Chapter 4. Finding Your Flow


Company Examples:

  • Intel

  • Cisco Systems

  • BioSurface Technology

  • Tanox

  • Cyrix

  • Compaq Computer

  • ONI Systems

  • Epimmune

In the first three chapters, you worked your way through the first three steps in creating an effective presentation. You developed the Framework Form, including your Point B, you determined your audience's WIIFY, and its knowledge level. You brainstormed potential ideas to include in the presentation and distilled those ideas into clusters, also known as Roman columns . You achieved right-brain focus.

Now you're ready to shift to your left brain and put your clusters into a sequence, to develop a logical flow. It's time to decide which Roman column goes first, which goes in the middle, and which goes last. In other words, you need a clear path that links all of your Roman columns, a blueprint for determining the best order for the elements of your presentation. You need flow .

The best way to express the critical importance of flow to your audience is to start with the simple example of written text. One distinctive aspect of written text is that the reader has random access to the writer's content. If the reader, while browsing through a book, report, or magazine, encounters a word or reference that is unclear but looks familiar, the reader can simply place a finger in the current page and then riffle back through the prior pages to find the original definition or reference. The reader can navigate through the writer's ideas independently.

Your presentation audience does not have that capability. They have only linear access to your content, one slide at a time. It's like looking at a forest at the level of the trees, only one tree at a time.

You may be doing an excellent job of presenting one tree. Your audience may be suitably impressed, thinking, "That's a superb tree: deep roots, thick bark, rich foliage!" But if, when you move on to the next tree, you don't make it crystal clear how it relates to the first tree, your audience is forced to try to divine the relationship on its own. They no longer have access to the first tree, which forces them to work harder to remember it and draw the necessary connections.

At that point, your audience has three choices:

  • They can fall prey to the MEGO syndrome.

  • They can interrupt you to ask for an explanation.

  • They can start thinking in an effort to understand the missing link, and stop listening.

None of these options is acceptable. Don't make them think!

Your job, therefore, is to become the navigator for your audience, to make the relationships among all the parts of your story clear for them. Make it easy for them to follow, to bring them up from the level of the trees and give them a view of the entire forest.

Doing this requires a roadmap, a plan, a formula. Like a chef who follows a recipe to use the right ingredients in the right order, you need to encompass all the Roman columns within an overarching template.

There are proven techniques for organizing ideas in a logical sequence to create a lucid and persuasive presentation. I call these techniques Flow Structures , and there are 16 different options for various types of presentations:



Presenting to Win. The Art of Telling Your Story
Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition
ISBN: 0137144172
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 94

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