Case study of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts’ 2018 General Managers conference in Regensdorf, Switzerland.
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The Story It was a cool September morning in Paris when my colleague and I sat down in a stylish hotel dining room to meet a Mr. Olivier Chavy, President of Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts.
Before 8:00am we jumped right into business: Olivier’s vision and objectives for the spring 2018 general managers conference. “We want people to leave with the sensation ‘wow, I am really proud to work for this company’,” emphasized Chavy.
A big part of the way many companies sell is to create a presentation that shows the complex benefits of the solution they are offering.
But even great businesses — which are very good at what they do — often lack the ability to clearly share their message to their target audience using presentations.
There are many reasons why people and companies want to improve their presentations but at the heart of it what they really want is to win more deals, get more customers and sell more.
Why would people care about your product?
Why would people care about your service?
Why would people care about your project?
Why would people care about your career?
Why would people care about your investment?
Why would people care about your discovery?
Why would people care about your research?
Why would people care about your videos?
Why would people care about your book?
Why would people care about your ideas?
“You have to speak slower!”
This advice is a staple of oratory coaching. But I think it is sometimes given by coaches without thinking about the consequences, and that it can actually do more bad than good. Let me explain why.
The first reason is simply that not every speaker needs to speak slowly. Speaking slowly is done for several reasons, such as increasing the perceived gravitas (authority) or allowing the public to digest complex information more easily.
Gizmodo wrote this rather funny piece about Elon Musk’s latest rash of announcements, such as fully autonomous cars and a million robotaxis by 2020. Now, Gizmodo is not exactly known as a staple of great journalism, but sometimes they have a knack to hit the nail on the head. In this case, the fact that for several years Elon Musk repeatedly promised—and failed to deliver—full autonomous driving. Honestly, s eeing how hard it is to achieve full autonomy, and how many problems are left with Tesla’s current autopilot system, it is hard to believe these new promises will actually materialize.
This is a quick list of seven common problems that we see with slides created by non specialists. However they are relatively easy to spot, and you don’t have to be a graphic designer to avoid them. Read on and your next slides will look much better!
Too much content. The goal is not to cover every single inch with content. It’s not because you have some space left at the bottom of the slide that you should put something there.
A few weeks ago someone spoke a name that I hadn’t heard in a long, very long time: Barbara Minto. She’s the author of the Pyramid Principle, a book that was long considered, and sometimes still is, the gold standard of presentation structuring in the consulting industry. But it was back in the eighties. So I’ll dare to ask the question: is the pyramid principle outdated?
If you’re not familiar with the pyramid principle, it is a method to lay out the information in a presentation in the most efficient way possible, based on how people with little time, especially executives, absorb information.
Recently my computer, a MacBook Pro, needed to be repaired. I had to do without a laptop for several weeks. And of course, during those weeks I needed to present with slides. Luckily, with my iPhone and a couple of accessories I had everything I needed:
A (not too old) iPhone or iPad A lightning to HDMI adapter A lightning power cable and brick (using the HDMI adapter drains the battery fast).
