Friday, April 21, 2006
The Best Use of Bullet Points...
If there is an award for "Best Use of Bullet Points", it needs to go to Stephen Colbert and his team at "The Colbert Report" for their regular segment "The Word." If you haven't seen this masterful use of bullet points in a presentation, you must visit the Comedy Central website right away.
It's highly entertaining. It's Friday. It's under three minutes. Go for it. Watch the video online. And learn how to use PowerPoint bullet points more effectively.
Mind you, this visit to Comedy Central is work-related. You can actually use Mr. Colbert's technique in a business presentation. I first used this technique myself over 10 years ago in an annual sales meeting...although nowhere near as effectively as Mr. Colbert and his production team!
The technique is quite simple. As the presenter speaks, a merry prankster "behind-the-scenes" either refutes or wisecracks about the speaker's commentary -- and usually in bullet point format.
Of course, the speaker is in on the prank. And the audience knows this, too. Aside from being funny and self-deprecating, it also builds a sense of camaraderie between the presenter, the production people, and the audience. You're all in this together, y'see....
One of the reasons we (the show producers) decided to use this technique ten years ago was because the speaker was talking about a dry, technical subject that was not going well in rehearsal. And no amount of speech coaching was helping to transform dry Mr. Monotone into a compelling speaker within a week's time frame.
We showed him slides of what we recommended doing "behind-his-back" as he spoke, and he dead-panned, "Yeah. That would be funny. OK. Do it."
Mr. Monotone never wavered in his delivery as we presented bullet points and thought balloons over his head as he spoke. The audience responded warmly: laughter and applause at exactly the right moments.
And after 2 days of corporate PowerPoint presentations and executive speeches, the results were in: Mr. Monotone amazingly won the highest evaluation for "best presentation".
Believe me: it wasn't his speech or his delivery.
It was his bullet points. ¶ 4/21/2006 10:52:00 AM
If there is an award for "Best Use of Bullet Points", it needs to go to Stephen Colbert and his team at "The Colbert Report" for their regular segment "The Word." If you haven't seen this masterful use of bullet points in a presentation, you must visit the Comedy Central website right away.
It's highly entertaining. It's Friday. It's under three minutes. Go for it. Watch the video online. And learn how to use PowerPoint bullet points more effectively.
Mind you, this visit to Comedy Central is work-related. You can actually use Mr. Colbert's technique in a business presentation. I first used this technique myself over 10 years ago in an annual sales meeting...although nowhere near as effectively as Mr. Colbert and his production team!
The technique is quite simple. As the presenter speaks, a merry prankster "behind-the-scenes" either refutes or wisecracks about the speaker's commentary -- and usually in bullet point format.Of course, the speaker is in on the prank. And the audience knows this, too. Aside from being funny and self-deprecating, it also builds a sense of camaraderie between the presenter, the production people, and the audience. You're all in this together, y'see....
One of the reasons we (the show producers) decided to use this technique ten years ago was because the speaker was talking about a dry, technical subject that was not going well in rehearsal. And no amount of speech coaching was helping to transform dry Mr. Monotone into a compelling speaker within a week's time frame.
We showed him slides of what we recommended doing "behind-his-back" as he spoke, and he dead-panned, "Yeah. That would be funny. OK. Do it."
Mr. Monotone never wavered in his delivery as we presented bullet points and thought balloons over his head as he spoke. The audience responded warmly: laughter and applause at exactly the right moments.
And after 2 days of corporate PowerPoint presentations and executive speeches, the results were in: Mr. Monotone amazingly won the highest evaluation for "best presentation".
Believe me: it wasn't his speech or his delivery.
It was his bullet points. ¶ 4/21/2006 10:52:00 AM
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