Today, I stumbled upon this great article most
presentations arent bullet proof by
Seth Godin . This must be a millionth
article on why mixing bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation is injurious
to audience’s mental health !
In his excellent book “Beyond Bullet Points”, the author
Cliff Atkinson provides an interesting metaphor to explain why bullet points do
not work in a PowerPoint…Psychologists have found that any sensory information
that we receive(Seeing, hearing, smell, touch ) in the present , has to pass
through an “eye of a needle” test for it to be registered in the long term
memory. What does this mean ?
Take the example of your daily commute to office
through your regular route for the past year or so .Even though your sensory
memory was (and is) working every single
day (otherwise you would not be reading this !) , it is never etched on to your
long-term memory. However, I am sure
though that you would be able to recall your commute on a particular day even dating several years back .. a day on which it
rained heavily during commute or there
was an accident on your route or you had to take a detour due to a major
festival …or some other striking event
which caused the day’s ride to be etched on to the long-term memory.
So the Message to all the modern day PowerPoint presenters
of the world is …Humans have a limited brain capacity (!!!) due to which our
brain purges all the sensory information through a filter setup in the eye of a
needle …anything that passes through the filter remains etched in memory for
long…others are scrupulously erased from long-term memory. Unfortunately, all
the bullet point efforts will not be remembered even to the basic level because
they do not pass through “eye of the needle”. So, what does pass through the
eye of the needle in our brain? not very much !
I recently came across this book “Made To Stick” –Why
some ideas take hold and others come unstuck by Chip & Dan Heath that
provides some clue .The authors have the following elements to express
our idea in a way that it will make stick to the audience mind :
S
- Simple –
Have only one core
message that you wish to convey in a presentation
U –
Unexpected – Make others to Pay attention
C-
Credible - Drive
authenticity in the message
C-
Concrete - Use simple
language…not jargons
E-
Emotional - While data is good,
Humans are a bundle of emotions !
S-
Stories
- Narrate a Story !
I am sure you will complain that the above list again looks
like a bullet-point list without bullets marked in front…Ladies and Gentlemen, so just
take one message out of this …In every presentation TELL A STORY …….not three
stories…just one story…your audience will be kinder with you…
In the next post , we will see how to weave a story!
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