to convince journalists that today’s news business is volatile
to convince my wife that I deserve a motorcycle
Almost all executives I’ve worked with find this challenging, even when they’re attempting to craft it for a presentation they’ve already given many times.
Having a CCO when presenting to a CEO is critical. CEOs have no time to waste. They’re listening for the single reason you’re there. When that CEO is Steve Jobs—my client when he was at NeXT Computer—the clarity of my CCO is a matter of career life and death; the difference between Steve listening to my presentation or walking out of the room.
19
The word that film critics use to acknowledgea truly remarkable achievement by an actor.
20
21
A lack of focus on the presenter’s part is obvious. It confuses the audience, creates frustration, and causes them to tune (or walk) out. And they don’t tune back in. If you pretend that every person you present to is Steve Jobs, you won’t risk wasting his or her time because you didn’t do your homework
Boil your CCO down so it doesn’t contain a single extra word, and build your presentation from there. It’s your foundation. Everything in your presentation must serve your CCO. If it doesn’t, get rid of it.
EXERCISE
Write down your CCO. Your goal is to have one simple phrase without buzzwords or jargon or a single extra word:
“to convince [ my audience ] that [ my main point ]”
If you aren’t crystal clear about your objective within the first 90 seconds of a presentation to Steve Jobs, he might get up and walk out.
exercise
You Are the Driver, Not Your Slides
24
25
You know what it’s like to be at the mercy of your slides—that sickening moment when you realize everyone’s glazing over and you’re only halfway through the key points. You’ve been reduced to a narrator.
Don’t let this happen. The relationship between you and your slides should always be:
You = Master
Your slides = Apprentice
Many presenters have this backward and as a result are marginalized in their audience’s mind. Take the way we interpret a cartoon. We see the image, then read the caption, in that order. The caption deciphers the image. When presenting, you, the Master, should provide the caption. Without your explanation, your audience would have no clue what the cartoon on the left is about. With it, however, the meaning—and the humor—is unmistakable.
YOU are whom the audience came to see.
YOU are the expert.
YOU should be the focus of any presentation you give.
YOU should offer the explanations, context, and references that make any slide you create make sense to an audience.
Your slides allow you to share images, video, graphs, and tables, which are there to serve and amplify YOU. They should never be the star.
“Paper or plastic?”
Start Your Trip Powerfully: With a Story
28
Even 32,000 years ago, the need to congregate and share was in our DNA. It remains there today, fueling the explosion of social media. Storytelling will always be part of our sharing process. If you’re a parent, you see firsthand the pivotal role it plays in educating and entertaining your children, while creating a bond between you both. Stories have the power to plant situations, scenes, characters, and images in people’s minds that they’ll never forget.
There’s no more effective way to engage an audience and capture its attention—right from the start—than with a story that communicates your CCO.
There
