5 Tips To Improve Executive Presentations

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PM Tip, Week of 16 May 2021

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Partial Transcript:
Hi everyone, Ray here with another project management tip. Today, let's look at five tips to improve executive presentations.

Now, before the era of PowerPoint, presentations were typically given with flip charts. A vice president of a prominent fortune 100 company was providing a quarterly sales update to the CEO, the senior executives and the board. Unfortunately, this VP was simply reading the flip charts. After a few moments, the CEO leaned forward and declared, "I can read. When I say flip, just flip to the next chart. Ready, flip,
flip,
flip."

Notice how some things haven't changed? Don't be like that vice president. Here are five tips to improve your executive presentations.

Number one, less is more everyone can read. So rather than fill in your slides with words, fill them with ideas, charts, and graphs. Your speech is going to fill in the context. In general for 30 to 60 minute presentation, there probably shouldn't be more than eight to 12 slides, I drafted a presentation for a school superintendent of large district to give to the board and it had only 10 slides. The speech with question and answer period lasted somewhere between 45 and 60 minutes. And he received compliments on the result.

Number two, emphasize the importance of your information early in the presentation. And after you've explained your primary purpose of the talk. Give it context by emphasizing why this topic is important to the organization. Provide a summary of data with charts and graphs to show how it connects to organizational strategy, and how the goals of any recommendations might be met.

Three, be flexible with the presentation flow. If sidebar conversations start, perhaps let them go on for a reasonable time. Be prepared to take the discussion in a new direction if needed. Also, be sure to watch the room for the signs of body language. You may see some indicators you need to change the path forward. During one presentation I was giving I quickly spotted an executive who also happened to be the project sponsor. She was standing at the back of the room, and she was nervously twisting her beads on the fly. I transitioned to another topic to find out later that I was talking about things the rest of the executive team wasn't expecting. Maybe there was some miscommunication between us. But that was okay. I took the cue moved on and got the presentation in a different direction. So you've got to be flexible.

Four, have the supporting data in your back pocket. Many times when you give executive presentations and you have high level charts and graphs, the audience might want more detail. While my executive presentations typically summarize high level detail, I typically keep a few detailed slides hidden at the end of the deck that have all the relevant data. So what I typically do is I think about what questions I might get. And I make sure that I have charts and slides to answer those questions. If I'm not asked those, I don't go to that information. If I am, I've got it at my fingertips.

So those are my tips for improved executive presentations. I hope you enjoyed them. If you do please like, share and subscribe. And I'll see you next week for another tip. Have a great week, everyone.