Know Your Objective

A good friend of mine at work reminded me of the gold medal-winning Australian rowing team of the 2000 Olympics, and the mantra that the coach took with the team during their preparations. Essentially, ‘Will this make the boat go faster?’

It reminded me of the need to have a solid objective and to keep this constantly in your mind as you develop the content for your presentation. Executive presentations should have a solid purpose, which will ultimately help you to deliver a presentation that is effective and efficient. The majority of presentations given at the executive level are given in order to reach a decision on the execution of some part of the strategy (or, indeed, to enable change within the strategy itself).

If you are trying to obtain approval to initiate a project, for example, then everything that you put into your presentation – words, images, lines, sounds – should all drive towards securing that approval. For every piece of information that you display and/or convey, you should ask whether it is helping you to get that approval. If the answer is ‘no’ (even if what you are displaying looks amazing and you have spent hours preparing it) then you need to cull it from your presentation.

Remember, keep things clear, keep things simple, and drive towards your objective at all times.