Start with the End: Why Your First Slide Should Be Your Last

Have you ever been in a presentation that felt like it went nowhere? The speaker starts with a generic title, rambles on for a while, and then throws in a bunch of cluttered agenda slides. You’re left wondering, “What’s the point?”

This traditional way of presenting often doesn’t grab the audience’s attention or make them want to take action. Why? Because it doesn’t have a clear focus or a compelling call to action from the start.

So what’s the better way to prepare your presentation?

Besides understanding the audiences’ profiles and aims, and researching the topics, I’ll start my slide presentation from the very last slide. Remember, the end goal should always be in mind.

Think of the last slide of the presentation – the one that sums up the main points or tells people what you want them to do – as your guiding light. It should be the first slide you make.

Here’s why:

  • You’ll Know What You Want: Writing your final slide first forces you to figure out exactly what you want your audience to take away from your presentation. What do you want them to remember?
  • You’ll Stay Focused: With a clear goal, every other slide becomes a piece of the puzzle, carefully designed to support your final message. No more unnecessary fluff!
  • You’ll Make a Bigger Impact: By repeating your final slide throughout your presentation, you make sure your audience remembers the key points.

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Figure Out What You Want Them to Do: What action do you want your audience to take?
  2. Make Your Final Slide: Summarize the main points and clearly state your call to action.
  3. Work Backwards: Make the rest of your slides logically lead up to your final slide.

This way, your presentation will be focused, impactful, and drive the results you want. Say goodbye to boring presentations and hello to presentations that make a difference!

#presentationskills #publicspeaking #storytelling #businesstips #startwiththeendinmind

Be your own career architect

Made a career talk to a group of university students recently and some of the key ideas interested them a lot (e.g. how to build their personal branding on the web). On the other hand, not many of them asked follow-up questions. It’s not a big surprise though, as most of the youngsters nowadays simply don’t care about asking questions, instead they care about their “images” – i.e. they think asking question is stupid and they don’t want to look stupid. They also somehow believe they can find all the answers to all the questions on earth from their peers and Google …

It reminds me one phrase from Chinese about the word “Knowledge” –

Knowledge in Chinese

This phrase composed of two Chinese characters … basically, the first character means “learn”, and the second character means “ask”. In essence, “Knowledge” in Chinese is “Learn to ask”. So … when will our students learn / know how to ask ?

Update 1: (2010-July-16) The slide is just featured as one of the slidedecks in Slideshare.com’s career channel !!

Anyway, here is the slidedeck …


Cloud Computing – Benefits and Risks

Just finished a presentation in the CIO Asia 2010 conference about Cloud Computing. My presentation focuses on the business benefits and risks of implementing Cloud Computing for an organization.

Here is the slide deck:

Government services in the 2.0 era

There are many people claimed that they are experts in Web 2.0 and e-Government. Seriously, not many of them can really explain the details of the two concepts, let alone how to link the two together … But here is one from Tara Hunt – great presentation and lots of details.

“Government Next”

Enjoy.