Stephen Covey, in his groundbreaking 1989 bestseller The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Free Press), urges readers to begin with the end in mind (Habit 2). Speech coach Jim Dawson brought this to mind recently as we discussed techniques used to conceive and create an effective presentation. It seems simple: to know where you want to be at the end of the presentation — what you want to deliver. But so often a speaker’s destination is vague and broad. The speech wanders aimlessly along an unspecified path and ends weakly.
Spend time at the very beginning of the conception process to carefully define exactly where and how you want to end. What do you want the audience to take away? Can you express it in less that 20 words? Less than 12? What do you want them to remember a week later? Make it short, powerful and memorable. Then go back and work on the beginning and middle.
Use that carefully defined goal as a yardstick to measure everything against as you write your speech and then as you create and edit each slide.
