Improve your written presentation skills

I have always described Nancy Duarte as the global ‘Mrs PowerPoint’ and the go to person on visual communication and storytelling. She gets the value of PowerPoint and has mastered it’s use – setting global standards for best practice.

Communication has changed

However communication has changed – we don’t have time for detailed long form business communication. We tend to review documents on our tablets or phones. We prefer shorter more visual communication to disseminate information that clearly gets everybody on the same page quickly – ideally pre meeting to encourage dialogue.  

The PowerPoint or equivalent is still the go to software for this in business. The problem with this is – documents designed to inform get presented and presentations get used as the report. This does not work well!

People seem to forget the PowerPoint is there to support the presentation – it is not the presentation and maybe it isn’t even needed.

Her business, Duarte offer workshops but the most cost effective way to initially learn from them is through their books. This includes Slide Ology, Resonate and Illuminate. More recently they have published really useful guides on communicating data – Duarte DataStory and an e-book on presenting virtually.

Introducing Slidedocs

However, Nancy recognised the information versus presentation dilemma above a decade ago and introduced the idea of Slidedocs as a solution. Slidedocs are visual documents developed in presentation software that are intended to be read and referenced instead of projected. The result is a medium that can be read more quickly than a usual document and replace or support a presentation. Duarte have an e Course to buy but your first step should be to download the free Slidedocs guide – sign up on this page.

I have spread the message on this great FREE resource from Duarte regularly but overall the message does not seem to have got through. The introduction of more data analytics has worsened our over reliance on PowerPoint. So if you have not seen the resource, go take a look it might just revitalise your Zoom meetings with quality conversations!

Slidedocs are a really powerful way to deliver your message. I have use them for pre and post meeting summaries to engage the audience, proposals, reports and ideas books . It is a great discipline to develop where you clearly discern what information goes in the communication versus the presentation. It is more professional, saves time, it helps you sell your ideas better and get decisions made more quickly.

The Slidedoc Guide also teaches you about writing well, designing documents, getting the visual navigation system right and how to incorporate data and diagrams.

You can view it and download it for free by going to Duarte and you get a couple of predesigned templates to help you get started too.

This is one of Nancy’s gifts to the world because it is an idea worth sharing – no catches – go take a peek!