Does This Presentation Make Me Sound Fat?

When information bloat meets shrinking attention spans, those who know how to communicate lean by adding maximum value with minimum waste, will stand out. To be lean, you must carefully guard against the “fat” of irrelevant material.

How much irrelevant material is in your presentation? Probably far more than you think. Despite your best efforts to clarify your main point and carefully select just the data you need to support your arguments, there are still many insidious ways that information can creep into your presentation.

Irrelevant information is like unwanted empty calories that somehow latch on to fat cells in your content and bloat your presentation beyond recognition.

If it does not add value to the listener or does not support your main point, it does not belong. While no one sets out to purposely include irrelevant material, it forces its way in for several reasons:

• Information compulsion. This phenomenon was described by journalist Tom Wolfe, who said, “people have an overwhelming need to tell you something that you don’t know, even when it’s not in their best interest.”[i]
• Self-serving excuses or boasting. When you want to make yourself look good, you might talk about how hard you’ve been working or the difficulties you’ve overcome to get the information.
• Excessive context. Decisions are about the future, but too many people spend far too much time talking about how we got to this point rather than where we need to go next.
• Editorial commentary. It’s tempting to tell people how they should react to a situation, but sometimes the facts best speak for themselves.
• Neat stuff. Have you ever come across a visual or a chart that is just so cool that you have to include it in your presentation? Before you do, ask yourself what point it serves or how it advances your argument.
• You see a lot of this in presentations; it includes such things as opening amenities, your “corporate story”, and all the stuff your legal and marketing departments force you to put on your slides.

[i] Cited in Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, p. 107.