beyond bullets

Nine Narrative Threads

When you're looking for inspiration on how to structure a story, look no farther than your own television set. 

According to a great article in today's New York Times Magazine by Steven Johnson ("Watching TV Makes You Smarter"), television writers are becoming increasingly sophisticated in their narrative approach these days. And unbeknownst to us, as their writing becomes more sophisticated, our own expectations of visual stories become more sophisticated too.

Steven explains that a hit show like "24" weaves nine primary narrative threads through the show each week, and somehow we are able to weave a sense of coherence through it all.  To judge how much our own media expectations have changed so quickly, he recommends watching a TV show from the 1970s, like Starsky and Hutch, to compare the experience and see how primitive those older shows seem today.

As the gap grows even wider between the sophisticated media expectations of  audiences, and our own presentations and communications, our need to start learning how to communicate with media grows more urgent.  Although our first instinct is to jump in and pick up a camera or start rendering 3-D, what we're really talking about here is a writing issue, not a visual issue. It is only once we have a written story structure in place that we can begin to build visual surfaces that help us see what the story is really all about.

Tip:  How's your screenwriting coming along these days?  If you want to advance your skills at writing narrative beyond the story template described in Beyond Bullet Points, check out the classics in screenwriting including Story by Robert McKee, Screenplay by Syd Field, or Stealing Fire from the Gods by Jim Bonnet.  They're all excellent resources for developing the basic media skills we all need to know to keep the narrative threads in our own lives in an understandable pattern.

IBM LOGO MUST NOT BE MOVED

If you want to see the source of the prevailing PowerPoint paradigm today, look no farther than your own corporate PowerPoint template.

If you don't have corporate template handy, it's pretty easy to find the PowerPoint template for many organizations -- just Google the phrase "(insert company name) PowerPoint template" and you're likely to find a publicly-available presentation that contains the template. 

To examine the template, open the PowerPoint file, then choose View, Master, Slide Master, and you'll find out exactly what kind of thinking underlies that organization's PowerPoint approach.

For example, if you follow these steps for IBM and review their PowerPoint template, you'll see a set of very specific guidelines that tell people in the organization what they can do and cannot do.

At the top right of the Slide Master is the statement, "IBM logo must not be moved..."  Well here's a question for the keeper of the template: What if a salesperson is selling a $10 million piece of technology and the presenter wants to remove the logo to make the presentation "All About the Audience" instead of all about themselves?  Sorry, because the IBM logo must not be moved.  What if the best approach to sell the technology is to use a blank screen with only an evocative image?  Doesn't look like that's possible.

Another guideline is "Background should not be modified..."  Well what if a corporate trainer is explaining a critical engineering concept and decides it's important to have visual variety to prevent boredom and reduce the risk that message would not be understood?  Sorry, because the background should not be modifed.

Yet another guideline is that the body text should be 18pt in size - a sure sign that this was set by someone who does not actually use PowerPoint in large meeting rooms because no one in the back of the room would be able to read a font size that small. What can a presenter in this company do? Looks to me like the options are limited.

It turns out that much of our collective thinking about PowerPoint is based on a branding misunderstanding, a lack of awareness of the research related to multimedia presentations, and a general idea that our work in corporate communications is done when we've designed a template and have thrown it over the fence for people to use.

This line of thinking guarantees that everyone in that organization will be put into a literal box and constrained from doing things that help them get their job done.  As much as people might blame Microsoft for enforcing a bullet-point culture, it is really organizations that enforce it through their templates and lack of an organizational strategy for their PowerPoint-based communications.  The solution here is to throw out the template approach altogether and adopt a better methodology that aligns with both research and the organization's communications strategy.

The PowerPoint situation is changing at organizations like HP, GE and even Wharton business school, all of whom are taking a more enlightened look at the potential of this powerful tool sitting at all of our desktops. As organizations like these begin presenting the way to a clearer and more flexible future, we can all look forward to the day when organizations replace "LOGO MUST NOT BE MOVED" with "AUDIENCE MUST BE MOVED" instead.

Tip:  Take a look at your own corporate PowerPoint template.  Does it constrain your communication possibilities, or open them up?  Share your thoughts by adding your comments below.

The Protagonist Pivot Point

If we can agree on the theory that a presentation should be "all about the audience", the harsh reality today is that so many presentations are still "all about me."

That's what struck me the other day when I watched the national sales director of a large resort make a "corporate capabilities" presentation to a group of potential customers.  He seemed like a really nice guy and I'm sure his intentions were good, but I could summarize the gist of his PowerPoint the way so many of these presentations go:

(Insert company name) Presentation

• Our company
• Our history
• Our mission
• Our capabilities
• Our goals

Hmm - what single word would be a clue about the orientation of this presentation? Of course, the word "our" would be OK if it included both the audience and the presenter, but "our" in this case includes the people inside his company sitting inside a conference room talking about themselves. Why aren't they talking about the concerns and issues on the minds of the audience outside their doors?

As is the case in the sort of presentations represented by this example, the eyes of the audience quickly glaze over after the first slide and it is only their vast patience and high tolerance that prevents them from walking out of the room.  Unfortunately, the only new business that would come from this presentation would likely come in spite of the PowerPoint slides, not because of it.

So if changing our orientation is so important, exactly how do we get from Point A (all about me) to Point B (all about you)?  One answer is to make a crucial adjustment to one of the classical elements of a story.

In most anecdotes and business fables, the protagonist (the main character) is the author, another person, or a fictional character.  This is also the norm in Hollywood films and television shows, where the main character is someone else.  To the degree that we find meaning in the story, or think of ways it impacts our own lives, we have to connect the dots between the outside characters and us. 

The same character orientation is expressed in too many PowerPoint presentations, where the protagonist is usually the presenter or his/her company.

A simple thing you can do to quickly change your orientation is to make your audience the protagonist of your story.  This is one of the pivotal elements of Act I of the story template. When you shift the dynamic of every presentation from self-centered to audience-centered, the other people in the room get to be the ones at the center of the action.  After all, they are the ones who will decide whether to think or act differently as a result of your presentation.  Recognizing this simple but dramatic fact will help you to focus, persuade and engage your audience better than any story titled "All About Me."

Tip: Try making the audience the protagonist of your next presentation story.  It is the powerful pivot point that will open up new clarity and communication and light up the eyes of your next audience.

The Slide of Things to Come

When you experience a storyboard breakthrough, you're only one step away from unlocking the visual power of your persuasive story.

The other day I described how far along Kim had been progressing on her PowerPoint makeover, and today she sent me a couple of slides showing some graphical treatments she was exploring for her storyboard (described on p. 118, "Applying a Variety of Design Techniques to Three Slides").

My response?  Wow!

There actually may not be a fair side-by-side comparison between the old and new slides here, because her new slide is in a completely different universe altogether, but here goes:

Her old slide (left) is really just a simple categorical listing of information, equivalent to writing a grocery list on a piece of paper.  Bullets might be good at helping you to compile lists like this, but one thing they are not good at doing is helping you to tell a story. Like most other presentations using this approach, the list of bullets is placed in a simplistic template that really doesn't do justice to the quality of the information.

By contrast, her new slide (right) is the opening sequence to an engaging story we eagerly want to hear and see ("Am I calling the right play? I don't know Kim, tell me what you think!").  It looks contemporary, media-savvy, and appropriate to the sophistication of her topic.

A transformation like this is possible only if you engage the thinking underlying the way you communicate, like Kim did. This is not about taking Kim's old slides and making them "prettier".  It is about applying a specific critical thinking process to the information you want to communicate, that ultimately allows you to express its deeper beauty with integrated words and visuals.

I can't wait to see Kim's finished presentation, especially in Notes Page format so we can see how the slides relate to Kim's spoken words.

Is this sort of communication transformation possible for you?  Absolutely.  When you choose to evolve the critical thinking process you use to structure information, you too are only one step away from unlocking the visual power of your own persuasive story.