boarding, they reach the development stage, at the top right of the page. They are then deployed into the various functions in the company, at the bottom right, and through several more steps are rewarded, on the bottom left, and promoted — you can see some of them climbing the staircase to their next position.
The point of including this graphic is not to suggest that everything you do should look this polished. This graphic was created by Xplane Inc., a company that specializes in such things, so you should not expect to meet their standards in your daily work. It does, however, show just how much detail you can put on a page and still be very comprehen- sible and effective. You can imagine what a rich and involved discussion you could hold, just using this one page. (If you happen to be just fl ipping through this book right now and noticed Figure 8.17 and think that it looks too “ busy, ” then go back and read this chapter from the beginning. You will then understand the power of the detail in it.)
16 Ginns ’ (2005) meta - analysis of forty - three different experiments found that when participants were able to study the presentation on their own, results can be equal to a live presentation.
16 Ginns ’ (2005) meta - analysis of forty - three different experiments found that when participants were able to study the presentation on their own, results can be equal to a live presentation.
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130
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131
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FIGURE 8.18. Combining Graphics and Text
Source: From WHAT DO PEOPLE DO ALL DAY? by Richard Scarry, copyright © 1968 by Richard Scarry, copyright renewed 1996 by Richard Scarry II. Used by permission of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc.
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