I believe many organizations “over present”; not every piece of information needs to be passed on via a presentation. Here are 3 questions to ask yourself when deciding whether or not a presentation is needed:
- Does someone need to explain the information for context, or is it pretty straight forward?
- Does your audience need the information to make an immediate decision? This may require you leading a discussion more than doing a presentation.
- Are you trying to persuade someone to do something, or are you selling an idea/concept that needs to be approved?
If your answer to any of these questions is no, then you are sharing information; a document or an email may be more appropriate – and efficient – than a live presentation.
In Lisa Braithwaite’s blog post “Do you really need to give a presentation?” she highlights 4 questions to ask yourself when deciding whether you should do a presentation. You can read Lisa’s blog at SpeakSchmeak.com.
One final suggestion – if you use PowerPoint to create the document you are going to circulate, save it as a PDF for distribution purposes. That way people will know it is for information sharing, and not intended as slides for their use in presentations.
Joe Pops
Refuse to be boring