Job Inside

So, you want to know the Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs? Simple, really.

First of all, you only give four presentations a year, at “Apple Events.”

You do this in a packed hall of Apple acolytes, and members of the world’s press who will give you a standing ovation for just showing up after being sick. They will all hang on your every word.

You hand out the design details to slide producing companies. Have someone else actually advance the slides.

You try to give the impression that Apple is anything but a marketing company masquerading as a tech company.

You have a bunch of monitors facing you across the front of the stage, so you can see both what’s on screen and your notes, without looking away.

You run the presentation as a sales pitch, with a minimum of detail.

As CEO, you are acutely conscious of saying anything that could lead to class action suits.

So, is this sounding like the presentations you give? Me neither, and basing this book on the way one famous individual presents is pointless. You might as well tell the Presentation Secrets of U.S. Presidents. What the famous have to look out for is something wildly different than your presentation of the Third Quarter Sales Figures for the North East Region.

Much of the information here is superfluous. If you’re trying to sell something with your presentation, it’s fine. However, there’s little real advice for any other kind of presentation. If you’re a school student or a pastor, a trial lawyer or a company pension fund administrator, you have to work for your audience.

So why two stars? That’s because the book points out some ideas that are often overlooked. It makes sense to limit your “take-home messages” to three. Many presentations blind you with dozens of facts without telling you which are important.

Another point is to control your presentation. Lead into and out of different ideas, and make it clear if the presentation suddenly takes a turn to become more technical. There are plenty of ways we do this in normal conversation, and you will help your audience considerably if you adopt this method and not the “Here are the facts, sort them out for yourself” approach.

Unfortunately, this book ends with the most useless advice given to presenters – “Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.” That means you spend endless hours trying to remember the words, and the ideas gradually become meaningless. Then you have to go out trying to remember whether you were supposed to start with “I’m happy to be here today,” or “It’s good to see all of you here.”

Instead, rehearse the Ideas. When you know that you don’t have to recall your words, you can get worked up – enthusiastic, even – in the presentation. How often have you seen people mumble their way nervously through presentations? They seem obsessed with the need to say all the right words in the right places.

Presentations have many different audiences needing many different messages to be effective. Let Steve Jobs smarmily introduce his overpriced products in his way, and use the best way for yourself.

And if you think that Steve Jobs is the master of conflicting messages, remember that this book calls him the Tiger Woods of business. Oops!

EDIT – Here’s an example of how NOT to do it.

In the launch of the iPad, Steve Jobs showed a slide of how much the iPad will cost. It is a classic of non-presentation design in a presentation.

You’ll find this on Gizmodo’s site. It shows a chart of six items (Three memory sizes, and with or without 3G).

This has all gridlines in place. Hello, with only six items you rarely need gridlines, and just about no chart needs lines separating it from the exterior world. So why keep them?

Rating: 2 / 5

How many iPods do you own?

I ordered the first Windows-compatible model on launch day. I had to wait until then because I didn’t have a working Mac at the time; now I have two of them. Since then, I’ve accumulated new iPods at the rate of roughly one a year. Some day soon I’ll be able to open a small museum featuring all of them and the three inch thick PowerBook that I used in grad school (it came with a whopping 32 Mb hard drive).

Am I a prodigal gadget geek? A spendthrift music maven. Nah. I blame the presentation skills of Steve Jobs.

You can’t get very far studying current ideas about presentations and public speaking without the example of Steve Jobs popping up over and over again. And for good reason– he excels at selling us stuff. Jobs is one of the few CEOs of a large corporation who is a household name and whose presentation skills clearly add value to his company. His showmanship at Apple’s product launches generate buzz and demand– if not lust– for Apple’s products. Clearly my expanding collection of superseded iPods proves that I’m not immune. And when Jobs was ill there was a great deal of concern about whether Apple would be able to generate anything close to that excitement without him and whether the company would be mortally wounded by his absence at these events. His value to Apple is so great that the SEC opened an investigation into whether shareholders had been harmed because Jobs’ illness had been downplayed. If he wasn’t around to convince us we had to have stuff that we never knew we needed, who would?

So it isn’t surprising that many of the leading presentation experts focus on Jobs as a clear example of how strong presentations can make a real impact. What has amazed me is how many of these writer (Gar Reynolds, Presentation Zen; Guy Kawasaki, all kinds of great books) have actually worked with Apple or on Steve Jobs’ presentations. It seems that Apple isn’t just a place where they create great presentations but also a crucible of thought on what it takes to make a presentation great.

Now Carmine Gallo has written The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs with the idea of pulling back the curtain on Jobs’ big presentations to show us how they are put together and some techniques that we can borrow to improve our own talks. Probably the most important thing that Gallo reveals is how much work actually goes into crafting one of Jobs’ presentations. Despite the fact that the final results are persuasive, polished, and entertaining, Steve Jobs is not a natural presenter who just gets up in front of an audience and speaks off the top of his head. Instead, he relies on a whole team of professionals who spend weeks helping him write, design and rehearse every one of his talks. Suddenly it makes sense that so many of those experts have personal experience with Jobs.

While this might initially seem discouraging to those of us who don’t have the resources of an entire corporation at our disposal, it’s actually very liberating to know because it means you don’t have to be a “natural” either. With enough thought, planning and practice anyone can improve their public speaking skills. Sure, it’s going to take some effort to put together and deliver a really great talk, but making the effort can help you rise above the sea of bad presentations out there. Work hard on your presentation and deliver it in a way that makes it look effortless and you can be a star!

Some of the other major strategies that Gallo focuses on include:

Making time for rehearsal: Jobs rehearses his presentations over and over and over again until he’s confident that he knows his material and that he’s got all of the various elements (script, slides, props, demos) just right. Rehearsing will help you iron out the kinks in your own talk and calm your nerves when you’re confident that you know what you’re going to say.

Taking the needs of your audience into consideration: It isn’t enough to just get up in front of an audience and share information or try to sell something. Steve Jobs knows that he needs to meet the expectations of his audience if he wants to hold their attention. They need to see Steve Jobs up on stage in his familiar black turtleneck with cool new gadgets, jokes, slick slides and product demos (preferably short ones). You need to be just as aware of the needs of your audience and focus on how you’re going to engage them.

Displaying your passion for your topic: If you don’t feel strongly about what you’re talking about, how do you expect your audience to care? Gallo repeatedly quotes Jobs discussing his belief that his success is due to the fact that he feels passionately about his work. There’s a great scene where Jobs tears up during the editing of Apple’s “Think Different” commercials because he is so moved by the message that he’s helping craft. He sees Apple as having changed the world in a positive way and encourages others to do work that they really believe in. Anyone who has ever worked to sell a product or an idea knows that it’s a lot easier when you’re selling something that you can believe in yourself.

Creating an antagonist: One of the best ways to build strong emotions for a product– create a villain. Jobs often contrasts the ideas he’s presenting against examples of other companies (Microsoft), products (the PC) or technical limitations (slow internet access on conventional cellphones). Presenting a problem and offering a solution is a great way to win over an audience while building excitement and loyalty.

There is much more to recommend in The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, though the book does have a few drawbacks. Using the example of one public figure throughout is an interesting way to focus attention, though some readers may want to hear about the strategies of other speakers. And it does get repetitive hearing the same Apple launch presentations recounted over and over again. The design of the book itself is also a bit awkward– side topics are often jammed into the main text in a way that makes it hard to follow.

But this is a book that has a lot of valuable concepts for students of public speaking, especially those who don’t come to it as “naturals” and need tips on how to prepare in order to overcome that challenge.
Rating: 4 / 5