Esok nak kena buat presentation, hari ni baru nak start prepare. Jangan la macam tu. When you have a presentation to do, make sure you start preparation early. Give yourself the opportunity of clarity of thinking. Kalau last minute, memang kelam-kabut la.
I normally start my planning with what is the one key takeaway message that I want the audience to remember. For the talk that I did last Saturday for the Medic Footprints Malaysia summit, My one key takeaway message is that “Be your own CEO” meaning take charge of your career.
I then will choose 3 other supporting messages that I hope the audience can remember. It’s ok if they don’t remember these 3 supporting messages because my focus is the one key message. For the talk last saturday my 3 supporting messages were ‘Do what you love’, ‘Network, network, network’ and ‘Be courageous’
Once I have the one key message and 3 supporting messages, that’s when I start to write my presentation and fill it up with the stories that I want to tell. I choose what is the ‘Mind Grenade’ that I want to use to open the presentation. For this talk, I chose to open the presentation talking about living in the middle of Manhattan, ten minutes walk from Times Square to inspire them to aim high! Once I am happy with what I have written I practice one time to see whether it fits the time allocated to me.
Then I start working on the slides, choosing photos that will illustrate my points. The slides are really just for supporting the presentation. At the talk last week, I was so engrossed in delivering my presentation that I kept forgetting to move the slides. It happened because I was not dependent on my slides. I knew exactly what I was going to say because I have been practising it for so many times that I already memorised my whole presentation.
So that’s it, a kind of step by step of how I plan and write my presentation.
