It seems intuitive enough. Every presentation should have a “big idea” behind it. But few do. And without it, your audience is likely to get lost (if they ever really engage to start with). In this short episode, we’ll show you how to stop wasting time, money and people power, and how to build a powerful idea that resonates with your audience.

No matter if you’re in front of a large group or giving a status update to a group of co-workers, your ability to deliver a meaningful presentation rests on the central idea behind it. Let’s build your Big Idea!

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Hi, and welcome to P3, the Perfect Presentations Podcast. I’m Doug Borsch, vice president of Perfect PlanIt.

You might recall in an earlier episode I said that once you started talking about better presentations it was like pulling on a thread of a sweater. It’s all tied together. Today I want to pull on one of those threads and talk in more depth about creating a Big Idea in your presentation, and how to do it.

Let me tell you what a big idea looks like. In 2006, or somewhere in there, I was at a business luncheon, where the guest speaker was nationally recognized investment banker, who was often sought out for his opinion on a variety of topics. But in the past several years, all anyone wanted to know was his opinion on the housing market. The market had been on fire for years, and a lot of people were getting rich, and as happens with most investments, the suckers are the last ones in. Well, that becomes obvious in hindsight, but just like day trading during the internet bubble of the late 90s, or the tulip panic in the 1600s, or bitcoin today, things were hitting a frenzy and everyone wanted a piece. Even investment professionals were afraid they were missing out on the good fortune. So not surprisingly, this presentation was to a packed room, hanging on every word, as if we were listening to a seer about to tell us all our futures. Keep in mind, it wasn’t just investor types interested at this point. A lot of people had bought homes recently, and many had cashed out equity to finance other parts of their lives, or to buy another home. Everyone was riding high, but recently the market has shown signs of topping out, and people were nervous. In hindsight I count myself lucky. I was a homeowner, and had benefited, but I hadn’t bought recently and wasn’t planning on selling, so I was more of a dispassionate observer. But even I felt that twinge of missing out on all of the action.

Well, this guy got up to speak and everyone put down their coffee cups and dessert forks and waited for the latest opinion of the guru. And he brought up a title slide titled (I’m paraphrasing here, but this will be close), “Housing market primed for a soft landing over next 12 months.” That was a big idea. And he knew how to land it. He didn’t make the audience guess, or wait. He simply told them exactly what he was going to say, and now the audience was ready to hear the justification for this conclusion. He’d struck a nerve. Even a nationally recognized figure, who certainly could have extended the drama, decided not to try to drag the audience along and build up to his big reveal. He simply told them “here’s what I’m going to tell you, and how I’m going to tell it. And you know exactly where I stand.” That’s a rare feat in a presenter.

The coda, of course, is that he could not have been more wrong. The market crashed spectacularly and a lot of people—some of whom might have been there that day, lost a lot, and maybe everything. And I love that he continued to be quoted as an authority for years after that, but that’s another story.

Here’s a more typical story.

I was at a conference last week about what the sponsors were calling The Experience Economy. It was about how we interact with customers, clients, patients.

The first speaker was a former biotech researcher, and later an executive at a large data firm. In general I don’t have high expectations when it comes to presenters. But this guy had obviously studied at the school of TED talks. His presentation was incredibly visual, and beautifully done. So we were already leaps and bounds ahead of expectations. On top of that, he told great stories about his time as a researcher. He wove in little anecdotes in interesting ways. In short, if you’d asked the audience what they thought, I suspect they’d largely say he was a “good” presenter.

But…. Of course there’s a but. If you asked them what his talk was about., I’d wager that not a single person in the audience could summarize it in less than three or four sentences. They’d fumble around a bit to think how to articulate what they thought it was about, and no two answers would be the same.

Since this episode is all about the big idea, it’s obvious that he didn’t have one. Telling good stories doesn’t add up to a good presentation.

You might think of yourself as a good presenter. And you might be in the sense that you can comfortably stand up and talk easily in front of a group. But if you’re listening to this, then you also know you can improve, and focusing on a big idea is one of the easiest and most powerful ways.

So much of what we teach is in reality quite intuitive. You know a big idea when you hear one. How about this one? [JFK: I believe that this nation should commit itself before this decade is out to sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to the earth]. No question about that, right? One statement that laid out a mission for an entire country that guided much of the rest of the decade. How about this one? [I have a dream that my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.].

It’s easy to find examples of big ideas in politics, because it’s built around the idea of summarizing a position or an aspiration in one short statement.  It’s rarer in business, where a lot of information is involved and sometimes it’s hard to know how to parse through it all.

First, I want to dive into why the big idea is so critical for you when you present. It applies whether it’s to a thousand people or a room full of co-workers.

There’s a statistic we use when we work with clients. First, we have to get them to understand what happens when someone sits through a poor presentation. I’m not talking about bad clipart. I’m talking about sitting for a half hour or an hour without coming away knowing what to do with the information you just sat through. If you’ve got a room full of people, and they walk away with unclear directions, what happens? They go and continue their work without changing direction. Or they have to research for answers, when the answers were already available. We estimate that every bad presentation results in 10-15 hours of rework for most companies. That includes the time spent creating the presentation, time wasted sitting through it, and time the team spends doing rework, or through unclear direction.

Stick with me here because the numbers are impressive. One of our clients had an executive team of 60 directors. Each director gave about 12 presentations a year. So that’s 720 presentations. If each presentation wastes 15 hours of the team’s time, that’s 10,800 hours of productivity lost. Do the math against an average salary of $100,000 and that works out to a cost of $518,000! So as a company, you get hit twice. First, you lose the productivity and ability to be agile. Second, you’re spending a fortune for the privilege of getting nowhere. Ah, but people love to argue with that 15 hours figure. No way, they say. OK, sure, I can walk you through it and prove I’m right, but let’s go with a best-case scenario and say that miraculously each presentation only took an hour to create and deliver. This of course means that you’re only presenting to yourself, since you’re obviously not wasting anyone else’s time in this scenario. Even then, the waste is 720 hours, and almost $35,000.

If you think I’m off the mark, please, get in touch with me. I’d love to have a detailed discussion about it. I love going over the numbers.

So, what’s our bottom line? We need better, clearer outcomes. And the way to do that is through a strong Big Idea.

Let’s start with a quick definition. What’s a big idea? A big idea is one single idea that ties the entire presentation together, and carries through each slide. You’re looking for the one takeaway you want everyone to carry with them.

You’ve heard people say that you should appeal to people on an emotional level. You’ve also heard people advocate for reasoning and logic as a way to prove your point. The truth is, both ideas are right.

A strong big idea is made up of both halves. First is what we call the head. The cerebral part. It represents what the audience should know. Here you want to build awareness on the subject, describe your point of view on the topic, and build a logical argument. If we had to assign a character to this part of the big idea, it would be Spock.

The second half is the Heart – This is about why the audience should care. Here you’re working to build desire, motivation, etc. For some reason this makes me think of Prince playing Purple Rain. Or the ending of It’s a Wonderful Life. Think about how you want you audience to feel.

Your Big Idea is essentially your presentation title. Use it as a powerful way to set up what you’re about to talk about. Now, let’s think about a title for a presentation. Let me start with a title you’re likely to see. It will often be something like “4th quarter results.” Or “Investing options in 2018.” Now, ask yourself, how much do you know about what you’re likely to hear, based on that title? Almost nothing. This is just noise…it doesn’t inform, and leaves your audience adrift before you even start.

Let’s look at the investing title. Investing options in 2018. And let’s think about what we want the audience to know. Maybe our audience is a group of money managers. Any investment gurus, please go easy on me here, as I’m likely to get out over my skis, but I want to make the point. How about we want to make the point that the long term rise in the stock market means a 1st quarter correction of more than 10% is highly likely? Spock would react well to that, don’t you think? You’re starting with a statement of opinion, but as an audience member, I expect that you’re going to give me all of the reasons why I should agree with that opinion.

But the facts here aren’t enough for me as an audience member. We need to address the questions, why should the audience care? Well, no one wants to be positioned poorly during a downturn, so maybe we’re advocating that an adjustment to a stronger cash position can minimize the impact of a downturn?

OK, now we’ve got the “what” and also the “why you should care.” And it’s obvious that the title Investing options in 2018 is pretty weak. We can take these two halves, and create a new Big Idea. Something like: The likely Q1 market correction warrants a stronger cash position for your clients.

You’ll notice that this title feels a bit longer and is certainly more descriptive. That’s a good thing. If you can shorten your title and still make the point, great. But don’t be afraid to be this specific.

We’ve heard the comment that this takes the surprise out of a presentation. That the presenter wants to reveal that. The problem with that is that if your audience is in the dark, or unsure of where you are headed, they’re more likely to check out. And your big conclusion is predicated on them having listened intently throughout your presentation to start with. If they don’t know where you’re going at the start, they’re not likely to have followed you to your destination.

I’ve been accused of being an over-explainer. But in my experience, that’s a positive.  I liken it to when our accountant sends us our corporate tax return. It’s got a lot of pages, but there, sticking out from the side, are those little yellow stickies that say “sign here.” And I can flip right to that page and know exactly what to do. Think of your big idea as a giant sticky note to your audience. They won’t have to search for anything, because you’ve told them what they need to know.

Now, once you’ve got your big idea, it’s your responsibility to follow it up. Your big idea makes for a wonderful litmus test. Each slide in your presentation should support that big idea in some way. It may provide context for it, such as talking in my investor presentation about other downturns in the market. It. Or it may provide more detail to prove my point. Perhaps it talks more about the impact of not acting (appealing to the heart again). If a slide doesn’t do those things, chances are it should be considered for deletion. Your big idea can help you focus on creating a really tight, powerful message.

If you have the opportunity, I’d also encourage you after you present to talk to a few people who listed to it. Ask them what they thought the main point was. If your big idea was strong and clear, each person should say nearly the same thing.

Remember, the head and the heart go together. Use them both and nail your big idea.

I hope you’ve found this episode helpful. Let me know if you have thoughts or ideas about it. Thanks for listening and good luck with your next presentation.