Thoughts On Presenting & Design mike-pulsifer.org

Sacred Cow #6: The Audience Wants A Detailed Agenda

We’ve all seen slides like this.  It’s your standard title and bullet list slide.  The title is “Agenda” and below it is a detailed list of each topic that will be discussed.  Oh, don’t forget the Q&A at the end.

Why do we see these slides all the time?  They’re not really helpful.  They encourage us to read and not listen.  Many times, they practically tell the story or enough to give you a false impression of what the story actually is.  What we have here is the sixth sacred cow of presentation slides:  The Detailed Agenda.

This qualifies as a sacred cow because the only reason people seem to waste our time with these slides is because that’s the way it’s always been done.  That, as we know, is what defines a sacred cow.  And like all sacred cows, this too needs to be turned into hamburger before the charcoal goes out.

Now I’m not suggesting that you ditch your agenda slides.  It’s important to let the audience know what you’re going to be talking about.  A couple effective ways I have seen this done is when Steve Jobs tells us he’s going to show us 3 cool new products.  There’s no slide saying this or even what they are.  He will, however, have each product introduced by a big number (1, 2, or 3), followed by the product or a series of suspense-building slides (think the intro of the iPhone).  The beauty of this is that the agenda is simple and memorable.  By not using slides, it helps build suspense.  Alternatively, you can tell your audience the three things you will be talking about and proceed.  This works if they’re simple, logical, and almost obvious.

If you are going to put your agenda on slides, try an approach that doesn’t turn your audience off just as you’re getting started.  Stay away, if you can, from the unimaginative agenda = title + bullet x (n).  Of course, it should be visually consistent with your deck’s overal all design as well as be content-appropriate.  In the embedded slide deck below, consider the following possibilities:

Conversational Style. Instead of just saying “Agenda,” try something like, “What we’re going to talk about today.”  Being rigid and stand-offish  can alienate your audience and discourage them from giving you the attention you want.  This is a time to focus their attention on what you want to share with them.

Pie Chart. Yeah, this is a bit off the wall, but go ahead and create a pie chart with the pie values being the amount of minutes you intend to spend on each section.  The pie slices give a visual representation of how much time you intend to spend on each topic, which would be more effective at facilitating storing this information in memory than using text alone would be.  Don’t display the values, but rather the labels.  Make each pie slice come in one at a time.  Oh, and despite how bad 3D charts are for data, this is a time where you should feel free to go 3D.

Call-outs On A Timeline. Create a line across your slide that represents the intended length of your presentation.  At the appropriate times along the timeline, insert call-outs for each topic.  Again, bring them in one at a time.  Because time is linear, this is by far more effective than the pie chart approach and infinitely more effective than simple bullets.

Blocks On A Timeline. Another timeline-based approach is to take boxes and add them to the timeline one after the other, each representing a topic.

There is no one way to share your agenda, but displaying a detailed or even a simple, yet unoriginal agenda slide does you no favors.  Get creative.  Try any of these ideas or come up with your own creative way to let your audience know quickly, simply, and effectively what you’ll be talking about.

Image credit:  xcode, used under a Creative Commons license.