This is Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon. He's presenting his new tablet computer, Kindle Fire HD, and this is one of his slides. Now, you see on top there, it says Thin & Light. Now, thin and light is motivation. It's subjective, right. Thin and light compared to what? And in order to support this statement, he gives us a few facts and figures. He gives us precise millimeters thin, how thin is this thin. And down below is information, up there is motivation. Another slide, Stunning Display. Now stunning, right. What is stunning to one person is not stunning to another. It's subjective, it's motivation. The subtext there is buy this computer, right. And then he gives all kinds of information to support this statement, that it has wonderful resolution, point per pixel or something. So if I remove this part, it would be unfounded. It would be unsupported, an unsupported claim, right? If I remove that part, it would be just boring facts and figures that you have to assess by yourself. And I would argue that the biggest problem with presentations is this, right. Not enough risky, emotional, subjective information, too much facts and figures. You see, informing is quite easy, it's quite cheap. And people know how to inform, and they do it all the way. Motivating is hard, people under motivate. If you look one more time at top five presentation problems, you will see, okay, number five not enough information. That means too much motivation or entertainment. But problem number four, went too slowly. Not enough interest, that means not enough motivation. Problem number three, too much information on slides. Not enough interest, not enough motivation. It doesn't sort of sustain. My Facebook is more interesting that your slides. Slides contain too much material. Once again, too much information, not enough motivation. And the main point was obscured by lots of irrelevant detail. Not enough motivation, too much information. So this is the problem, we inform too much. And I would argue that we inform too much because this is how we set our goals. When I ask people, well, what is your goal? The person says, well, I'm just here to inform. And this is precisely what he or she accomplishes as a result of his presentation. He stands for 50 minutes, he stands turned away from the audience reading from the slides. And nobody can say that he is not informing. He, of course, is. The problem is that he's not motivating, it's boring. And what we have to do, we have to move from too much information closer to more motivation. Of course, there's a danger zone where you become an annoying salesperson. Where you just go and say buy, buy, buy my stuff without giving out any supporting evidence. But I would argue that for most people, the problem is the opposite one. We should move from informing towards motivating. You see, informing is easy. This is a very easy job to do. All you have to do is just read the slides. You don't have to show passion. You don't have to show your emotions. I'm just a messenger, I'm giving you objective information. That's my job. Motivating is actually quite hard. You have to work. And you have to do a lot of emotional labor during the preparation stage, rehearsals, and during the presentation, itself. But it makes much more business sense. I would say that we are mostly salespeople. We sell ideas, right, not even products, most of the time. We sell ideas to one another. And motivating is harder, but it pays. I once interviewed about 40 people about, well, I asked them why do you think presentations are bad? Your presentations as well as other people's presentations? And an insight that I acquired as a result of all these conversations was that people do not, they simply do not, invest enough time and effort in their work. Presentations are hard to do. There are lots of presentation courses where they tell you, well, presenting is very easy. You just come and enjoy yourself. And this is not what I'm going to tell you. Presenting is actually quite hard. Preparing is very hard. And in order to do this hard work, you have to, number one, motivate yourself. So on one side it's hard work, what's on the other side? What would motivate you to do all this hard job? And I don't know, as far as I'm concerned, the only thing that could accomplish this is your goals. What do you want? What is it that you cannot live without? What do you want from those people sitting in the audience? So tip number one, and this is probably the most important thing that I'm going to say in this course, try setting goals that motivate you. What would you like to receive as the result of this presentation from the audience? Not applause, not laughter. But what actions would move this whole situation toward the ideal situation, toward what you want? What do I want my audience to do? Not to know, not to understand. What would I see different as a result of my presentation? You see, goal is the information filter. After you understand what you want, you know what to filter out. You know that this piece of information doesn't lead the audience toward achieving the goal. So you can stop informing, and start being interesting and active on the stage. And the second thing, nearly as important as the first one, is close your eyes and think about the audience. What do they want, and what do they need? You see, if you have this common, shared goal, you have a common space for communication. Most of your arguments will fail if people realize that you are not acting in their best interest. You have to have a shared, a common goal, this is very important. And the second very important thing is think about what people want, but also think about what they need. There's a very famous quote attributed to Henry Ford. I don't know if he actually said that. But if I asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. The moral is that sometimes people want weird stuff, and you have to correct them. Everybody wants to be fit, but nobody wants to exercise. But they need to exercise to get fit. So you have to think about what people need, not only about what they want. And this intersection between what you want and what you need is the ideal goal for your presentation.
