Crafting Better Slides

Alexander: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of The Effective Statistician. Today we will talk about how you can craft your slides better. In the last two episodes, I already talked about how to prepare presentations and to that you need to answer a couple of really key questions before you start with what we’re going to speak about today.

Now, before we dive into the content. Just a reminder, there’s just one week left, well actually if you listen to this on the Friday, one week plus the weekend left to submit an abstract for the Effective Statistician Conference. The conference happens on the 15th and that will be a great opportunity for you to actually

So, let’s dive into a couple of things in [00:01:00] terms of crafting better slides. Now the first big challenge that I see again and again is that people use the slides to It’s more for documentation purposes rather than for presentation purposes. And I can understand that. You need to have something as a pre read, you need to have something for documentation after the meeting, all these things.

Fine. I have a solution for you. Instead of having one slide set, you have two. Two slide sets. One for the presentation and one for the documentation. And yes, you can put everything into the same powerpoint. Slide, document, You have basically, basically duplicate each slide so that you have one slide that is for documentation and one slide that is for presentation.

[00:02:00] And when you do your presentation, you deliver your presentation, then you just hide all these slides that you use just for documentation purposes. So slides that have all the references in there, all the details in there, maybe a long sentence in there. All these kind of different things. Now, you can even start with these crowded slides, you know, these slides that you see nearly all business presentations, full of details, long sentences, very crowded, elaborate slides.

These slides, although they are done so often, are really, really bad, they’re bad for multiple reasons. But the main one is If you have such a crowded slide, people will focus on the slide and not on you as the speaker. And that [00:03:00] is a real big challenge. Yeah, people should listen to you and not read. And we can’t do the same thing to these two things at the same time.

So make sure that the focus is on you, not on the slides. See you. If you want, create all your kind of documentation slides that you usually do and then duplicate each slide and make the second slide your presentation slide or create a couple of slides out of that. So how do you start? Start with your main key takeaways.

I think it’s a very, very good scientific practice that you have these inductive slides. You start with what was the question, what was the introduction, what was the method, all these kind of different things. Okay for most of the academic slides, [00:04:00] but for business presentations, and to be honest, I think also for many academic presentations, it is much better to clearly start with what is the main takeaway.

What do you want the audience to Do, to think, to believe, to understand, and the end. Where do you want to move them? So have a clear, great start into the presentation, usually with a story. Don’t start with, I’m Alexander Schacht, today I will talk about estimates and observational studies. And here’s my agenda.

No! Directly start with a story. People know that who you are. You know, you know in most cases. If they don’t, then you can actually weave that [00:05:00] in after you have started with your story. So start strong with a story. Our study was positive and here are the key outcomes that we need to think about.

So, start with that and don’t have an agenda slide. I know many of us have learned about you present an agenda in school. I’m not a big fan of it. It is wasted time. You can quickly speak about what to expect, that’s fine, but you don’t need an agenda slide. Especially not for these 10 minute presentations that we mostly do.

So, generically, generally, less is more. The less is on your slide, the better. For sure, don’t have any [00:06:00] complete sentences on it. Focus on your key bullet points. And maybe, you know, one key word subject with a verb. Something like this. But don’t have complete sentences on that. People don’t want to read, they want to listen.

Also, never ever, well never ever is maybe too strong, but in nearly all cases, avoid tables and use graphics instead. And yes, I know that it takes more time to prepare them. Yes. We’re speaking about, do you want to be a good presenter or do you want to be an average presenter? And if you want to be a good one, well, you need to invest a little bit more time into it.

And I think, I believe very, very clearly that [00:07:00] this will pay off. We have a complete training around all of what I’m talking about here, including also how to make better data visualizations called mastering called Winning with Words and Graphs. You can check that out. And I’m also offering a data visualization course that is then delivered specifically to your needs.

So if you’re interested in that, just connect with me on LinkedIn or write me an email to alexander at cfxdecision. com. And of course, the course about winning with words and graphs, you can find in the academy. Just go to the homepage and you’ll find the academy in the menu. The other thing is use pictures, use visuals.