If the entire economy can fit on one slide, then you probably have too many slides
Steve...and this blog post title is way, way too long.
Check the below image, spotted over the weekend on Business Insider's piece titled Here's The Entire Debate About The US Economy In One Huge Slide:
The slide presents, (simply I admit), what the financial services company sees as the key assumptions and challenges for the US economy in 2014, offers up some alternative and plausible implications of these assumptions, and then presents what it feels are the most important data visualizations (that are not too hard to look at), that support both the assumptions and the conclusions.
Think about it, they are attempting to distill a subject as large and complex as the economy of the USA down into one slide. Sure there are lots of data points and subject areas that are not and can't be covered in just one slide, and sure, the presentation gurus out there will cringe at the notion that there are way too many words in way too small a font to pass muster, but the overall effect I think is outstanding.
All the important data points, the reasoning, the charts - everything that this presenter needed to lead his/her talk about the state of the economy all laid out on one page.
I know I have gotten into a really bad presenting habit over the years of simply adding more and more slides to just about every presentation that I have done. Slides are free, right? Just add another one with a cool picture and a word or two in 64-pt font.
But I think that approach makes you a little lazy and also can easily result in ponderous presentations that end up going everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
The tightness and the focus required to distill your content into its smallest container possible also forces you to consider what is truly important about the information and arguments you are presenting and to think much more about what you are going to say about that content, rather than spending umpteen hours scouring the stock photo sites for the 'right' images.
This has to be the next HRevolution contest - the 10 minute, one-slide presentation.
Have a great week all!
Reader Comments (3)
I get where you're going with this... but you'd better be one kick-ass presenter to give 10 minutes without a slide change. I would hate have this slide being presented to me. Condensing and idea is very different than condensing a presentation.
Every presentation should be able to condensed to one sentence - but not every presentation should be presented from one slide.
It would be an interesting experiment - you can call it something like - YAWN HR or maybe SLIDE1zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Steve, I agree some presenters do overuse slides. It would be hard to distill any subject to one slide that audience can actually see from the last row. Though the result of such accomplishment would be astonishing!
I follow this suggestion: Use only 5 slides in 10 minutes to get 5 points across. And pictures do help to connect to people. And considering Paul's comment, I bet it will prove to be even more so in HR.
Paul - I get your point. But I guess what I really was getting at was that constraints make for better, more focused talks. I for one am getting really tired of 85 slide works of art. I mean they look cool, but it seems to me that they often become the whole point of the talk, not the talk itself.
Elena - Thanks for that idea. I know the one-slide thing is a bit extreme, but I think it is heading in the right direction.