Importance of Being Simple
Albert Einstein said, “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself”
He’s right, but there’s more to it than that. We often overlook the ability to teach as being a genuine talent. It is a skill to have the ability to teach children.
Teaching requires patience. You need a level of communication that maintains a student’s attention long enough to keep the kid learning. This goes beyond the ability to comprehend subject matter and into the capability we have as people to communicate with one another. No matter what it is that you’re trying to say, you need to make yourself understandable before you worry about anything else. So be simple.
Going off that, here’s my executive summary for this article: I’m going to share some of my recommendations on how to be effective with a simple approach to presentation.
— Note: a lot of the terms I will use, such as “Executive Summary” are probably going to hint that I’m from the business school. But trust me, I’m STEM-ey.
Firstly, most people who’ll hear that you are presenting will be result-oriented people, so speak in a result-oriented manner. This means that the most important thing you can say once you’ve introduced yourself is the reason that anything you’re about to say is worth knowing. There’s obviously no “right” way to do this, but there’s definitely wrong ways. I decided to do that in the form of an executive summary. In a presentation, you can have something similar.
You can literally start off your speech with “Hi, I’m Ahmad Dajani, I’m a Senior majoring in Information Systems,Operations Management & Business Analytics, and I’m here today to discuss *topic*, so let’s get right to it.”
Secondly, you want to organize the information on your screen to suit your presentation style.
I’m not going to feed you the same old fluff saying you *have* to be an extrovertive presenter who bounces around the stage with their microphone and laser pointer. Don’t get me wrong, this is literally what I do. But that doesn’t have to be you, and you don’t have to mimic my style. It’s your analysis, it’s your presentation, do you.
What I can tell you though, is that it has to make sense. Be consistent. If you are more extroverted, you can get away with having very simple slides, as you can take the attention of the crowd by putting it on yourself and your words. If you’re not, your goal still doesn’t change. You’re trying to ”sell” your concept, and you do it by selling yourself.
After all, people are there to hear you speak.
Another thing that I can’t stress enough is delivery. You need to be understandable in every sense of the word. This doesn’t mean yell or be obnoxious with your speech, but that’s actually more forgivable than not letting your message be heard or read. By now you should know how to make a powerpoint that is functional, at the least. The bare minimum means that people can read the text on screen without being overwhelmed with words, font size or bad color schemes. Consider this to be a metaphor for your monologue. Once you start your presentation, you have to stay consistent in your pitch, pace, and tone.
To add to what’s been mentioned above, here’s a few things that should be essential to your presentation, no matter what it’s about:
- Introduce yourself (people forget this way too often)
- Simple headers, detailed labels
- Don’t just stare at the slides/ground/ceiling
- Don’t stare at any specific person too much
- Don’t stare.
- Look around and keep your audience engaged. People are looking at you physically, but they’re also looking to you for information, so show them that you appreciate their attention
And lastly, note that when I say simple, I do not mean dumbed down. Show that you have a high level of understanding with how you balance the complexity of your topic while making it easy for your audience to digest it. In the words of Alan Perlis:
“Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.”
*****
Tips for case competitions.
CoMis:
I was selected by the Information Technology and Business Transformation Fellows Program to represent the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business at the annual CoMis Case Competition in Minnesota this past April. The goal was for me and my teammates to propose a solution for US Bank to overcome a certain cybersecurity risk. The details of the case we took aren’t as important as the strategy we took to overcome it. Nobody in my team was a cybersecurity majoring student, but we still managed to come up with a creative solution that appealed to some of the judges. What they really liked about us, however, was how clean our presentation was.
The competition consisted of a 24-hour session of analyzing the scenario given to us and creating a proposal we could give within a twelve-minute presentation to a panel of judges. The judges then had five minutes to ask questions.
My team excelled at getting the details right. For example, the questions they asked us were often times given to us by someone who was not using a microphone and sitting in the front row. I would repeat the question in a summed up way so that I assured the judge that I knew what they were asking for, but also it gives everyone in the room a chance to know what it is that I’m about to answer. I have a voice that resonates pretty well out of the team, so I was the one we chose to be the front “spokesperson” for the team. It’s a good idea to have one, so that there’s no awkward disconnect between teammates who both want to answer the same question. It was my discretion what I decided to answer myself and what I deferred to my teammates to answer.
Having roles in a research team is essential to getting your job done. Having roles in your presentation is essential to not just getting your point across, but to getting the best point across.
The idea of repeating the question must be executed in a way that doesn’t make it obvious that you are wasting time (aka stalling). You do this by sounding confident in accepting the question. Even if it’s a tough question, give yourself the extra second to think by replying with “good question.” You pace your words in a way that allows everyone to hear you loud and clearly. One thing that always helps is to have mock questions to answer prior to presenting. Test your teammates. Make sure everyone knows not only your presentation through and through, but that everyone knows which parts they are responsible for. Question time is the best chance for anyone to find what’s wrong with your proposal. This is why you should make the questions phase your best strength if possible, because it will be everyone else’s weakness.
Another effective tactic that every team should take in presentation is foresight. Have an answer to questions before going up to present. Have some links to some analysis prepared in your appendix for quick reference. You don’t have to include all your analysis in your presentation. In fact, that’s not preferable. It’d be better to get the main point of your research in the presentation with your analysis being there to support if needed. You still need to have your analysis in the presentation but it’s up to you to decide what it is you share with the audience.There are some things that you should keep to the “in-case” slides that are hiding in the appendix, well labeled in case a judge wants to see more information about any specific topic.
Ask your teammates questions about their topic before going up to talk, too. Make sure they’re ready to back up what it is they are proposing. In the business school, it is easy for everyone to think of things in terms of ROI (return on investment). The concept still applies to everything else, no matter what field you’re in. If you want someone to buy in to what it is you’re saying, you have to communicate what your ROI is. Do you want to raise awareness? Do you want people to know about some application you’ve developed? In any situation you present something beyond yourself, you have to be ready to answer questions if you wish to have any hope of retaining said interest after you finish talking. Make sure your teammates are on the same page. Your ROI for a certain aspect of the project may not match theirs, so show everyone why each investment is worth it, and have the best speaker for that make the pitch for it.
Transitioning between speakers has to be fluid. You need to be seamless with your transitions so that the train of thought for the audience isn’t interrupted. Your presentation will really stand out if your team manages to engage the audience in ways that the traditional “stand and talk” method doesn’t allow. Such techniques often include moments of silence that allow your audience to think, like after asking a rhetorical question. I really enjoy making people laugh, so any time I can fit in light humor in my presentations, I do.
The judges really appreciated the fact that we had an organized method of accepting questions. The audience appreciated that we made everything easy to follow. Every target audience has their own definition of what contributes most to the presentation. Appeal to yourself before you try to appeal to anyone else. If you’re happy with your work, you will succeed. Since the simplest way to remain simple and captivativating during a presentation is to be yourself.
