Presentation Note Taking

This morning I co-presented a workshop on social media for real estate agents with Andy Ciordia and Beth Griffiths.  The Broker In Charge asked us to provide the presentation in advance so that she could print it out for everyone to  take notes on.

This is what people ask you to do because they’re accustomed to death by PowerPoint. In such a death, the speaker lards the presentation with bullet points and basically reads them to the audience (like a first grade teacher at story time).

We don’t subject people to so-called presentations of this ilk.

Our presentations lend visual interest to what’s being said and reinforce the points.

Responding to the request

What did we do? We devised a handout for “guided note taking” that gave our audience questions and prompts to go with the slides.  For example, Stop thinking about “creating” traffic. With social media, it’s about “getting in front” of it. What are you doing to use web-based sites and tools to get people to notice you?

Try this technique next time and be sure to wind it down with a solid question like these:

• How many homes would I have to sell each month to pay for this service?
• How many more homes could I list/sell if I were doing this?

In case you’ve never seen this video on the proper use of PowerPoint (or any multimedia during a presentation) be sure to watch it here.

March Book Lust

Big news: I’m writing a book with Matt Davio called Tradeoffs: Leveraging the Longs & Shorts of Life. We’ll use the language and practices of those who trade for a living to frame life’s tradeoffs: time for money,  freedom for convention,  risk for reward, and money for goods and services.

In a post-meltdown world where so many people feel the stakes are higher and the margin for error more narrow than ever before, Tradeoffs will introduce a general interest reader to how traders view “scalp,” “swing,” “directional,” “fade” or “breakout” trading setups, how they mitigate risk, and how they live with the outcomes of their trades.

We have a book agent who’s excited about the project and will help us get the proposal in tip-top shape by the end of April so he can hit the road with it.  Stay tuned!

Trading From Your Gut: How To Use Right Brain Instinct & Left Brain Smarts To Become a Master Trader

by Curtis Faith

Reviewed by Dasan: Legendary trader Richard Dennis believed that trading was so simple that anyone with the right training and psychology could do it successfully. After making millions for himself in the commodity, stock, and FOREX markets, he trained complete novices how to trade in 2 weeks. He called them the “turtles.” He was right – a large number of the “turtles” went on to become very successful traders in their own right. Curtis Faith, the author of this book, was one of best of the turtles.

In “Trading From Your Gut” Curtis Faith’s discusses a central aspect of trading success: Intuition. While most mediocre traders let emotions drive their trading, better traders use primarily rational thought. The best traders of all, the master traders, use a balance of intuition and rational thought. Like the experienced poker player that just knows what the other player has, these master traders can identify trend reversals simply by “gut feel” which comes from a combination of experience and underlying rational thought.

This is an excellent book for the intermediate level investor. The author does give a basic explanation of a rudimentary swing trade system, but it is just enough knowledge to be dangerous. I would not recommend this book for a rank novice. However, if you have some experience trading stocks or commodities already, this book is extremely valuable. For me as an experienced hedge fund investor, I found his concepts mainly affirmed in a concise way what has taken me years to learn. In this way, this book could make a moderately experienced trader more successful very quickly.

The main thesis of the book is the importance of intuition in trading, especially by experienced traders who already have mastered their emotions. He says it like this: “A balance between left-brain analysis and right-brain intuition is critical for optimal trading.” He quotes many experts in this book, which adds a lot of value; for example, he quotes Barry Ritholz’s idea that “wisdom is the capability to have `strong opinions, weakly held.’” Faith emphasizes the importance for a master trader to think independently. He writes “If you want to be a master trader, you need to develop your own reasons for making trades.” He illustrates the concept of waiting for the right trade by comparing it to surfing at the beach, waiting for the right wave. The book is full of detailed examples like this, which illustrate his trading concepts. Faith wraps up the book with a discussion on ways to limit risk by being flexible, having a plan “B” and sizing positions properly to avoid overcommitment of your capital.

This book is valuable to any serious trader or investor looking to raise the level of their game. Novice investors have other volumes to read first.

Here’s my co-author Matt  interviewing author Curtis Faith:

The Back Channel: How Audiences are Using Twitter and Social Media and Changing Presentations Forever

by Cliff Atkinson

Reviewed by yours truly:  This book caught my eye because it grasped a phenomenon I’ve observed at events where the audience gives more eyeball time to their netbooks and smart phones than to the presenter. I figured someday I’d figure out how to harness the power of this behavior, and author Cliff Atkinson beat me to it. Mr Atkinson is THE authority to write on the matter. In addition to writing Beyond Bullet Points,  he designed the presentations that helped persuade a jury to award a $253 million verdict in the nation’s first Vioxx trial in 2005. Fortune magazine called the presentations “frighteningly powerful.”

For those new to the back channel and the ways of Twitter, never fear. The book starts there, not with boring  exposition, but with a real-life event where panelist Guy Kawasaki noticed a critical tweet (Twitter update) about him and asked the tweep (person who tweeted) to step up and explain the remark.  After setting the context for Twitter and the back channel with this case study, Mr Atkinson goes into the mechanics of Twitter and other technological means for sustaining an official back channel.

The part of the book that everyone presenting can use (with or without a back channel) describes how to be an editor, curator and taste-maker to your audience. Thinking of yourself in these ways makes it 100% easier to craft a presentation.

Mr Atkinson outlines a strategy for JOINING the back channel’s conversation, including how to manage a “conversational presentation.”  Presenters with and without a back channel should follow this advice

You can no longer get away with putting up a slide that lists Agenda or Introduction at the start of your presentation. Nor can you get away with kicking off your presentation with too many details or a list of your accomplishments. In a world in which your audience is accustomed to high-quality media at their fingertips, you need to capture their attention out of the gate. You must engage your audience within the first five slides or at least the first five minutes of your presentation.

The book offers a chapter on how to handle the positive and negative feedback from the back channel.  Particularly helpful is the advice that speakers should practice scenarios that put them in a range of difficult situations.  He gives five scenarios to practice: “You’re not listening to us;” Your Facts are wrong or misleading;” “Your material is a mismatch for us;” “Your material is boring;” and “You made me mad.”

Finally, relying on an excellent case study from a conference gone snarky via the backchannel, Mr Atkinson shows how Chris Brogan (author of Trust Agents) turned the situation around. Here’s the 10-point checklist for managing an unruly back channel:

1. Establish a reputation
2. Listen and collect stories
3. Dispense with pretense
4. Talk to the elephant in the room (if there is one)
5. Make it you, you, you instead of me, me, me
6. Check in with the audience early and often
7. Improvise
8. Stay grounded
9. Ignore the small stuff
10. Keep things in perspective

This slim volume is worth the $34.99 list price and includes a free 45-day searchable online edition. Both of my thumbs are way up.

Why We Make Mistakes: How we look without seeing, forget things in seconds, and are all pretty sure we are way above average

by Joseph T. Hallinan

Publishers Weekly review: Pulitzer winner for his stories on Indiana’s medical malpractice system, Hallinan has made himself an expert on the snafus of human psychology and perception used regularly (by politicians, marketers, and our own subconscious) to confuse, misinform, manipulate and equivocate. In breezy chapters, Hallinan examines 13 pitfalls that make us vulnerable to mistakes: “we look but don’t always see,” “we like things tidy” and “we don’t constrain ourselves” among them. Each chapter takes on a different drawback, packing in an impressive range of intriguing and practical real-world examples; the chapter on overconfidence looks at horse-racing handicappers, Warren Buffet’s worst deal and the secret weapon of credit card companies. He also looks at the serious consequences of multitasking and data overload on what is at best a two- or three-track mind, from deciding the best course of cancer treatment to ignoring the real factors of our unhappiness (often by focusing on minor but more easily understood details). Quizzes and puzzles give readers a sense of their own capacity for self-deception and/or delusion. A lesson in humility as much as human behavior, Hallinan’s study should help readers understand their limitations and how to work with them.

Genius on the Edge : The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted

by Gerald Imber

Intro to a Fresh Air interview with the author:  In the second half of the 19th century, New York City’s population swelled from several hundred thousand to just over 2 million people. Conditions were not pleasant: Sewers were virtually nonexistent; piles of manure sat several inches high on sidewalks; and the city was overrun by disease.

Medical practices of the time were crude, at best: If surgical procedures were performed, they were done without sterilizing the equipment or the operating room, and typically ended with the patient losing an entire limb, if not his life.

It was in this environment that Dr. William Halsted began his surgical career. Halsted, who began the nation’s first residency program, pioneered techniques ranging from blood transfusions to sterilizing operating rooms. He also developed the radical mastectomy — also known as the Halsted mastectomy — reducing the local recurrence of breast cancer in patients nearly 50 percent. When Johns Hopkins Hospital opened its Department of Surgery in 1889, Halsted was named its first supervisor.

Though his legacy suggests a medical pioneer who made surgery safer and more precise, Halsted’s life was frequently messy.

That dual life is examined in Gerald Imber’s new biography of the doctor, Genius on the Edge: The Bizarre Double Life of Dr. William Stewart Halsted.

Imber traces Halsted’s journey from a young Columbia-trained medical student to a successful surgeon who secretly suffered from several narcotic addictions. Imber, himself a plastic surgeon, says that while Halsted was a “rigid perfectionist in some portions of his life, [he was] totally negligent and forgetful in others. He could leave a patient in a hospital bed for weeks on end and forget to operate on them.”

Imber talks to Fresh Air about Halsted’s dual lives and about 19th century American medicine. Imber is an internationally known plastic surgeon who specializes in facial rejuvenation and noninvasive surgical techniques.

Please tell me if you have a book to recommend or review for April’s post.

Nuke the Bullets!

Great advice in this video on SUPPORTING your talk with a presentation (Powerpoint, Keynote, etc), not leaning on it.

Oriental Rugs & Business Writing

True story: I was once written up for using college level vocabulary on the job. Yes, it was in a written performance evaluation. No, I was not writing for a living at the time; was running a line of business. You might not guess that my employer was a bank, where most workers had some college and many had MBAs. Go figure. Just one of the reasons I’m forever freelance.

There’s a place for arabesques in writing — that place is usually literature or narrative nonfiction. When I write for business I’ve learned to use them sparingly (or link to the definition!).

Business writers need to err on the side of spartan communications. Well-written, engaging and action-oriented, while spartan.

Trim the fat

Teaching by example, I edited the opening sentences of this WordPress blog post to rid it of verbal flourishes and the loathsome passive voice. I kept “nascent” for the paragraph’s arabesque.

It is with extremely great pleasure that I point you to the first post at the new I’m pleased to introduce you to the WordPress Foundation site. Not only am I excited about the things that will happen under the auspices of the Foundation, I’m proud of what the Foundation will do, and excited to see a site running the 3.0 development version and the nascent theme called 2010.

In the edited post above, “extremely great pleasure” and “under the auspices of” belong in a royal decree, not a business message.

Boilerplate blight

Since business communications are usually intended to sell something — an idea, product, feeling or investment — stick with the big picture or high concept.

I’ll make my point visually, with Oriental rugs (below). The closeup on the left shows intricate detail, but you can’t see the whole rug, whereas the photo on the right gives you the big picture at the cost of the individual motifs.

There’s an ideal use for each photo. If you were a rug merchant who had to choose between the two, you’d use the larger one to entice your prospective client into the store to examine the design and craftsmanship. Same with business communications, which are ultimately designed to sell anything from a product to a feeling to an investment. The goal of written communications is usually to get people to make the next step, which might be making the purchase or calling for more information.

Financial communications often require the equivalent of both photos (detail and big picture). If you’re writing something with boilerplate requirements, write less and use visuals like sidebars, graphics and headers to keep the reader’s attention on your pitch and off the fine print.

Visual perspective

When you look at the closeup of the rug to the left, you know you’re not looking at the entire rug because there are enough visual cues that it’s a part of the whole (no border, no symmetry of design, etc).

The photo to the right might be the rug’s border or the entire rug, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a closeup of the border because if it were the entire rug the right and left ends wouldn’t be chopped off.

This photo clearly shows the entire rug, but you have no way to know if it’ll fit in your dining room. If it had been photographed with a dog, human or piece of furniture — better yet, a dining room table and chairs — you’d have a clue.

Whole-brain communications note: this post taught about writing but did so in a visual manner.

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Low-Jargon Financial Blogs & Newsletters

I write blogs and newsletters for attorneys, advisors and accountants. These professionals often need to provide complex information without making their clients’ eyes glaze over.

Professionals  with compliance/malpractice concerns  too often navigate the middle of the road where nothing meaningful is communicated. Some admit they hope readers will pick up the phone and call for clarification “on the clock.” Bad strategy.

Everyone faces this challenge of writing thorough-yet-understandable communications  from time to time. Here are writing tips for newsletter or blog writers who aspire to communicate without using jargon on one hand, or dumbing down the message on the other.

It’s a conversation, not a treatise

• Provide links to jargon, technical definitions and 50-cent SAT words like “treatise.” This way, everyone can get as much info as they need on their own and your writing doesn’t bog down
• Don’t mistake your articles for term papers!
  • Use headers, bolds and links to enable (gasp) skimming
  • Avoid passive voice; use active voice
  • Write to the appropriate reading level of your audience
    • Run your copy through a fog index calculator (tells the number of years of education needed to understand what you’ve written)
    • If you use Google Docs, click Tools>Word Count and find the analysis at the bottom
• You’re not a professor
  • Don’t try to tell everything you know about the subject. Pare it down to the essentials
  • For weighty topics, write a series of short articles
  • Provide an intro to the topic in your newsletter and link to your blog/elsewhere for details. If you can find a video (or make one yourself) your audience will be grateful. Here’s how one of my clients does it
  • Leverage industry videos and handouts (be sure to comply with licensing and copyrights)

Engage readers

• Invite them to leave comments and comment on those of others
• Offer a free worksheet to help them apply the information to their lives — invite them to review the information with you off the clock, if appropriate
• Ask readers to weigh in on a topic by linking to a survey that gives them the option to see how their answers compare to those of other respondents
• Poll readers for future articles on similar/related subjects

Brains need variety

• 

  This infographic is from a parody site

  Use stories – our brains are wired for stories -and people “find” themselves in them.

• Use case studies for the same reasons

• Link to a narrated presentation deck or video to stimulate the story-receptive part of readers’ brains. One of my clients does this very well

• Use  infographics or produce your own charts and tables. FlowingData is a great resource to learn about them and you might find one to use there

What techniques have you or others used to make complex information digestible? What have you seen out there that turns you off? 

Brains Need Stories

Evidently story-loving is a function of our brain’s development. We’re biologically wired for them.

In a Washington Post story I learned: “Roughly around age 4, psychologists say, a child develops a ‘theory of mind.’ The child suddenly grasps that other people have feelings, thoughts, just like the child’s own. From this great mental leap comes a secondary, almost accidental talent: We can get inside the heads of people whom we never actually meet except in stories. This is why fiction works. Huck Finn and Harry Potter seem real enough.”

Is this why Steve Jobs is the world’s greatest keynoter? Because he’s a great storyteller? In the new book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs we learn his three-act methodology:

• Act1 is to create a story with seven tips (chapters or scenes) in crafting a great story behind the presentation
• Act 2, delivery of an experience with six scenes for adding appealing visuals to a presentation.
• Act 3, refine and rehearse and rehearse some more with five scenes discussing body language, verbal delivery, and using appropriate dress

I wrote a post on PowerPoint and effective presentations a couple of months ago that got excellent traction with readers. Join the discussion.

Prompts for Professionals

Next time you’re trying to deliver a memorable presentation try:

• Aesop’s Fables
  • When you want to make a point that appearances may be deceiving try The Cat, the Rooster and the Young Mouse
  • When you want to illustrate the power of positive versus negative influence, try The Wind and the Sun
  • You’ve probably heard the phrase “Pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered”– here’s a fresh approach: The Dog and His Reflection
• In this economy, many CEOs and companies could be compared to Icarus
• And when talking about messes that need a dramatic approach, refer to Heracles and the Augean Stables or The Gordian Knot

Collaging for Answers

Every business should periodically examine its market position. This summer I spent time with artist and consultant Catherine Anderson, who guided me through a process of collecting hundreds of images and snippets of text to make a series of collages about my life, work and clients. Toggling between collaging and the more traditional marketing exercises in Book Yourself Solid I clearly determined the kinds of people and projects that energize and satisfy me most.

This whole-brained process sharpened the focus of my business: I ghostwrite for financial professionals — advisors, accountants and attorneys — who are too busy with their own clients’ work to research the best communication channels and write their own newsletters, blogs, presentations, articles and books. They can’t trust their professional reputation to a rookie, which is why they work with me, a former financial services executive who writes like an English major. As a result of partnering with me, my clients solidify relationships, gain referrals, increase their self-confidence and have better scripting to use when talking about their work — in person, print and presentations.

If you need a sounding board as you sharpen your professional focus, give me a call.

Corporate Bankruptcy Word Cloud

Here’s a free word cloud maker:  www.wordle.net

Simply copy-paste your text or give Wordle an RSS feed and let it work its magic.  When it spits out your custom image, you can play with the layout, fonts and colors to your heart’s content.

I took the two (so far) responses to “Corporate vs Personal Bankruptcy Attitudes” and fed them through Wordle and got this result:

Financial Word Clouds

Catching up on reading this weekend and came across two great word clouds in Pat Allen’s Rock The Boat Marketing blog.

For those new to my blog, I post word clouds because they’re valuable whole-brain communications tools; a brief glance tells you what’s important to the author.   Use them in presentations, websites and white papers.

Tell me, please, where you’ve employed a word cloud.

Fidelity’s July US economic update

Oppenheimer’s Weekly Market Review

“I loved the way he used PowerPoint”

The anti-PPT bandwagon doesn’t have room for another rider. My only addition to the chorus  is that a bad PPT-based presentation is like a bad dog — blame the owner!

PPT isn’t inherently bad, but, like a Rotweiller, can be placed in the wrong hands and do real damage.

I generally agree with the authors of Real Leaders Don’t do PowerPoint: How to sell yourself and your ideas, “You are the message. Who you are–your character, experience, values–shapes the message your listeners hear.”

Dan Ariely, PowerPoint master

Last year I heard Dan Ariely, bestselling author and professor at my B-school (Fuqua — Duke) speak on behavioral economics and his first book Predictably Irrational.

In staccato diction, he regaled us with tales of our irrational behavior — like why we won’t pay $3000 for a leather couch in the family room while we will pay the same amount for a leather interior in our family car — and he did it with the delivery skills of any comedian’s aspiration.

If he’d been a rock star we’d have whipped out our cigarette lighters and stomped our  feet until he gave an encore.

And yes, he used PPT, including a slide with an x-ray of Homer Simpson’s brain.  See?  I remembered that one.

In defense of PowerPoint

Recall a time when someone gave a terrific, memorable, actionable presentation WITH PPT, as Professor Ariely did.

I’ll wait.

OK, I can’t wait all day.

If you did have the good fortune of attending such an event, you’ll recall that PPT didn’t make it great — it was great because the speaker had something to say and said it with conviction; they knew their stuff cold, engaged the audience, told stories and stayed ON POINT.  Did the PPT help?  Maybe, after all, who knows how it would have gone without the screen?

Reasons for PPT:

• Leave-behind for those who couldn’t make it to the live event
• Guided handout for taking notes
• Satisfies the need for visual stimulation
• Illustrate points graphically

Bottom line:  No one says “I loved the way he used PowerPoint;” but if you’re a good presenter they’ll say “I’d go see him speak again.”

Malcolm Gladwell speaks

A friend of mine had the good fortune of attending The Foundation for the Carolinas’ annual meeting.  You can hardly drag me to one of those, but I wish I’d gone to this one.  Why?  Bestselling author and New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell did the keynote.

According to my friend, Gladwell took a wireless mike and roved the audience, telling stories about a town in (I believe) Pennsylvania and how and why it prospered and failed.  My friend, a public relations pro who is not easily impressed, was awed.

Just the opposite of Ariely, Gladwell is soft spoken.  Where Ariely is irreverent, Gladwell is earnest.  Both can bring the house down.

I’m not a qualified speaking coach — my specialty is the content — but to me this is the bottom line:  You don’t have to be “dynamic” to get your message across.  The book mentioned earlier, Real Leaders Don’t do PowerPoint: How to sell yourself and your ideas, got good reviews and the website and book Presentation Zen is chock full of great stuff. And I’m always here to help.

It’s easy to bash PPT, and you’re welcome to bash away in the comments section.  I’d really like to hear from you about a presentation that thrived WITH the visual support.

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