Miles Davis’s album, Kind of Blue, is regarded as one of the most influential jazz albums of all time.   Its music offers lessons for musicians of all genres, and its techniques offer interesting parallels and lessons for presenters.

Here are three jazz elements that apply to presentations:

1. Improvisation – Miles Davis called for almost no rehearsals before recording Kind of Blue.   He provided the other musicians only sketches of the scales and chords for each song and then encouraged everyone to improvise.

In presentations, we presenters often need to improvise when we see that our planned content or approach doesn’t jibe with the audience.

How?  Feed off audience reactions and questions to adapt content, and be willing to explore important tangents, even though they don’t fit into your prepared presentation.  (Note: Bag the trivial tangents.)

Also, when faced with presenting the same content several times to multiple audiences, find stories from current events that apply to your content to keep your presentation fresh for both you and your audience.

2. Tension and release – What makes jazz complex and interesting is playing notes and chords that create dissonance—or jarring, sometimes off-key sounds—before returning to satisfying notes and melodies.  Moving the crowd through the tension makes the melodies that much more enjoyable.

Presentations work the same way.

How?  Highlight business risks and issues as much as solutions and outcomes.  Like it or not, our brains respond more powerfully to the negative than the positive.  (Think political advertising.)  So a presentation will be more persuasive if it takes the audience on a journey from the consequences of not acting, to the benefits of following your proposed plan.

3. Emotional appeal – Kind of Blue influenced musicians of all genres, partly because of the techniques and intricacies of each song, but also because of how the sounds struck at their souls.

A presentation should tap into the audience’s reason, but equally important is tapping into its emotion.  The information presented may be sound and factual, but unless the audience is inspired to action, what is the point of presenting?

How do we appeal to emotions?  First, start strong and finish strong.  Don’t open your presentation with your agenda and housekeeping items.  Instead, jump straight into a stirring story or statement that provokes your audience’s beliefs, fears, or opinions.  Once you’ve captured your listeners’ attention, you can then present your agenda.

Finish your presentation with a bang, not a whimper.  Too many presenters flounder at the end with, “Thank you, do you have any questions?”  As you close, infect your audience with your enthusiasm.  Don’t let your listeners think you are relieved that your presentation is over; show them you are energized.

If using PowerPoint or Keynote, use visuals that elicit an emotional response from the audience.  We’re officially tone-deaf to boring slides that feature the same tired visuals and monotonous bullets.  These days our brains need a higher voltage to be drawn away from the routine.  Get creative in finding visuals that are exaggerated, mysterious, incongruous, or striking.  Look for authenticity in visuals over staged stock photos.

These techniques were successful for Miles Davis, and they can be for you too.  Of course, Kind of Blue wasn’t his first album, and he didn’t master these skills overnight.  But in working at these presentation skills, you may just find that you have a presentation in the future that is critically acclaimed—by your boss.   And your influence on the company will be felt for years to come.

If you are interested in information on presentation-skills training for your team, click here.

Test your daily writing for these:

1. Positive wording:  Attitude, attitude, attitude.  Doesn’t it make a big difference? We all enjoy working with people who come at a problem with a constructive approach—those who take time to consider all possible solutions.  These people’s attitudes are reflected in their language:

• “We could look at it one of two ways.”
• “I have another idea for how to approach that.”
• “Have you tried this process?”
• “Let’s adapt that procedure to this situation.”
• “Let’s contact Jane for her ideas on that. She’s an expert in this area.”
• “Here’s what we can do going forward.”
• “How can we make this right?”
• “We can fix that!”
• “Have you considered this option?”

2. Logical organization:  With every message you send, follow a format that works for you, or take a minute to consider this question:

How could I organize this message in such a way that it achieves R&R—Readability, thus Retention?

Try the PAPER format for much of your writing:

Purpose for writing

Action you plan to take or want the reader to take

Particulars—Why, who, what, when, where, how, how much, and so what?

Evidence—Information, often in the form of an appendix or attachment, that backs up your conclusions

Request for response (next step?)

3. Clear wording:  Reread your messages aloud to check for clarity. Don’t edit as you go, but circle or highlight awkward sentences, transitions, and phrases.  When finished, go back for your rewrite.

When saying each word, you will also notice tone, missing words, and misspelled words. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman and many other professional writers find reading aloud their best editing technique.

Apply these three items as the foundation for your writing, and then build upon them throughout 2012.

I recently had a chance to review your work and what I found shocked me.

Of course, I don’t know you from Adam, but did I get your attention? Are you curious to know what shocked me?

An opening line that draws in your readers is the best way to generate interest in your writing. In journalism, it’s called the lead, and it’s the most important sentence of the story. A lead grabs your readers, plays on their curiosity, and motivates them to read further.

John McPhee, a prominent author and journalist, wrote in a recent edition of The Wall Street Journal that “A lead is a promise. It promises that the piece of writing is going to be like this. If it is not going to be so, don’t use the lead. A lead is good not because it dances, fires cannons or whistles like a train, but because it is absolute to what follows.”

The logic of a lead applies to business and technical writing, too.  A manager swamped by data sheets and engineering proposals is likely to be drawn in by the one with the most engaging opening sentence.

Given the importance of its task, the opening sentence can be difficult to craft. If it’s too dry, too clever, or too cute, your reader might move on.

What’s the key to writing an effective opening sentence? The answer is elusive, as different types may work better in different situations, and different writers will tackle the same problem with different approaches. But for starters, here are five tips:

• Know your audience – Is your communication for a general audience or a specialized one? A company-wide report will likely start differently compared with one written for the engineering department.

• Don’t start naming your children after the first date – A good lead will typically hint at your subject material without giving away the entirety of what you have to say. It’s a way to whet your reader’s appetite with the who, why, and where without giving the reader a reason to skip the rest of your document.

• Be brief – Short and punchy is always more effective than a lengthy explanation. You can delve into details deeper in your piece.

• Experiment - Try writing several different leads, and then share them with colleagues to get feedback.

• Go easy on the puns or wit – You may set the wrong tone for your document or turn off those readers who don’t understand your attempts at humor. The best lead hits the ball straight down the middle.

Below is an example of a lackluster first sentence from an actual product data sheet. (The company name has been changed to protect the guilty!)

Acme Security’s XX Series provides maximum protection against even the most malicious Internet security threats while reducing the complexity of security management.

Pretty bland, right? Did you start spacing out halfway through it?

What if we re-wrote it by starting with a bold but believable assertion?

The Internet is awash in malicious security threats. But Acme Security’s XX Series has tightened the noose around those threats while simplifying security management.

How about this one from another data sheet?

The sluggish economy has forced midsized semiconductor and component manufacturers to take a hard look at costs.

Not bad.  It’s short, strong, and clear.  If I were a midsized manufacturer of semiconductors, I’d be interested in reading further.

The premise is simple: Time is a limited resource. In a world where your target audience is continually bombarded with emails, reports, and various other documents, readers have only minutes to scan these items as they move across their desk. To engage people for any longer, you have to snap them to attention.  And you do this by crafting a well-written opening sentence.

By Alison Rosen

I’m one of those weirdos who actually enjoys public speaking, so I was surprised, early this summer, when the thought of giving a toast at my sister’s wedding began to fill me with dread. It wasn’t so much that I had to stand up in front of people and talk—I’ve been doing variations of that sort of thing on TV, on the radio, on podcasts, in front of strangers, in front of stranger’s pets, for years—it’s that I wasn’t sure what to say.

My sister is younger than I am and early on I decided I’d talk about how I had a good run being the older sister, but somehow the tables had turned and I found myself looking up to her and learning from her. Specifically what she taught me was how to find and recognize a soul mate.

But as the wedding grew closer I began to fear my toast was cliché and predictable. “I bet every older sister gives this toast!” I whined to a friend who’d stopped listening. You see, I didn’t just want to give a good toast. I wanted to give The Best Toast Ever Delivered In The History of Sisters Giving Toasts at Weddings. Plus, to my dismay, I learned at the rehearsal dinner that my sister’s and her husband’s school and work friends had a cornucopia of day-to-day anecdotes to draw on. How was I to compete with stories of my sister improvising a bumblebee Halloween costume while abroad in Italy, or her and her husband’s shared love of the zoo? I didn’t know they loved the zoo. I assumed they were merely lukewarm on the zoo. I was a fraud.

Have you ever opened an email to realize you need to block out half your day to get through it? How many of us have opened one of these monsters and scrolled to the end before even beginning to read it, just to mentally prepare ourselves?

Email has revolutionized the workplace, but like all communication, it’s only effective if it gets and maintains our attention.  And in an information-fueled world, that can be hard to do.

Start by considering rule number one: The shorter, the better.  Emails that are too long are too easy to tune out.

However, that doesn’t mean you should be overly brief. A cryptic email has a better chance of confusing things rather than clearing them up.

Like Goldilocks in “The Three Bears,” you want your porridge, and your email, to be just right.

Clear Thinking

The key to writing emails that are just right is to ask yourself two questions:

• What is the key point I want to make?
• What do I want the reader to do?

Too often, we don’t take the time to consider these questions. Email is so convenient that we dash off the first things that come to mind and hit the Send button, all in a misguided sense of efficiency.  But that “stream-of-consciousness” mentality can lead to emails that wander or just don’t make sense.

Additionally, think about how you want to come across. Do you want to sound official, or would you prefer a conversational tone?

When you have your answers, start drafting. Re-read what you write, often. You’ll likely find yourself cutting things more than adding them.

Also, make sure you aren’t repeating yourself. Are you saying the same thing more than once, but differently, hoping that will drive home a point?

In the following examples, which makes the case?

1. We need to cut costs in the third quarter to improve profitability. Paring costs will help the bottom line and help the company have a stronger third quarter. If we cut costs, our profits will grow.
2. We need to cut costs in the third quarter to improve profitability.

The second example is sufficient. Think like drill sergeants: Say something forcefully once to get results.

When you think you are done drafting your email, re-read it again.

If you can pull off what you need to say in a few sentences, bravo.

If you need more than a few sentences to make an argument or to cite examples, fine.   But don’t go overboard. In such instances, a good rule of thumb is to keep your email to three to five paragraphs. Anything longer and you risk losing your reader’s attention.

If you find you have more to say, tell your readers you are happy to provide examples or more of your thoughts in a follow-up conversation should they express an interest.

Clear Formatting

To help readers grasp your points more easily, consider using headings to categorize ideas. Also, consider using lists to efficiently summarize items.

Lastly, before hitting Send, ask yourself if your email will produce the desired result. Will it prompt action? Or will the email sit in your reader’s inbox like a bowl of cold porridge?

Occum’s Razor, loosely interpreted, is a principle stating that the simplest method is often the best.  Philosopher William of Ockham surely would have approved of clustering then.

Clustering, believed to have started in Roman times, is a technique that helps create a hierarchy of ideas around a central purpose or problem.  Circa 75 BC, Cicero etched clusters for his speeches on clay tablets.  Today, third graders mark up clusters in black-and-white composition notebooks for planning stories, and IT managers use iBlueSky mind-mapping software to develop clusters of ideas for project plans.  Clustering has stood the test of time and proved effective in many applications.

You have surely heard of clustering before, maybe even practiced it, but do you use it?

Our minds naturally cluster

In his book, Brain Bugs, Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano explains that “the human brain stores factual knowledge about the world in a relational manner.  That is, an item is stored in relation to other items…and retrieval [of knowledge] is a contagious process.”

In other words, our mind doesn’t process ideas in a straight line, which is what we traditionally do when writing a document or creating a plan.  Instead, the brain accesses information based on what each idea is associated with: our minds naturally cluster.  (Take note when you look at the clustering diagram below—it even looks like a brain.)

So we think of ideas and our minds jump to thoughts that are linked to those ideas.   Sounds too simple, right?  The process is that simple, which is exactly why it is effective.

Choose your own adventure

Clustering can be as simple as tearing a piece of paper out of a notebook, jotting down a problem that needs solving in the middle of the page, and branching off with all possible solutions.  To get fancy, use a white board with colored dry-erase pens.  To impress your co-workers, project one of the many clustering software applications onto a screen.  (Show-off!)

Pick your poison, but the process and outcome will generally be the same.

Again, begin by stating your purpose or problem in a center circle.  Here’s an example of my purpose for this article:

Next, on your own or in a group, branch out from the center circle with the main items you need to consider.  See the example:

After developing your main ideas, consider the W & H questions for each branch: why, who, what, when, where, and how.  These questions help the details flow.   Check out how I expanded my clustering:

While clustering, write everything down that you think of.  Don’t worry about the value or location of ideas.  Once you’ve exhausted your thoughts, rearrange branches to group the information more precisely.

Finally, challenge the clustering for completeness (or for irrelevant information), and move on to your next step, whether that step be writing a document, creating a product plan, or crafting a presentation.

The time that clustering takes varies, but just five minutes of clustering for a document saves time when you start writing and revising.

By the way, clustering also works well for taking notes during a meeting or conference call.  Furthermore, if your boss asks you to give a presentation on the fly, jot down a few clusters to get organized and create your notes.

Create order out of chaos

Clustering is easy to start and quick to finish.  It maintains focus on content only: addressing the problem or purpose at hand—not on grammar and punctuation if writing a document, or public speaking and room set-up if creating a presentation.

The results are categorized clusters of information, which in turn allow your writing or presentation to convey organized information to the audience.

To paraphrase Buonomano, not only do we retrieve information from our brain in an associative way, but we learn and retain information in that way too.  Hence, if you present information to your audience in tight categories, your audience more easily processes the information and is more likely to retain it.

Other benefits to clustering include the ability to organize complex information, come up with creative ideas, get a bird’s eye view of overall content, or to produce a plan for writing a strategy, presentation, or document.

We are asked to process overwhelming amounts of information daily while we attend meetings, read emails and reports, and join conference calls.  Without a clear way to capture and organize our information, we sometimes contribute nothing but noise.  When we receive unorganized information, we receive noise.

German writer Wolfgang von Goethe said, “If any man wishes to write in a clear style, let him first be clear in thoughts.”  Clustering provides order to your thinking and development of ideas.

Try it at least once today.

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By Andrew Moore

In a famous scene from the Steve Martin remake of “Father of the Bride,” Martin’s character heads to the supermarket in a huff, tasked by his wife to buy something for dinner. Frustrated that hot dogs come in packages of eight and buns in packages of 12, Martin begins opening the bun packages and ripping out the extra buns, telling a stunned clerk that he is removing the “superfluous” buns because he’s tired of being had.

Of course, superfluous means extra, and in the movie, the line gets great laughs, partly because Martin’s character enunciates it for great effect, and partly because it’s one of those words that people sometimes use to make themselves sound smarter.

The English language has an enormous vocabulary seemingly capable of capturing every shade of nuance. But with it comes hazards. In the right context, superfluous can be a good choice. But in business, when composing an email or writing a report, use extra instead.

In other words, don’t bog down your business communication with big words if a more concise substitute is available. Consider, for example, using buy instead of purchase, start instead of commence, or grow instead of cultivate.

Smaller words are generally easier to read, and your communications are better understood. Don’t worry if your sentences sound too simple or too short. Brevity is good for business. Leave the long words for literature.

Take the following two sentences. Which one is easier to read?

1.  The team utilized its training and was able to accelerate its growth strategy, thereby differentiating itself from its competitors.

2.  The team used its training and sped up its growth strategy, outpacing its competitors.

A good way to check your vocabulary choices is to review what you’ve written. Read it aloud. Are there words you stumble on, or don’t quite understand what they mean? If so, replace them. You don’t want people scrambling for a dictionary with each email you send.

Also, keep in mind that most Latin loan words often have a shorter English counterpart, such as imbibe vs. drink, incline vs. lean, or transport vs. carry.

Lastly, don’t over do it. While Steve Martin’s character scored points for using superfluous in a sentence, it ultimately landed him in jail. You want people to understand you, and the best way to do that is to use common language and everyday words.

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Access list of Alternatives for Forty Overused Words and Phrases in business writing.

Although the mountains are nowhere in sight, my view is of a driveway, and my workspace was built not from logs but concrete, I still spend significant time typing emails and documents on my computer.  Did you know that a conservative estimate shows the average employee in the average industry writing 30 percent of his or her day?  Include me as average on all counts.  Breaking that number out equates to being firmly planted in a seat typing away for a day and a half each week, ten days a month, and 120 days per year.

The question is, what is most effective when it comes to all this business writing? In terms of structure, it’s certainly not writing lengthy sentences in block-style paragraphs, as with what I’ve used to this point.  A more effective structure is closer to what follows.

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General’s Chicken, Please

For effective business writing, lose the long-winded, overly wordy paragraphs.  In fact, you may drop many paragraphs altogether.  Instead, convert them to lists.  Why? Lists accomplish the following:

• Increase accessibility of your information
• Decrease your need to craft sentences that flow together
• Improve your audience’s retention of your ideas

Lists also help present content to your audience in small chunks.  Just as the chef in a Chinese restaurant chops up your meats and veggies for you, you need to chop up your content into bite-sized, easily digestible pieces for the audience.

Additional techniques for slicing and dicing writing include the following:

• Using headings and sub-headings
• Adding plenty of white space
• Moving data into tables and charts
• Using visuals
• Limiting paragraph length to eight lines
• Limiting sentence length to two and a half lines (average of 17 words)

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This ain’t Tom Clancy

We read books, newspapers, and magazines because we want to.  We read business documents because we have to.

Structuring business content with the techniques above helps our audience scan, not read, our documents.   This greatly helps those busy businesspeople who receive 30-40 emails and a tall stack of reports each day.  Save them the burden of burrowing through all that text by structuring your document so that the most important actions or information leap off the page.

To fulfill your artistic need for crafting beautiful, fluid prose, get started on that novel.  Otherwise, use the Chinese-chef approach to writing.

So what on Planet Alderaan does Star Wars have to do with presentations?

Let me explain.  Star Wars follows a quintessential three-act structure.  In fact, not just Star Wars, but many movies, plays, and books progress this way.  So too should your next presentation.  Why?  Because a three-act structure provides an organized and engaging way to tell a story.  And a presentation is, after all, a story.

What is a three-act structure?

In a three-act structure, a story unfolds with a clear beginning (Act I), middle (Act II), and end (Act III).  While the acts are distinct, Act I builds into Act II, and Act II into Act III.   Furthermore, between each act is a turning point.  Turning points provide closure for an act and transition the audience to the next one.

Scenes in Act I orient the audience to the setting, the protagonist, and a disruption.  (A story wouldn’t be interesting if there weren’t a disruption to produce drama.)  These three components create what is called the beginning equilibrium.  Once the beginning equilibrium is established, Act I finishes with a turning point, which is usually a decision, or change, made by the protagonist.

Act II is where the rubber meets the road (or where the audience experiences the main events).  Act II uses multiple scenes to describe how the protagonist grows and how the plot thickens to ultimately build to a conclusion.  This act also ends with a turning point that leads the audience to Act III, the big finish.

Act III is the culmination of the first two acts and creates a new ending equilibrium.  In other words, if the story started in one place with a setting and protagonist, it ends in another place with a new setting and changed protagonist.

How does the three-act structure apply to Star Wars and presentations?

In Star Wars, Luke is clearly the protagonist, and the movie opens with scenes related to his life on his home planet, Tatooine.  The disruption occurs when Luke one day returns home to find his family murdered and his farm burned to the ground.

For a presentation, the setting, protagonist, and disruption work similarly.  A business presentation may open with the current state of the business (setting), a decision that the audience (protagonist) needs to make, for example, regarding the development of a new product, and the threat from competitors if the business doesn’t expand its product line (disruption).

Remember, this first act in the presentation creates the beginning equilibrium.  The goal of the remaining acts is to bring the audience to a new, positive ending equilibrium.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The turning point from Act I to Act II in Star Wars is Luke making a decision to leave his home planet to follow Obi-wan Kenobi and fight for the rebellion.  Luke, in Act II, meets Han Solo, studies the ways of the Force, and saves Princess Leia.  The act ends when Luke and his cohorts escape from the Death Star.

The turning point for the audience in the business presentation is knowing that they have to make a choice on whether to proceed with the new product.  Act II provides the information or justification to allow the audience to make an informed decision.  In the act the audience may learn the overview of the product development plan, marketing plan, and initial sales projections.

Finally we come to Act III, the climax.

In Act III, the threat of annihilation from the Death Star, the Imperial superweapon, still exists.  Therefore, with a squadron of fighters, Luke returns to battle and faces the Death Star once and for all.  Aided by his newly acquired Jedi powers and use of the Force, Luke destroys the Death Star and ends a key chapter for the rebellion. A new ending equilibrium is thus created.

Act III of the business presentation now begins.

The turning point to Act III is to revisit the disruption—the threat from competitors—and to summarize the key points that make the case for the new product.  To help the audience make the decision, the role of the presenter, or storyteller, is to describe the new business equilibrium using both reason and emotion.  The presenter ties up the presentation with a dramatic ending describing the benefits of developing the new product and its impact on the future state of the business.

If you’re successful in using this three-act structure, as Star Wars was, you will be successful in creating an organized, engaging, and persuasive presentation.  You may not be talking about lightsabers and Death Stars, but you will tell a compelling story all the same.

Furthermore, after flipping through the 19-page pamphlet, I realized that the tips my grandfather learned so long ago are nearly identical to what I teach today.

Here’s what the preface in the pamphlet had to say:

Poor meetings, like accidents, don’t just happen.  They are caused, but not, in most cases, by the indifference, or stupidity, or pigheadedness of their audiences.  Poor meetings are generally what they are because they are just ‘other meetings’ to those responsible for their planning.

Effective meetings, on the other hand, are effective because they were planned as having unique situations calling for individual treatment.

What?  I made that same point in a workshop a few weeks ago.  In fact, the part about meetings “having unique situations calling for individual treatment” is an underlying principle for each module that I train.

Here’s the deal:  The challenges and solutions of meeting facilitation were the same in 1958 as they are today, save for a couple of minor differences:  I type up my meeting agendas on my shiny new MacBook Pro using Microsoft Word; my grandfather and his colleagues typed up their agendas on shiny new powder-blue Royal Futura 800-model typewriters.  (Gotta love the Futura part.)  I often log in to a meeting via Gotomeeting or Webex from my home office in my pajamas; Granddad arrived at meetings in polished boardrooms dressed in smart suits and skinny ties.

But, honestly, those items are about the extent of the differences.

So let’s take a look at three techniques from then and now to help you run an effective meeting:

1. Identify the purpose and desired outcomes in your pre-meeting email and agenda to attendees. To identify the purpose of the meeting, answer the question “Why are we meeting?”  To discover the desired outcomes, answer the question “What are we going to walk out the door with?”  Your desired outcomes ensure that you achieve tangible results.
2. Plan the content and process. We often plan the content of a meeting by throwing a few items for discussion onto the agenda.  But don’t stop your planning there.  You should also plan the process of the meeting, laying out how the items will be discussed and how consensus will be achieved.  Planning the process helps you keep the discussion on track, ensures everyone’s involvement, and moves the group toward your desired outcomes.
3. Get feedback. You can ask a participant to provide you feedback after the meeting, or you can hand out a short feedback form for everyone to fill out anonymously.  You’ll find out which parts of the content and process worked and which parts didn’t.  The feedback will be invaluable to helping you improve your planning for your next meeting.  (Download an evaluation form here.)

So there’s a start for you.  To get additional techniques and practice in facilitating effective meetings, you can either take my workshop or get in your time machine and set the dial to 1958.  Do whatever is most convenient for you.

If you decide on my workshop, rest assured that there is one major innovation that sets it apart:  it isn’t called Making Meetings Effective, but Making Meetings Matter.  Nice 2010 ring to it, don’t you think?