The Opsimath

The 10/20/30 rule of presentations

If you give presentations and you use PowerPoint, have you heard of the 10/20/30 rule? Presentation gurus such as Garr Reynolds and Guy Kawasaki swear by it, and this is how they describe it.

Basically, it's this:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

Ten slides. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting — if you must use more than ten slides to explain your point, you probably don’t have a point!

Twenty minutes. You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Yes, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if everything goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.

Thirty-point font. The majority of the presentations have text in something like a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, they read ahead of you because they can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of step.

The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough, and this is their script; second, they think that more text is more convincing.

Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. It will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, then try this: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

10/20/30

The power of the visual

Many teachers of presentation skills will quote the fact that the communication of a message is composed of 55% visual - images, posture, body language, dress, facial expression etc - and of 38% vocal impact - tonality, volume, rhythm etc. (The remaining 7% accounts for the actual words spoken.)

While some will argue with the actual percentages, the undeniable fact is that the visual aspects of any presentation have tremendous power.

Communicators need to be aware of this, and then carefully consider how to best use the visual to improve the impact of their message.

(It must be stressed that simply using a tool such as PowerPoint does not count as a good use of the visual.)

As a training company, pearcemayfield are always disappointed to hear of training courses that consist of delegates sitting through hours of lectures complete with literally hundreds of slides, which in turn are made up entirely of bullet-pointed text after bullet-pointed text. It brings the industry into disrepute!

It's boring - and we have banned boring.

At last week's Best Practice Showcase in London we ran a series of workshops, and in order to bring out the best in the groups and the sessions, we used a strongly visual approach. Here's my colleague, Richard Rose, looking very pleased with the results (although for the sake of full disclosure, it should be said that this drawing was the work of my other colleague, Patrick Mayfield).

The power of the visual cannot be over-stated. The next time you are on a course or at a presentation, why not critique it for its use of the visual...?

More about Best Practice Showcase

Here's what we will be up to at this year's Best Practice Showcase: [click here]

We believe that the topic we are going to tackle is really quite significant. It's called 'The Age of Change Management' and we will be using each of the five sessions that we run during the day to explore what is going well, and what is going not so well in the area of change management.

If you are planning on joining us on Friday 17th June, please come ready and willing to join in the story.

By the way - if you were at the Best Practice Showcase last year you might remember that, at times, it resembled a really busy market place! Fear not. This year our sessions will all be in a private board room so we are assured of a good quality environment.

We would love to see you there...

Using cartoons to bring about change

Interesting thoughts from Liza Donnelly in this short talk. She talks about how humour in cartoons can empower women to change the rules.

New Yorker cartoonist Liza Donnelly is someone who tackles global issues with humour, intelligence and sarcasm. Her latest project supports the United Nations initiative Cartooning For Peace

 

The Power of the Pause - and the Impact of Good Timing

In a previous post called "Reading Speeches - why not to do it" I looked at the dangers of simply reading out a speech, and the damage it does to the emotional impact of the talk.

Like all 'rules', it is great when it is broken, and broken well.

This lady breaks the rule. She reads her speech (which takes place after the prayer), but does it with great style. Her delivery is beautifully dry, and her humour deadpan. But it is the timing and the use of pauses which win the day.

Great speech!

Look!

For a little while now in British politics, a word has crept into regular use when politicians are being interviewed on television or radio - Look!

Where it came from I am not sure (although I have a suspicion). Why it is used? Again, I am uncertain. My guess is that it started as a defensive mechanism for dealing with aggressive interviewers, but it has now become established as the default way in which to open many sentences:

"Look, the previous government were..."

"Look, I have been quite clear that our policy..."

Yet every time that I hear this said I cringe a little, as the use of the word is invariably equally aggressive. It has now become a case of getting your retaliation in first!

The way to counter aggression is not with aggression. Why cannot our politicians move in the 'opposite spirit'? Why can't we see a gentleness and respect in our politic discussions?

Look, that way we might get to hear the real discussions, rather than being distracted by petty school playground arguments!

Reading Speeches - why not to do it

Here's an excellent article from the Decker Blog - Lesson from the Hall of Fame: Don’t read speeches!

It contains a couple of examples of speeches being read, and a brief analysis of what went wrong.

Something else to consider if you are interested in public speaking is Scott  Berkun's book called "Confessions of a Public Speaker".

Scott is quite challenging, saying that most speakers are too lazy to improve on their game. I guess that is why we will always have 'speech readers' with us, and consequently we will have speeches like the two you will see on the Decker Blog.

Dressing to Impress

When you make a presentation to a group, how much of a contribution does the way that you are dressed make?

A lot more than you might imagine.

• How we dress creates an immediate visual impression - long before we say our first word
• That visual impression is created in the first 2 seconds
• It then takes another 4 minutes to add a further 50% to that impression, so
• Those first few moments are vital.

To be dressed in the wrong way can divert people from our message

A few basic rules might help:

• Always be appropriate to your setting
• If in doubt, go over-dressed rather then under-dressed
• Consciously think about what you are wearing - men this means you
• Know the style that works for you
• Style is not the same as fashion

Whenever we present we are aiming to make an impression - otherwise why are we doing it? . And if the way we dress can affect that impression then it needs our attention - so, dress to impress!

Presenting Statistics - the Hans Rosling way

This is an excellent example of how to present a lot of data in an exciting and compelling fashion. This is really worth your time watching.

10, 20, 30 - rule for presentations

This is an extract from an article by Guy Kawasaki. Take a look here to see him give a 2 minute presentation of this material.

This is important stuff, as there are still far too many very poor presentations with a shocking use of PowerPoint.

"I am evangelizing the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. While I’m in the venture capital business, this rule is applicable for any presentation to reach agreement: for example, raising capital, making a sale, forming a partnership, etc.

Ten slides. Ten is the optimal number of slides in a PowerPoint presentation because a normal human being cannot comprehend more than ten concepts in a meeting—and venture capitalists are very normal. (The only difference between you and venture capitalist is that he is getting paid to gamble with someone else’s money). If you must use more than ten slides to explain your business, you probably don’t have a business. 

Twenty minutes. You should give your ten slides in twenty minutes. Sure, you have an hour time slot, but you’re using a Windows laptop, so it will take forty minutes to make it work with the projector. Even if setup goes perfectly, people will arrive late and have to leave early. In a perfect world, you give your pitch in twenty minutes, and you have forty minutes left for discussion.

Thirty-point font. The majority of the presentations that I see have text in a ten point font. As much text as possible is jammed into the slide, and then the presenter reads it. However, as soon as the audience figures out that you’re reading the text, it reads ahead of you because it can read faster than you can speak. The result is that you and the audience are out of synch.

The reason people use a small font is twofold: first, that they don’t know their material well enough; second, they think that more text is more convincing. Total bozosity. Force yourself to use no font smaller than thirty points. I guarantee it will make your presentations better because it requires you to find the most salient points and to know how to explain them well. If “thirty points,” is too dogmatic, the I offer you an algorithm: find out the age of the oldest person in your audience and divide it by two. That’s your optimal font size.

So please observe the 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint. If nothing else, the next time someone in your audience complains of hearing loss, ringing, or vertigo, you’ll know what caused the problem. One last thing: to learn more about the zen of great presentations, check out a site called Presentation Zen by my buddy Garr Reynolds."