25.03.15 Putting Presentations Together Like a Highly Paid Consultant
with Remona Moodley (44)
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Chris: In this episode of Great Practices, I'm joined by Ramona
Moodley, a former McKinsey consultant turned executive coach and founder of
masterthetoolkit. com. Her company helps professionals sharpen their problem
solving and presentation skills using the tools of the trade of consultants.
[00:00:18] Chris: Ramona shares why the final 5 percent of a project can make
or break the first 95%, how to know when a presentation is truly necessary, and
the best ways to start a deck from scratch. Spoiler alert, never start from scratch.
Plus, we'll break down the three essential components every presentation needs,
and how using transitions and signposts can keep your audience engaged.
[00:00:47] Chris: We'd like to welcome you to this episode of great practices,
where we are going to be discussing some of the tools of the trade. Now, every
industry has essential tools that professionals rely on to get the job done.
Carpenters, they have hammers, saws, nail guns, mechanics, use wrenches,
diagnostic scanners, automotive lifts.
[00:01:35] Chris: Doctors depend on stethoscopes, syringes and scalpels. But
what about project management and PMO leadership? Our tools of the trade
include project and portfolio management software, communication and
collaboration tools, financial, reporting, and presentation software. Well, today
we're going to be zeroing in on the tools and the skills that [00:02:00] we need
to give effective presentations with our guest, Ramona Moodley.
[00:02:04] Chris: Now, Ramona is a former McKinsey management consultant
turned executive coach, and she is passionate about driving change through
people development. Ramona is the founder of Master the Toolkit, a company
dedicated to helping professionals sharpen their problem solving and
presentation skills. Her mission?
[00:02:25] Chris: To democratize the consulting toolkit. The same tools of the
trade that high paid consultants use as her website puts it, she helps people turn
our minds mess into presentation finesse one slide at a time.
[00:02:42] Chris: Ramona, welcome to great practices.
[00:02:45] Remona: Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
[00:02:47] Chris: So Ramona, we're just going to start off with, just tell us a
little bit about yourself, where you're from, what you do, kind of, uh, kind of get
us into it and kick things off , with that.
[00:02:57] Remona: Yes, sure, Chris. So if you hear a weird accent, I'm a little
bit all over the place. I grew up in South Africa and then spent the majority of
my career in the U. S. In San Francisco and more recently moved to Sydney
where I'm currently based.
[00:03:15] Chris: Okay. Got it. so what, what is it that you do now, Ramona?
Can you tell us a little bit more about master the toolkit?
[00:03:23] Remona: Yes. So master the toolkit has been something that was on
my mind for the past 10 years. And I just recently brought it to life a couple of
years ago, taking everything I was thinking about over 10 years and putting it
together in an offering that can help people build what I, what is the consulting
toolkit.
[00:03:47] Remona: what is the consulting toolkit? That's what I hear really
often. It's something that is so valuable in the workplace and was the biggest
thing that I took out of my time [00:04:00] at McKinsey. I've seen the
consulting toolkit set people up in their careers for life. It leapfrogs them. Way
ahead of where they would have been if they hadn't built that toolkit.
[00:04:12] Remona: But not everybody wants to go into consulting, gets to go
into consulting. And that's what I mean when I say democratizing that set of
skills and mindsets outside of consulting so that others can learn to do that. So
that's what I do right now. Teach the toolkit and support people as an executive
coach on the mindsets piece of it.
[00:04:36] Chris: well, that toolkit sounds amazing, Ramona, and I could only
imagine that that presentations and delivering presentations is it's a big part of
that toolkit. Is that correct?
[00:04:50] Remona: So it is a massive part of the toolkit. And that's why I'm so
excited to be talking to you about it today. I call this part of the toolkit. We're
focusing on today. The final 5%. What happens is, when we're working, there's
four big things that we're doing. The first is, we're usually tasked with some
kind of problem to solve, and we break that up and we plan the research and
analysis and work that it takes to do that.
[00:05:19] Remona: The second step is, we do all of this research and analysis.
and take some sort of action towards this problem. Now these two steps are how
we spend 95 percent of our time. The 5 percent of the time comes at the end, it's
the polish. It is the two steps that are documenting the work that we've done via
slides or a vertical document of some kind and then presenting that.
[00:05:49] Remona: Now this final 5% the thing that actually makes or breaks
the 95 percent of time we spent getting to that [00:06:00] point. And I would go
so far as to say that 5%, it takes 5 percent of time to do your slides, to build
your documents, to present. But it's 95 percent of the impact right there in that
moment. And that's the power of the conversation we're having today.
[00:06:16] Chris: just absolutely critical to make sure that we are, you know,
making these presentations the best that they can be. so my first question then
would be Ramona is. do we have to have a deck prepared for every single
meeting now, you know, as a project manager, a PMO leader, I know
sometimes, you know, going to a meeting without a presentation is kind of like
having your hands tied behind your back, you know, and being asked to cook or
being asked to play an instrument or something like that.
[00:06:44] Chris: So do we need to have a presentation prepared for every
meeting? And how can you tell if a meeting needs a deck or not?
[00:06:53] Remona: Yes, this is a question I get really often. And I think there's
three times that I know I need to make a presentation. The first is if it's a norm,
a cultural norm, an expectation of the audience that you will have a
presentation. That's the first. The second is if you are communicating a message
that is complex and you need to bring the audience along with you on the
journey.
[00:07:27] Remona: I would use a presentation in that case. And then the last
one is for record of work. So, in consulting, and I also know in PMOs, we very
often have to put together presentations to show progress, to show the work that
was done. In consulting, we leave behind on strategy engagements very large
presentation decks.
[00:07:51] Remona: And there's this joke we throw around, which is if you
didn't make the slides, You didn't do the work.
[00:07:58] Chris: right.
[00:07:59] Remona: And [00:08:00] so in that sense, it serves as a record of
work. But those are the three times I would think about absolutely making a
slide presentation deck. Everything else is, it depends.
[00:08:12] Chris: Okay, well, that that makes a lot of sense. And to your point,
then, you know, if it's not a cultural norm, I mean, you know what? And I'm,
and I'm actually seeing a transition where people are just like, I do not want to
see a presentation. I just want to have a conversation, you know, and, and I'm
seeing that shift recently, which I think is kind of refreshing.
[00:08:31] Chris: It's like, let's just kind of get together and we can just talk. So
you do not have to have a deck every single time.
[00:08:37] Chris: all right. So let's say that you do decide that you do need a
deck. So let's just say that is the cultural norm. And that is the approach that
people take in, in the organization or the PMO that you're in. what's your
approach to not having to reinvent the wheel every single time.
[00:08:54] Remona: Absolutely. I have a rule of thumb, which is never start
from scratch. That is a way that you will save yourself so much time. And so I
encourage people to very quickly figure out What are the must haves on a
presentation that will be repeated over and over again? And I call it almost like
building the placemat to fill in and update repeatedly as you go.
[00:09:24] Remona: And what I've noticed is that, you know, you get to a point
where You build a structure and a placemat that is so robust that you probably
never have to change its structure if you do just 5 percent on the margins,
customized from meeting to meeting. So get to that point as quickly as possible.
If you're trying to figure out, how do I get there fast?
[00:09:48] Remona: Think about what questions. Will your audience have and
then just lay that out in a nice structure and focus on answering those questions
and updating the [00:10:00] answer to those questions each time.
[00:10:02] Chris: Okay, perfect. so let's say things get a bit non routine, you
know, now we're going to be totally outside of there's nothing about being able
to tweak the 5 percent or, you know, just kind of work around the edges. It's a
new project, or maybe we have to report out on a problem or, you know, there's
some kind of reorg recommendation, something like that.
[00:10:23] Chris: What is your process for presenting these bigger topics and to
a more senior audience? Because that's really where that message is going to go.
[00:10:33] Remona: Oh, absolutely. So this, I'm going to take you now into a
slide making process and also one of the big mistakes I see people making. So
they know they've got this big piece of work to do and they're going to have to
make some slides on it. People start right at the beginning, like I said, in the
four step process with planning the work they're going to do, doing the work,
then building the slides, then planning to present.
[00:10:59] Remona: And what I want to encourage your listeners to do is
actually start thinking about the final 5 percent first, start thinking about your
slides before you even go into the planning and analysis, because it puts you in
the shoes of your audience, it gets you asking what is it that they actually need.
[00:11:23] Remona: want, where are they right now, and where do I need to get
them to be? So, you want to start your slides right at the beginning, at least with
some kind of outline or concept or questions that your audience will have. So
start crafting your message first and you won't know any of the answers. At a
bare minimum, you'll have the questions.
[00:11:48] Remona: Then you want to draw out your slides on paper.
PowerPoint starts on paper. This is how you're not going to fight with yourself
about [00:12:00] trying to figure out how to fit in content. Start on paper first,
plan them out. Then you can start doing some of the work and analysis. And
then you want to select a starting point for your slides.
[00:12:13] Remona: This is where templates come in. Slide templates are my
best friend. I say never start from scratch. This is where you want to go. Select a
slide template that fits your content. Not the other way around, which is another
mistake that I see very often is selecting a template that you like and force
fitting content.
[00:12:33] Remona: So you select that starting point with templates. It's going
to speed up your slide making next. You actually build the slide. Now comes
the real slide making, and you can see how far into the process we are at this
point here. You want to then easily just copy and paste content into the
templates. And here I use keyboard shortcuts.
[00:12:57] Remona: These are life. Changing to save you time in my course,
there's a lesson that I run and it takes me two minutes to edit a slide and my
student of my course emailed me the other day and told me it took her 18
minutes. Because she didn't know how to use shortcuts and I did. So this is the
time saving power of keyboard shortcuts.
[00:13:24] Remona: And then the last one is, don't forget to beautify your
slides. Just think, how can I make this more visually appealing? As well as,
Quality checking, making sure everything's aligned. The flow is good. Take a
step back from your audience perspective and make sure that, from a clean
audience, who isn't so much in the detail, does it now all make sense when I
take a step back?
[00:13:50] Remona: Absolutely.
[00:13:51] Chris: Okay. That is a lot that you just went over there. And I'm
going to go all the way back to the beginning because I want to make sure that I
am clear on [00:14:00] what you said. Are you saying when you saying? Start
with that 5%. You're saying before the project even starts or whatever problem
you're solving and all of that kind of deal, you're saying, just have almost the
outline of what is going to go in that context.
[00:14:14] Chris: Is that what you're saying? So you're basically saying we
know that this is going to feed into this deck. We know that this is what these
people are going to want to understand that they're going to want to know.
[00:14:25] Chris: And then you start out with that. And then you fill in the
blanks, right? As you figure out the problems and you work through the,
through the issues.
[00:14:33] Remona: Absolutely. And you pivot as you go and your storyline
will change slightly as you go, but at least you've got something, some kind of
scaffolding to work around. And it avoids analysis paralysis because it's easy to
get carried away in things that are not that important.
[00:14:53] Chris: Yeah, that is, uh, that is very good advice there to sort of start
with that. So what I'm hearing, let me see if I get this right then. So you
basically, you start with your rough outline of where it's going to go. You then
said you put it on paper, right? I mean, we all immediately, Oh, we just got to
fire a PowerPoint or fire up whatever.
[00:15:10] Chris: And we're just going to start, you know, clicking away in
there and moving around. But it just ends up to be a muddled mess. So you're
basically saying, get it on paper. It's forgiving, right? Um, use templates. You
know, it's a good starting point. Use these shortcuts on and we're going to talk
about. I think people can access these shortcuts that you're talking about.
[00:15:27] Chris: We're going to talk about that at the end and then finally just
beautify that. Make sure it flows and it looks good So that is actually is
something that people will enjoy. So very nice approach there for sure. Now,
people think that building the deck, you know, you're talking again about that 5
percent at the end, and this is, you know, really a big part of it. Now, people
think that maybe building that deck is 100 percent of that final deliverable. you
have a different opinion on that, don't you? What else do you feel needs to be
part of the presentation in order to be [00:16:00] considered 100 percent
complete?
[00:16:02] Remona: Yes, this comes down to the last part, which is the
presenting. So you've done all this amazing work. You've made this. Beautiful
slide presentation and now you've got this audience in front of you and you need
to convince them. Of the credibility and power of all the work that has come to
this point, and I've seen people let it down in the 20 minutes that you're
presenting or the one hour you're presenting, letting down months of work that
went into this.
[00:16:31] Remona: So you want to avoid that. And that's why the way you
present your slides matters so much. And the way that I like to think about this
is there's this beautiful book and video you can watch on YouTube by Chip and
Dan Heath talking about the power of moments, and they talk about the human
experience of an event being anchored in the start, the peaks, And the end.
[00:16:58] Remona: So you want to think about that when rehearsing your
presentation. And if we take it to the start, I have a quick, some quick tips on
this. There's something called the five Ps. You want to set your audience up
well at the start, so they know what to expect and they're engaged. the less
questions your audience has.
[00:17:21] Remona: In the back of their heads, the more they're listening to
what you're saying. So you want to get ahead of that with these five P's and it
stands for past purpose, payoff, preview process. So you start the meeting with
when we last spoke. Dot dot dot. That is past. Just sets the context. People are
busy. They don't know who you are sometimes.
[00:17:45] Remona: They forgot. They don't know why they're here. Get them
grounded. Then move to purpose. Today we're here to talk about dot dot dot. Or
to make a decision about whether we should move forward or not. [00:18:00]
That's purpose. Very clear. Pay off. What's in it for the audience? Why do they
need to be there? That would be payoff.
[00:18:09] Remona: Preview is about what's, what's going to happen over the
course of the meeting. Here you can present your agenda or you can say, I'm
going to talk you through three steps and then we're going to go into a problem
solving to decide whether we move forward or not. And then last is process and
that's just anything you have to say.
[00:18:28] Remona: Around the logistics of how the meeting will work. I
encourage you to speak up, or I encourage you to ask questions. We'll write it
on the whiteboard and tackle it at the end. So just a really nice framework to set
yourself up well at the start.
[00:18:42] Chris: That is excellent. , so that is to kick things off. Like, and, and
what is that? That's maybe less than, maybe it was at a 90 seconds, two minutes,
maybe.
[00:18:50] Remona: A minute to two, and you can use some and not all.
Sometimes I just use three of it.
[00:18:57] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's great. It just kind of sets, sets the
expectations up and gets everybody, like you're saying on the same page,
literally. So that's great. What's next after that then?
[00:19:07] Remona: and then we talk about, let's talk about the middle. Here,
what I like to say is when you put up a slide, people are going to read it and
when they are reading it, they're not listening to you. So how do we avoid that
from happening? I like to use transitions. not transitions in the PowerPoint
sense, transition as in when, before I put up a slide, I say next time going to
show you.
[00:19:35] Remona: And then I give a highlight of what I'm going to show.
Then I put up the slide. So we just primes the audience before the slide comes
up. So that they don't have to read it to try and figure out what's there. So
always do that. And then the other thing I do is when the slide is up, I use
signposting. I say, what you're looking at here is a [00:20:00] chart that shows a
revenue.
[00:20:02] Remona: over the past 10 years. I want you to focus on the last bar,
just guiding the audience to what you want them to look at so they're not
reading it in whatever haphazard way they want.
[00:20:17] Chris: you're doing the thinking for them so that they don't have to
do that. So they are focused on you with a focused on the message and they're
not having to process that themselves. That is fantastic. And then where do we
go? I assume we go to the end next, right? What does that look
[00:20:34] Chris: like?
[00:20:35] Remona: now we go to the end and this is also where I've seen a lot
of people completely let down their presentations because you want to end with
A call to action or next steps, just a final something that makes the time spent
feel worth it for every participant. So don't forget the call to action or a next
steps page.
[00:21:00] Chris: There's something that I've kind of subscribed to myself
because, and we've all fallen guilty to it, the last slide is Any questions that is
like the worst last slide to have because you know, you, you could have built up
this great crescendo and had this, fantastic information and then, you know, you
leave it up to somebody in the audience that may have been paid attention, may
have been listening, may not have been listening, good, could care less to ask a
question.
[00:21:27] Chris: And that's what everybody's left with is what a, what a
letdown. So I love that. So you need to finish with that question. Strong call to
action. Do this, you know, and, and, and I'm not saying don't put any questions
in there. Like I personally do that as my second to last slide. Is there any
questions?
[00:21:42] Remona: And then, like you're saying, you can finish strong. Yeah.
You should own the peaks. That's the, that's the thing. So I love that you take
control at the end and you put questions before that final couple of minutes.
Take the power back, own that peak. It really [00:22:00] matters for the
experience.
[00:22:01] Chris: So clearly you've given a presentation or two and you've seen
some presentations given over the years. What are some of the most common
mistakes that you've seen people make when it comes to giving presentations
and how can they be overcome?
[00:22:16] Remona: there are so many places we can go with this one, but
seeing that we're on the topic of actually presenting just that last part, this is a
challenge I've seen faced over and over again. You've got a 60 minute meeting
and at the last minute you find out it's been cut down. To 20 minutes to five
minutes and you're frazzled in the moment.
[00:22:40] Remona: Where do I go? What do I do with this for this? You have
to plan ahead of time. This is what I do. I structure my deck in a top down way
naturally so that if I wanted to cut information. It would usually be from the
end, and so I would just present the first few slides if I only had five minutes, a
little bit more if I had 15 minutes.
[00:23:05] Remona: So I plan for that happening just in case. And the five
minute slide rule is I'll have an executive summary or something that's back of
pocket. It's just one page. If you had one page, what would you show? So that's
what I would do on that side. Then on the actual slide making side, I see a lot of
Distracting content and placement put on slides.
[00:23:36] Remona: And the reason this happens is because when we get so
into the work, we want to show everything that we did. We get more absorbed
into the process. Then delivering exactly what the audience needs.
[00:23:50] Remona: And this is when we end up with really messy slides. A
storyline that's not compelling. A storyline that's not really answering the
[00:24:00] questions that the audience has. Instead, it's a, it's a presentation that
just shows, Look at my work, look at how much I've done. to get away from
that, I would say, Chris, it's just following that five step process, always keeping
your audience in mind.
[00:24:14] Chris: And I have fallen prey to every single one of these mistakes
that you have, that you have talked about, you know, over the years and that,
that last one, you know, I would be so guilty of that. It's just like the way I
would want to, I'd want to walk everybody through it. Here's all of the work that
we've done and here's the assumptions that we made and here's the conclusions
we came to and here's the recommendation at the end.
[00:24:38] Chris: But the further I've gotten in my career, I have flipped that
script. What I start out with now is Boom. Here's the recommendation. This is
what we've got. This answers your question. does anybody want to go any
further? No. Okay. We're done, you know? And it's like, it's totally flipped the
script,
[00:24:54] Remona: And it's, it's called a pyramid principle. If any of your
listeners want to dive deeper into that, but that's exactly what it is, is leading
with the recommendation first, and then supporting that with the arguments.
And you're right. Sometimes, all you say is, Throughout research, we found that
we should proceed with this decision and sometimes everyone in the room
could be in agreement with you right there.
[00:25:17] Remona: And that's it. You're done with that meeting.
[00:25:20] Chris: That's it. No, no need to belabor the point, right? And just
move on from there. Excellent. So I love, rules of thumb to follow, and you've
got a bunch of those that you've interspersed throughout our conversation
already.
[00:25:32] Chris: So we're going to see if we can apply a couple here as well. ,
any guidelines for a perfect slide count?
[00:25:39] Remona: This is a question I get very often and I don't give a
recommendation on slide count because it depends, it depends on where your
audience is at and where you're trying to get them to that determines how many
slides you need, the complexity [00:26:00] of what of the message that you're
trying to deliver. I've seen Presentations that are 50 minutes long go off one
slide, and so it's all about your audience.
[00:26:10] Remona: I've also seen slides that have nothing on it but one single
chart. So it's hard, it's hard to say an exact number.
[00:26:18] Chris: So maybe the principle here is just enough to get the job
done.
[00:26:23] Chris: What about, what about guidelines when it comes to time
spent per slide and or time per presentation? Is there any rules of thumb that you
follow there?
[00:26:33] Remona: I'll just, I'll reiterate the, what I call the 515 rule here,
which is always having at the Back of your mind, if I only had five minutes to
present this whole presentation, what slides would I take to that? And if I only
had 15 minutes, what would I take to that?
[00:26:54] Chris: Love it. That is a great, that's a great approach. And then my
final rule of thumb question, any guidelines of, uh, text? To image ratio, is
there, you know, I've seen them both ways where it's like, you know, 97 percent
text and, uh, and then, you know, maybe one or two words and just a huge
image. Is there anything that you like to follow there?
[00:27:15] Chris: Okay.
[00:27:15] Remona: I always say here, go for the norms of the context that
you're in. Different clients consider different Things normal in the look and feel
of a slide. And you want to match that because people are really good at
recognizing patterns. And the more that something feels familiar to them, the
less processing it takes in their brain.
[00:27:39] Remona: So match the familiarity of your, of your context. I like to
keep 70 percent of the slide with words and pictures and 30 percent white space
just makes it clean andMore visually appealing.
[00:27:55] Chris: Makes sense. And again, you're just, you're going back to
what you first started with is what's the, [00:28:00] what's the cultural norm,
you know, or what is the norm that everybody's used to and familiar with and,
and you could kind of use that as a guideline there. , Okay, I want to ask you
this question.
[00:28:10] Chris: We're coming down to the end now, but this is something that
has just plagued me for years is, you've Laid out this presentation, you've got
this whole thought process done and this flow of work that's done and you're
ready to just go into it and then somebody just immediately out the gates, well
what about this?
[00:28:27] Chris: And what about that? Well, it's gonna be covered later in the
presentation. And you've thought about that and it's part of it, but you know, it's
like that's the first thing that's out of the gate. And then it just kind of disrupts
the whole presentation. What is your way of dealing with, you know, something
like that when that type of thing happens.
[00:28:43] Remona: Oh, and it's happened to me so many times, and it kind of
knocks you out of the controlling seat, and you've rehearsed it in a very
particular way, and it just knocks your confidence. So, here's what I do. I always
have a very visible parking lot. ready. If it's in person, it will be a flip chart or a
whiteboard.
[00:29:03] Remona: If it's virtual, it will be, we'll put it down in the chat. But
it's some way to acknowledge the question, acknowledge the concern. And just
almost just release it, put it onto the board and acknowledge that you will come
back to it. It is part of the plan.
[00:29:20] Chris: Perfect. So instead of being, , maybe a stop sign, it'sjust a, , a
road bump or something. You may have to slow down just a little bit, but you
could keep moving forward and you'll come back to it and address it later. Love
that. , what have you found to be effective? Like, if you see that people are, you
know, kind of dozing off a little bit, or maybe their attention is waning, what are
some things that you've done to be effective to bring them back?
[00:29:45] Remona: Yes. So something I like to plan for ahead of time is to
have engagement. Every five to ten minutes, at least, and it can be as simple as
asking the [00:30:00] audience a question, asking them to think about
something, uh, having some post it notes and have them jot down some
thoughts, any kind of engagement activity like that would help.
[00:30:12] Remona: You can use ice breakers. Ask people to stand up for the
next few minutes of the meeting. Uh, you can tell a joke or two. Lots of ways.
I've also had experiences where a couple of people might be nodding off. I've
had that after lunchtime, particularly. And a neat trick for that is if you can,
walk over. Who just walk over in their direction, stand where they are and start
giving the presentation from there.
[00:30:40] Remona: , and you can also cold call asking questions. , that's a not
so friendly approach, but it really does trick for keeping people on their toes.
[00:30:50] Chris: So basically, like you're saying, every 5 to 10 minutes is what
you're saying. Just have some type of engagement mechanism and it depends
upon, you know, the severity level of you're going to be standing over them and
asking them questions directly or just having them rhetorically think about
something.
[00:31:06] Chris: Just got to keep stirring that pot, right? And keep their
audience coming back. So that's great.
[00:31:10] Remona: Yes.
[00:31:11] Chris: So if there is one thing today, Ramona, that you would like
our audience, just one thing that you'd like our audience to remember today
about effective presentations, what would it be?
[00:31:20] Remona: Think about your output. Think about your presentation.
Think about your audience right at the beginning.
[00:31:28] Chris: That says it all. Well, we definitely appreciate you being on
today. This has been so helpful, so insightful. Um, you, you have got a ton of
free resources that are available, so if somebody wants to contact you to discuss
this further. Download your free presentation template or your shortcuts. What's
the best way for somebody to reach you?
[00:31:51] Remona: You can find me on my website, www. masterthetoolkit.
com and also on LinkedIn. [00:32:00] And you can find me at Ramona
Moodley there and it's Ramona R E M O N A Moodley.
[00:32:07] Chris: All right. Excellent. So I would highly encourage, ,
everybody that is listening to go to master the toolkit. com and that's, that's
actually how I connected with you. Ramona was, I downloaded some of these
templates and these shortcuts and I just found them very effective myself. So
we, again, appreciate you being on today and we'll look forward to talking to
you soon.
[00:32:26] Remona: Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
[00:32:28]
[00:32:28] Chris: Well, that was another great episode of Great Practices, and
we certainly do appreciate Ramona joining us today. What were some of the
great practices and insights that came from this episode? Well, I like the ratio
that she started things off right out of the gate, where she said that 95 percent of
that time, you're being tasked with the problem to solve and then doing the
research and analysis to solve that problem. And then 5 percent of that time is
documenting the work that's been done and presenting, you know, the
recommendations that would come from that. So, it's that final 5 percent that
could actually make or break that initial body of work that's done,
[00:33:10] Chris: just really shows the importance of honing our presentations
and our presentation skills. Now, we moved on to, do we need a presentation
prepared for every single meeting? She mentioned three times where it would
be appropriate. First of all, if it was a cultural norm of the audience. If they
expect a presentation.
[00:33:29] Chris: Then that's certainly a time that we would want to deliver
one. If we're communicating a message that is complex, maybe a little bit hard
to follow, then we need to take the audience along with us. That'd be another
time to do that. And finally, she talked about if we need to show a record of our
work, we need to show progress, we need to show work that was done, the
presentation may ultimately be the end deliverable itself.
[00:33:52] Chris: For example, in that consulting environment, and that really
shows the work that was done and brought up to that point of that [00:34:00]
95%.
[00:34:00] Chris: I liked her viewpoint. And the timing of when to start putting
a presentation together, especially if it's not one of those routine presentations.
Maybe this is going to be something that's a one offer. It's a unique problem that
you're solving. She says, start it. thinking about that final 5 percent first before
you even have started the project, uh, before you even getting into planning and
analysis, put yourself in the shoes of the audience and ask yourself, what do
they want?
[00:34:32] Chris: What are they going to want to know? What questions are
they going to have and put that outline together that you're going to be able to,
then you're not going to have the answers to these questions yet because you
haven't even begun to solve the problem, but put these Outline of questions
together so that you've got an outline to follow.
[00:34:50] Chris: Then, she said, start on paper first. You know, we all have a
tendency to dive right into PowerPoint or right into our presentation software.
But she'll mock things up first, just to kind of really flesh it out and get an idea
of how that's all going to come together.
[00:35:05] Chris: Then move into the starting point for your slides, which is
obviously having some templates to work from. She had some great tools, and
we'll talk about those great tools at the end that you could use as a starting point
for some of those templates. And then build the slides. So now you've already
got the outline, basically, of here's the questions that we're going to be asked.
[00:35:23] Chris: Here would be the concerns. This is what the audience
wanted to hear and what they wanted to know. You've filled in the content from
The research and the problem solving that you've done. Now you can just build
the slides and then finally just pull it all together by making them look good,
visually appealing, quality checking, and making sure that that's going to
resonate.
[00:35:42] Chris: With your audience. So that's great when it comes to actually
building the deck, but she also talked about the fact that that's only half of the
deliverable when it comes to that final 5 percent because The other part is
actually presenting these findings.
[00:35:58] Chris: So this is where you have to [00:36:00] convince your
audience of the credibility and the power of the work that was done.She started
off with the point that you want to have a Solid beginning. You want to have a
good middle that includes transitions. Now, not transitions as it relates to like
the transitions and PowerPoint that moves from one slide to the next, but
transitions in the spirit of you're going to tell people what's going to be on the
next slide.
[00:36:24] Chris: So they already are aware of that so that they're not spent
time reading that slide, but they're actually listening to you. I thought that was a
great point. And then even when you get them to this slide, You're going to use
signposts. She just said you're going to focus in on this one particular area on
this one particular slide and you're going to be looking at this one particular
thing.
[00:36:44] Chris: You take their ability to need to think about what it is that
they're going to look at and what it is that they need to follow. You take that
away from them, which allows them to engage with you and follow you in a
much easier and smoother way. And then obviously finish with a clear call to
action or next steps of what people are going to do.
[00:37:03] Chris: I loved your point of the fact that, you know, if you've got,
you know, you've got a presentation that you think is going to last X amount of
time, maybe it might be 60 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever that ends up being
be prepared for. Oh, guess what? You've only got 5 minutes or you've only got
15 minutes.
[00:37:21] Chris: So yeah, go ahead and build out the deck for that 60 minute
presentation. But also come prepared for the very abbreviated, very abridged
version, which could be just one slide or a handful of slides that you can
structure top down so that you could cover what you need to cover. If you find
yourself in that type of situation where you are very limited on your time, which
you didn't expect.
[00:37:46] Chris: And I liked your final point where she wrapped it all up. One
thing to remember. Think about the output. Think about the presentation and
think about your audience right at the beginning of the project. If you do that,
then [00:38:00] you're going to be able to stitch that through and you're going to
be able to build that through that entire project.
[00:38:04] Chris: so when the time comes to build that final 5%, you will have
everything you need to make a very effective and very persuasive presentation.
So again, we'd like to thank Ramona for being on great practices today. And do
you have a great practice that you'd like to share?
[00:38:19] Chris: Go to the PMO leader. com, click on resources, great
practices, podcast, and fill out the form at the bottom of the screen. Someone
will get in touch with you shortly. also be sure not to miss a single episode by
subscribing to Great Practices on your favorite podcast platform.
[00:38:35] Chris: And if you like what you hear, we've had great guests on,
we've got many more coming. Be sure to share this with your manager,
colleagues, and any others you think would benefit. Thanks again for listening
this episode and keep putting great practices into practice.
