COMMUNICATION
Five basic principles for better presentation slides
Make presentations more professional
Once, I had a memorable Big Boss, whose career straddled both the public and private sectors. He gave me a lot of good guidance and advice. But one piece of advice on developing presentation slides stood out for me.
For example, back then, it was common to have three different sections (of one deck of slides) cobbled up separately by three different teams.
One of the teams would be the lead that consolidated the work and eventually tabled the slides for clearance. And what the lead would do is to put dividers to indicate three sections, and slot the slides in.
Big Boss used to gently, but firmly, insist on decks of slides having the same overall look and feel, appearing consistent and coherent such that they looked like they were done by one person — even if there were different contributors to different sections.
Big Boss expected the lead officer, who consolidated the slides, and his immediate Boss — usually a Senior Assistant Director — to read through everything, format everything consistently, and ensure that the deck flowed as a complete, coherent piece of work, before we sent it to him for clearance.
