I'm done with my summer classes on Wednesday. This summer FLEW by. All I have left is my statistics final. It's kinda funny that the prior post is about my stats midterm. I didn't realize that was the last time I blogged.
This last week I had to give a 15 min presentation with my study group about the Ford/Firestone tire crisis from 2000. We had to give a powerpoint presentation as if we were advising the then CEO of Ford, Jacques Nasser, on how to deal with the crisis in relation to prospective Ford customers. Also, we had to give him a recommendation on whether to accept 60 Minutes' invitation to appear in a investigative piece about the tire recall. We were given about 5 newspaper articles as our case material, which we all had to use as our primary source material.
The presentation went very well. My section dealt with the 60 Minutes recommendation, however I spent a lot of time doing the slides for the entire presentation.You can download the Keynote presentation here: Download Ford_Presentation_4Play_f.key.zip
. I would appreaciate any feedback!
We also had to write a 3-5 page report to support the conclusions, which I didn't write that much of. The report turned out great. My teammates did a great job putting it all together.
The presentation marked the end of my Management Communication class. Let me know what you liked/disliked about the slides.
Here are my takeaways from the class:
- Preparation, preparation, preparation: This determines about 85% of your success. The last 15% is actually delivering it well that day.
- Memorizing text vs. Relying on notes: It makes a huge difference to memorize key phrases and plan your movements during your presenation. You can communicate a lot through your movement, pace of speech, and timing with visuals. For example, elongating the pauses between individual words gives great emphasis to a point without you having to say it over and over and over again.
- Eye contact: never underestimate the power of eye contact to wake up your audience and draw them into your story
- Always know your theme: before you even start a presenation, come up with a 6 words or less phrase that encompasses the one message you want your audience to take away from your presentation. Every slide and word should be focused on getting that message across.
- Less is always more: We took out a lot of material from our presentation the night before and it served us very well. It let us focus on the core things we wanted to communicate rather than explaining facts no one would remember. Some facts are always necessary to build credibility with the audience, but you can very quickly overwhelm an audience...much quicker than you would think.
- Seal the deal during the opening and closing: That's when you have their attention, so make it count.
There are many more lessons, but these are the big ones I wanted to share. I can't help but share what my teacher said about my piece of the presentation. His favorite moment out of all the presentations was my 60 Minutes recommendation section because I started it in a very memorable way. My first words were "Imagine if you don't go on 60 Minutes" and I had a slide with Leslie Stahl's picture sitting there. I nailed it by slowing my pace and taking very deliberate steps towards the audience.
Well, enough tooting my own horn, but I put in loads of time so I'm psyched he appreciated it.
