Winners
We have someone in the office who has a quote posted in their cubicle that says, “Winners don’t do different things. They do things differently.” Apparently, this was written by Shiv Khera, a motivational speaker and author from India. Now, I thought about this for quite a while, trying to figure out just what this meant.
Obviously, the difference between the meaning of “different” and “differently” in the context of the quote was the essence of the meaning of this statement. It was after figuring out what that difference is that I realized that the quote is actually representative of the problem nowadays. In the context of the quote, “different” means something fundamentally different while “differently” means doing the same thing, just in a different manner. The reason this is a problem is that this advice encourages people to stick to the herd and that mere cosmetic changes are what will lead you to success.
I see this thinking at play all the time and it kills creativity while giving it lip service. It fosters closed minds and resistance to change. It feeds the fear and loathing of anything truly different. For example, when speccing out a workstation for print, design, and video work, the thought of some was, “Get a beefy Dell.” It was the fear and loathing of that which is truly different for them (the Mac) that closed their minds to the best tools and equipment for the job while leaving their minds “open” to mere variations of the same theme of what was currently on their desk.
I also see this in presentation slide design. We have people “simplifying” their slides by merely removing all of the background while keeping their walls of text and endless sea of bullet points.
Another way we can see just how Mr. Khera’s quote is off the mark is when presenting data to your audience. For this example, I took the Operating System usage statistics on my web site and whipped up the following.
The first slide is your typical chart throwing all of the data on the screen, giving each data point equal importance, whether it deserves it or not:
Sample Pie Chart #1
There are obvious problems with this slide. Each data point, by being placed in this chart are given equal importance. However, what’s important to me as the presenter is that the Mac has 12% usage share on my site. This is far more than most of those stuck in the Windows world would imagine. It’s a potentially powerful point that gets lost in all of the noise. You also have more data points than colors given how Windows and the Sony PSP share the yellow color. Granted, this is a limitation of Keynote, but it’s actually a good limitation. Too many data points dilutes your message. If you need more than 6 colors for your chart, you have far too much information in there.
So, using Shiv Khera’s approach to this slide, we have this:
This one isn't any better.
With this slide, I’m doing the same thing, just “differently.” I’ve added snazzy textures to the pie chart and made the pieces explode out to give them separation. However, do you think this actually helps the message? I’d say this is even worse. Here, you have an appealing, but distracting texture for the pie chart pieces and the orientation of the chart actually emphasizes the Windows slice while hiding the Macintosh slice. You could even swap the order of these two examples and you’d have the same problems as I listed above.
Now, let’s take a fundamentally different approach. One where I’m not doing the same thing, just differently, but rethinking the delivery process in its entirety.
A slide that gets the message across.
With this slide, I’ve completely cut through the noise and using only the statistic that really matters for the message. I have an image (a photo by Aaronage) of a Macintosh computer with the 12% in big, bold numbers. With this slide, there’s no question whatsoever what my message is.
Unfortunately, in my day to day life, I see more of the first two slides than I do of the last one. This is because too many people are afraid to be different and instead are just doing things differently.
Envisioning Information
I've recently finished reading Envisioning Information
Presentation Hell
One of my areas of personal improvement of late has been in the area of improving the way I give presentations. This was spurred on by being fed up with having to endure presentations such as the one below (go to the original at pcweenies.com).
Presentation Hell
This happens all too often and it happens everywhere. Nobody wants to watch someone else read from their slides. It detracts from the presentation and conveys to the audience the sense that either the presenter doesn't really know what they're talking about or they weren't considerate enough to prepare ahead of time. Besides, if the information is going to be read word for word, the presenter might as well just give hand-outs and not bother saying a word because the spoken presentation doesn't contribute to the audience's understanding of the material.
One book I would recommend to anyone that gives presentations with slides is Presentation Zen, by Garr Reynolds. In this book, the author promotes keeping the slides simple, yet powerful. Slides should help reinforce what the presenter is saying and not "be the presentation," if you will. If the audience is reading the slides or putting effort into interpreting a complex chart or graph, then they're not listening to the person speaking. If the audience isn't listening, they're not paying attention to the presentation.
Making slides that are simple, yet effective isn't easy. It's far easier (and lazier) to just slap a bunch of bullet points on the slides. However, bullet points are the easiest way to kill your presentation. I'm not saying there's never any value in them. They need to be used judiciously, intelligently, and sparingly.
This is something I will be blogging about a lot more as time goes on.
