PowerPoint suicide

It’s 8.58am: in 2 minutes you’re going into the Global Marketing Director’s office to present your proposal on a huge project for the business. Your immediate boss, who is going in with you, comes over to your desk with a copy of your presentation and says, “This isn’t good enough – we can’t present this,” before picking up her notepad and heading into the Director’s office with a beaming smile. Utterly speechless, you pick up your laptop and a copy of the presentation you have spent the last 3 weeks perfecting and head into the office with your tail between your legs. Your confidence has been hit upside the head, and there’s no recovering it.

You mumble your way to slide 3 of 75, when the laptop packs in. The only thing more mortifying than this is the subsequent crawl around the floor under the table looking for the plug socket. The Global Marketing Director stifles an involuntary sigh and scans his watch. With a smile he suggests continuing without the laptop, not realising he is crushing you with his kindness.

Thirty agonising minutes later, the Director mentions celebrity endorsement for the project: Russell Brand is too risky, Kanye West is too expensive, and Lily Allen is pregnant. With an upbeat tone and excited eyes, you pip in: “Oh, actually Lily Allen had a miscarriage last night, so she may be able to make it,” as if this is good news for everyone in the room. You then look down and remember that your boss is 8-months pregnant. “It’s awful.” Your attempt to salvage the situation is met with blank faces.

Some tips to avoiding Presentation Hell:

First impressions
The first 3 minutes are key to getting your audience onboard for the rest of your presentation: be prepared, test the equipment, and own the show before you begin. Don’t be late, sweating or hungover.

Keep it short and relevant
People are easily bored, so stick to the point of the presentation. Lily Allen’s miscarriage is not the point. Each slide should relate directly to your aim. If you’re getting to 75 PowerPoint slides, chances are you need to restructure your presentation. In any case, keep your audience on track with the three-step rule:
1. Summarise what you will tell them
2. Tell them
3. Summarise what you have just told them

Death by bullet point
Is there any other way you can present this information? In the undignified situation above, I scrapped the laptop and reverted to a mood board I had created in 30 minutes from Getty Images. Visual aids work much better than text-heavy slides, so look at each slide and ask yourself if it is there for you, or there for your audience. If it is a slide of bullet points designed only to help you through your presentation, scrap it - use an image- or video-led approach to help enhance your message for your audience. See below 2 ways of delivering the same speech.

Text-heavy presentation:

Image-led presentation:

Seven signs that your job may not be recession proof

An interesting post from business pundit on unpopular jobs that are, for the most part, recession-proof.

But how do you know if your job or business is unusually susceptible to axing during a recession?
Here are a few ideas:

1. You are doing a sales job and are not in the top 60% of performers. Think about why - should you be in an account management role instead? Why did you get into sales? Are you actually doing enough calls/meetings to generate revenue? Do people around you who are performing better have better clients, or a better work ethic or sales technique?


2. Your job or business is dependent on customer whim. You are a holistic masseur for iguanas, for example, or you run the excellent Any Question Answered - businesses that depend on your target customer spontaneously deciding that their iguana needs a massage that goes beyond the traditional, or that they simply must, this instant, know the advice of an anonymous stranger on what they should get their dad for his birthday.


3. You work for a hedge fund or an investment bank. You thought they were paying you well because of the obscenely long hours. Turns out, it's also because you aren't necessarily a long-term investment. The exception to this rule is if you are either shit-hot, or very well liked. Ideally, be both.


4. You are expensive, work in a big organisation and have a job that involves liaising between teams internally. In leaner times, people will learn to talk to each other if you're not there to do it for them.


5. You work in governance or compliance in an organisation where this is not viewed as essential. If project managers do not come looking for you demanding your opinion on their project plans and GANTT charts - be worried.


6. Dan and I have both worked in big businesses that over-strategise basic things, like "space planning". This job is basically to be Head of Chairs. Although things would be a bit less efficient if managers had to order their own chairs, it's safe to say it would not have a significant impact on share price.
The key if you are in this role is to maintain an aura of barely contained chaos. You are the little Dutch boy holding back the dyke of furniture calamity, if anyone asks. This explains why these people are always so argumentative.

7. You are an arse. If you are routinely awful to everyone around you at work, you had better be totally indispensible.