It’s common for people to complain about the writing we all see in business. People like to bemoan the rambling e-mails, the sloppy grammar, and wonder what will become of the English language now that texting is the most common form of written communication.It’s easy as well to catalog the errors people make in business correspondence. In the workshops I teach I focus on the most common errors: poor organization, too much data, and not taking readers into account.But it has occurred to me recently that there may be a simpler problem with business writing, which is that everyone is writing “working documents” instead of seeing the writing process through to a final document. And it’s not just that people don’t have or don’t take the time to write a final version of their communications. My sense is that people only write working documents because they don’t know what a final document should look like. I make this point because in the hundreds of samples of business writing that I review every year, I don’t actually find the writing that bad. And virtually none of what I read stands out as truly embarrassing. Everyone writes to a common standard. But the common standard in business tolerates the “almost done”—writing that isn’t terrible, but writing that is poorly organized, contains too much data, and doesn’t address the needs and concerns of readers. As a result, people only pursue a writing project to the point that they know what they themselves are thinking about a topic. They don’t see the process through to the point that the written presentation is designed to be read and readily understood by someone else. The “working document” syndrome is especially evident in e-mails. When writing e-mails, we tend to figure out what we want to say as we go along. Typically, we only express our main point in the final few sentences of an e-mail. Sometimes, we recognize this weakness, and bold or underline the last sentence to tell our readers, “Hey, look here! This is what I want you to do or believe about everything else I wrote.”To make this draft into a final document, take the final, clear statement of the purpose of your e-mail and move it to the beginning.Then, write an introductory sentence that tells your reader the issue that your e-mail addresses. Is it a response to a question? Or a proposal to correct a problem?Finally, review the details in the rest of your e-mail. Organize them in a bulleted or numbered list, if possible, to highlight how they support the argument or point of view you present at the beginning. Eliminate any details that do not directly prove or support your argument.Now your “working document” has become a final document, tailored specifically to serve the needs of those who will read it.

I just found out last week that Nancy Duarte came out with a new book last year called Resonate: Present Visual Stories That Transform Audiences. Nancy’s first book, Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, was a handsomely illustrated guide to graphic design as the road to great presentations. But “come to find out,” Nancy writes in the Introduction to Resonate, “there was a much deeper problem” than poor graphic design. “Gussying up slides that have meaningless content is like putting lipstick on a pig.”Nancy’s solution to the messaging problem in presentations is storytelling. “The methodology in Resonate,” she explains, “uses story frameworks to create presentations that will engage, transform, and activate audiences. After more than twenty years of developing presentations for the best brands and thought leaders in the world, we’ve codified our Visual Story™ methodology so you can change your world!”Resonate delivers on Nancy’s promise. Resonate is the most insightful and practical book available on how to use storytelling in a business context. But, although I appreciate Nancy’s quest for an approach that will help people deliver better presentations, I have one reservation. Storytelling is actually the problem with many presentations.Whereas I agree with Nancy Duarte that storytelling can be a powerful tool of persuasion, it is also a lazy man or woman’s way to figure out what we want to say. If you ask me why manufacturing isn’t meeting its productivity goals, the simplest way to answer your question is to tell you a story. “Well, we found out last fall that… So, we asked Chuck to look into… Since then, we have tried…” And so it goes in countless e-mails, memos, letters, reports, and presentations. At the end of a sometimes interminable recounting of the “facts,” the author presents conclusions and recommendations. In other words, most people don’t just tell stories when they write, they tell Mystery Stories—the critical information, the answer you are really looking for, is at the end.It is important to appreciate, furthermore, that storytelling is a literary and theatrical art form whose primary purpose is to stir emotions and motivate people, and in which “the facts” are of entirely secondary importance. Therefore, storytelling has very specific uses in business, such as in sales pitches, roadshows, product launches, and the like, in which the objective is to dazzle and excite the audience, usually to sell something, without too much concern for the harsh light of reality. Silicon Valley, where Duarte Design is based, has frequent need for these types of presentations. But not every business presentation calls for this approach.Most routine business presentations—such as quarterly reviews, project proposals and status updates, marketing plans, and the like—do not, in fact, call for storytelling. What most business presentations require instead are the ability to construct a persuasive argument, which has a structure that is different from stories.Whereas stories have a Beginning, a Middle, and an End, arguments require an Opening Statement, a Body, and a Summing Up. In the Opening Statement, give your audience a complete summary of the argument you will make in your presentation. In the Body, present the details or data that support your point of view. And finally, in the Summing Up, review what you have said and call for action. Some may notice that this is sequence the structure of legal argumentation, and the order in which a trial proceeds.If we were to frame arguments in the language of stories, we could say that in business there is one primary story form, and that is “We should DO this, for these REASONS, and, if you agree with me, these are the NEXT STEPS.” Or, if you are not in a position to advocate action, the story becomes, “I believe this is WHAT IS HAPPENING, for these REASONS, and, if you agree with me, these are the NEXT STEPS.”What most presenters need to study is not storytelling, but rhetoric—the art of speaking or writing effectively to persuade or influence an audience. For those who understand how to formulate a persuasive argument, storytelling can be an effective tool, especially for providing human and tangible detail through example.A good place to start learning about rhetoric is Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us about The Art of Persuasion, by Jay Heinrichs. Or send me an e-mail with your name and address, and I’ll send you a wallet-sized card that explains the principles for organizing any type of business communication, including presentations. Then go back and study Nancy Duarte’s book about how to use stories as a strategy in some of your presentations. Her approach and point of view are very useful—for certain types of presentations—and the book is very well-conceived and produced.Whether you craft your presentations as stories or not, be sure that every presentation makes a concise and well-conceived argument that tells the audience WHAT you want them to do or believe, WHY, and if they agree with you, WHAT’S NEXT. 

One of the most common mistakes people make when preparing presentations is diving right into their slideware. They don’t plan what they are going to say before they start creating slides. Too often, the result is a poorly organized talk with too many slides that bores the audience.Most people start preparing presentations by creating slides because they think they don’t have time to plan. After all, they have slides to prepare! There is a little trick in PowerPoint, however, that enables you to create an entire slide deck directly from an outline created in Word. Which means you don’t have to choose between creating slides and planning your talk.There are several pitfalls to preparing a presentation by starting with your slides. First, slideware is better suited to preparing visual aids than it is to crafting a message. On paper or in a word processor, you can see and work with your whole message as you compose it, as opposed to slideware where you can only compose one slide at a time. And as anyone with experience knows, you spend so much time futzing with your slides that you have no time to prepare, or rehearse, what you are going to say.Planning your presentation before you create your slides, on the other hand, makes for more effective presentations in several ways. When you start your preparation by composing your message, you separate what you are going to say from what you put on your slides. That way, you save time by creating only as many slides as you need to support your message. And each slide will contain just enough information to hold people’s attention, and remind you of each point you will discuss. That way, you are the presentation, as the saying goes, not your slides.Your presentation will be have a more coherent logic and narrative flow, furthermore, because you will have prepared it as a single continuum of ideas and information, rather than as separate elements, created one at a time. In addition, when you start by preparing your message, the rest of the preparation process becomes part of rehearsing your message and the flow of your ideas. Finally, the simplicity and clarity of your ideas, expressed in as few words as possible, will give your presentations an elegant, uncluttered look and feel.The best way to prepare a presentation is to start by writing an outline, and ideally a one-page summary, that can serve as the script for your talk. Preparing an outline and a summary will enable you to determine exactly what information you will include in your presentation and the best order in which to present it—before you create your slides. You can also use a one-page summary of your talk as a handout, or a complete narrative of your ideas to send someone when they ask for a copy of your slide deck.The PowerPoint trick that makes all this planning worthwhile is that you can create your entire slide deck directly from your outline in Word.Begin this process in Word. Write an outline of your main points, using two levels—a top level for your main ideas, and a second level for details or supporting points. If you are uncomfortable writing outlines, start by composing a one-page summary of your presentation, and then strip each paragraph down to its barest elements. Create headlines from your topic sentences, supporting points from the detail in each paragraph. When you are satisfied with your outline, apply the “Heading 1” style to your headlines, or the top level of your outline, and the “Heading 2” style to your supporting points. Save and close the document.Now, in PowerPoint 2010 or other versions with a command Ribbon, open the dropdown menu from the New Slide button on the Home tab, and select the Slides from Outline option at the bottom of the box. This will open an Insert Outline dialog box where you can select the Word file containing your outline. In PowerPoint 2003 or any version equipped with menus instead of a Ribbon, open the Insert Outline dialog box with the Slides from Outline command on the Insert menu. Proceed as above from there. In either version, PowerPoint will import your outline, creating a separate slide for each headline and its supporting points.If you are using a presentation template provided by your company, the template’s background and text formatting will be automatically applied to each slide. If you are working without a template, select all slides in the left-hand panel in Normal view, and apply formatting and colors to backgrounds and text. Background and text formatting can also be applied using PowerPoint themes.The result—you have planned what you will say in your presentation, and created your slides.

Books and training on graphic design and presentation skills have become the rage in recent years as sources for solutions to bad PowerPoint presentations. But what can be missed in this focus on design and delivery skills is that a clear message is the prerequisite for their effective use.When preparing presentations, we tend to make the same mistake we make when writing e-mails and documents—we fail to plan what we are going to say. We dive right in to creating slides. Too often, the result is a poorly organized presentation, with too many slides, that bores the audience.Therefore, the first step in preparing a presentation is to identify our message—what we want our audience to do or believe as a result of our talk. Defining our message first, in this way, will enable us to determine exactly what information we will include in our presentation—just enough to support what we are going to say.Starting with a clearly defined message will also save time, since we won’t have to prepare 60 slides when we can get our message across in 10.The current rule-of-thumb for good slide design is simplicity—a picture and just enough words or data to capture our idea. In keeping with this objective, a clear idea, well-expressed, is itself good design. If your message is clear, each slide will only contain enough information to hold listeners’ attention, and remind us of the points we want to make. Concise expression is inherently elegant.Finally, the clarity of our message instills self-confidence and creates the free attention needed to practice the skills of good delivery—making eye contact with our audience, pausing to breathe and collect our thoughts, moving and speaking naturally. No training in these presentation skills alone can compensate for a message that is muddled or that we can’t remember.In other words, to focus on presentations skills and graphic design is to focus on the medium we use to deliver our message—our personal presence and the look of our slides. But part of what makes for bad presentations is that the presenter focuses on getting the medium right, but fails to leave the audience with a clear point of view or course of action.So, Marshall McLuhan notwithstanding, when it comes to presentations, the medium is NOT the message—the message is the message. Get your message right, and you will spend less time preparing slides, your slides will be easier to understand, your presentation will be shorter, and your delivery will be more engaging.

A few weeks ago, a number of sites were promoting Just Say No to PowerPoint Week. Great idea. The problem was no one seemed to know what to do instead. Fast Company mentioned that the Demo and Finovate tech conferences have banned presentations and replaced them with 7-minute product demos—substituting one technology for another. The idea, apparently, is that the product will talk instead of the slideshow. After bringing up the usual debate about whether the fault lies with PowerPoint or with the presenter, TheJobBored suggested that what we really need is a Learn to Give Better Presentations Week. How about we work on that one? The problem with most presentations comes done to one thing: people don’t plan what they are going to say. Instead, when there’s a presentation to prepare, they dive right into their slideware and start creating slides. No wonder so many presentations are bad. A picture is only worth a thousand words if you have something to say in the first place. So, the first remedy to bad PowerPoint is to figure out what you are going to say—before preparing your slides. All the best books on presentation skills recommend spending as much as 60% of your preparation time on planning your message, and only 20% each on creating slides and rehearsing your talk. Nobody trusts the advice because they think they don’t have time to plan. But the only way to develop a smart presentation that holds peoples’ attention is to hone your message. Planning what you are going to say is, furthermore, the best way to save time. By creating an outline, you create your script first, instead of at the end, after you have spent hours creating slides and there is no time left to think about what you are going to say about them. The outline you write can be imported directly into PowerPoint from Word, creating your slides automatically. Select all slides, and you can assign a background and text formatting to the whole slideshow. See Beyond Bullet Points, by Cliff Atkinson for more on how to do this.You also save time by planning your message because you will only create enough slides to support what you are going to say. That way, you avoid the tendency to put everything you know on slides and end up with a huge slide deck. By planning your message first, you also create the basis for a handout that people can review after the show. You can copy that text into the Notes section of your slide deck so that the presentation file includes your visuals, plus the narrative that gives them meaning. Now back to Just Saying No… Want to dispense with PowerPoint entirely? Hand out a one-page summary of your message at the beginning of the meeting. Suggest that everyone take 5 to 10 minutes to read it, and then open up the floor for questions and discussion. Have slides or an additional handout with examples that illustrate key points, or the data that supports your recommendations. Replace PowerPoint’s one-way communications channel with real dialogue and you will remedy most of what people hate about presentations. In the first month after Lou Gerstner became CEO of IBM in the mid-1990s, he gathered with senior managers to review the performance of the company’s business units. The standard protocol had been to present quarterly results with a stack of transparencies and an overhead projector. At the beginning of the meeting, Gerstner walked to the front of the room, turned off the projector, looked the first presenter in the eye, and said, “How about we just talk about your business?” Not a bad idea.

Business e-mail is a Darwinian world. Although you may think you have a special relationship with each person you are writing to, you are in fact competing everyday with at least 50 to 150 other e-mails that each of your correspondents receives. As a result, only those e-mails survive that are fit to be read. If your e-mail is unclear or too detailed, your readers may misunderstand your message. Or, they may simply lose patience with what you have written and put their attention on another e-mail that is easier to understand.What none of the countless books and articles on communicating effectively by e-mail ever tell you is that, more than any other factor, the structure of an e-mail, or the logical sequence in which you present your ideas and information, will determine whether your e-mail gets the attention you want from your readers.The assumption most people make is that e-mail is like a conversation. Just to keep up with an incessant deluge of e-mails, the tendency is to open a screen, write whatever comes into one’s head, and hit the Send button. Each e-mail is treated as if it were just the latest contribution to an oral back-and-forth, and a casual one at that. As a result, most e-mails ramble. And if they make a point at all, it’s usually at the end, when the author has finally figured out what he or she wants to say.