Three Questions to Ask Before Your Team Opens PowerPoint

Last week I shared the five questions I ask instead of rewriting someone's deck. They come from AOREN, the framework I use to plan every presentation.

If you only have time for one of them, make it the first. Who is the audience?

It sounds obvious. Everyone thinks they know who they're presenting to. But when I ask technical people that question, the answer is usually "the customer" or "the leadership team". That's a group, not a person. And a group doesn't make decisions. The people in it do, and each of them wants something different.

Ten directors and the corporate deck

I worked with a team of ten directors whose job was to get in front of customers and win work. They were getting feedback that they didn't have the presence in the room, and it was costing them deals.

They had a standard deck they all used. It was all about their company: who they are, what they've done, how good they are. Corporate spiel.

During the program, they worked out for themselves that the deck wasn't wrong. It just wasn't about the customer. So they went back and rewrote the base material together, and started planning properly before each meeting. Their leader saw the difference straight away: people preparing more, and a completely different attitude when they presented.

Name the person first

Before the three questions, get specific. Not "the customer", but the actual people who'll be in the room. If you know their names, use them. If you don't, describe them: the finance director, the head of security, the engineer who'll have to run it.

Then, for each one, ask:

1. What's hurting them right now? Their pain on this topic, in their words, not yours. A security lead worried about an audit hears your pitch very differently from a finance director worried about a budget overrun.
2. Why does it matter now? Something has made this a priority this quarter and not last year. If your team can't say what, the audience will feel like they're being sold to.
3. What does perfect look like for them? If this went brilliantly, what would be different in six months? That picture is what your presentation needs to point at.

The more detail in the answers, the more relevant the presentation becomes. And relevance is what earns attention from someone senior.

How to use them with your team

When someone on your team brings you a deck, or better still before they start one, ask them these three questions. Don't answer them yourself. Let them work it out.

You'll often find the slide count drops. When people know exactly who they're talking to, they stop including everything just in case.

If you're the one presenting and nobody's asking you these, ask yourself. Write the answers down before you open PowerPoint. It doesn't take long, and it changes the whole deck.

Go deeper on coaching your team

On Tuesday 24 November at 12:30 UK I'm running a free 45-minute online masterclass on Teams for leaders of technical teams: Coaching Your Team's Technical Storytelling. We'll start with AOREN, then how to connect through story, then a coaching process with the questions that help your team improve without you rewriting their slides.

If you lead a technical team, you can register here. If you're investing in yourself, find the right program for you here.

Ben.