My wife, Erin, does an excellent job decorating our home. She has a well-honed sense of style and much of the time when she goes shopping for decor she knows exactly what will work and what won’t when she sees it. Occasionally though she needs a little help.

On one particular shopping trip she had a particular space she was looking to fill on our mantle, right in front of a colorful piece of wall art. She just wasn’t having any luck finding anything, so she asked one of the store stylists for help. My wife described the space and showed the designer a picture of the painting. Just a few moments later the stylist had carefully plucked a few items from different parts of the store. The disparate items didn’t match, but they worked together very well. Individually, the items were not pieces my wife would probably have chosen on her own. But seeing them together she was delighted with the result and couldn’t wait to purchase them and bring them home.

My wife, who is usually a marvelous decorator on her own, had been stumped. Rather than feeling ashamed that she couldn’t figure this out on her own, she had the courage to ask an expert for help. And the results of that collaboration turned out to be better than what she would probably have come up with all alone.

Sometimes your vision will be clear and all you need is someone to help you execute it. This is the perfect time to hire a designer.

But an equally perfect time to hire one is before the idea has come into focus.

It’s nice to work on things when the path is clear. But some of the best (and most unexpected) results come when great ideas are developed and refined through collaboration.

Trying to put everything you know about something into your next speech is one of the most common presentation mistakes you can make. Instead, figure out what your audience wants most and save the rest for next time or never.

If you’ve been asked to speak to a group of people, it’s because someone believes that you know something about a topic that’s useful to them. Whether it’s a five minute speech on how to use the office coffee maker, a thirty-minute summary of the company’s financials for last quarter, or an all-day seminar on knitting, the chances are good that you know more about your subject than will fit into your allotted time. While at first this may seem daunting it’s actually a blessing.

You know a lot about your topic because it interests you. You can’t get enough of it. You love it. And that’s good. But trying to say everything you know about a topic in one presentation isn’t just impossible, it’s not helpful to your audience.

Just the good stuff.

Instead of succumbing to the temptation to tell your audience every little detail, you need to decide on the main ideas you want to get across. The number of main ideas will vary for each speech you give based on the length of time you have to speak and the complexity of the ideas you want to cover. You might have time for 10 points or you may only have time for one or two. But deciding up front which ideas are most important to your audience will help you decide what facts, figures, and stories stay or go.

Just enough to convince them.

Once you have your main ideas in place, only add enough supporting information or evidence to make the case. You probably could go on all day about why each point in your speech is a good idea. But once you’ve convinced your audience, you should stop talking about it and move on. Saying more may lead your audience to stop listening, and could even undermine your credibility. Giving too much evidence can actually make you seem defensive, like you might be hiding something.

Feeling the need to say everything can be daunting, and knowing that you can’t fit everything you know into any speech ever can actually be comforting. No one expects to hear everything you know, and frankly, no one wants or is able to hear it all at once anyway. By taking the time to organize and edit your thoughts into an order and size your audience can handle, you’ll save yourself a lot of mental anguish. And your audience will appreciate it as well.

Image courtesy of Flickr – wagaboodlemuum.

Here are the stories from the worlds of presentation and design that I enjoyed this week.

The Moth is now sharing their famous stories on the web.

Nancy Duarte released a new blog post sharing more content from her new book, The HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. This makes one, two, three, four.

Jonny Ive (Apple’s chief designer) got a promotion this week. Could this mean the end of skeuomorphism in Apple’s software?

On a similar note, Steve Jobs’ amazing yacht was unveiled this week.

Maggie Summers brought us a true story about Death by PowerPoint in 1841.

Mike Rohde’s new highly-anticipated (by me at least) Sketchnote Handbook is now available for pre-order. Can’t wait to read it!

I was excited when this week Michael Hyatt covered the 7 Rules for More Effective Slide Presentations on his weekly podcast. Referencing Duarte, Reynolds, and Schwertly…he’s studied the masters and his succinct tips are excellent.

Though I usually preach that anyone can become a great speaker, I enjoyed reading (and heartily agreed with) Alex Rister’s take on the 4 People Who Will NEVER Succeed at Public Speaking.

Dan Pink turned me on to this great documentary about sushi master, Sukiyabashi Jiro. Jiro is obsessed with creating perfect sushi and his ten seat restaurant in Japan has 3 Michelin stars. (It doesn’t even have a restroom on the premises!) It’s on Netflix instant right now, and it’s extremely interesting.

And finally, I hope you’re working on your James Bond opening for next week’s staff meeting. ;^)

With your next presentation you might be trying to get listeners to invest in your start-up. Or maybe try a new product. You might want them to consider a new philosophy or maybe just a new brownie recipe. No matter the specific goals, though, there’s really only one general reason to give a presentation and it’s a simple one. You have to want to help people. Presentations for any other reason are where we run into trouble.

In my opinion, failure to think of our audience’s needs and desires is the main reason we give so many boring presentations. When was the last time you enjoyed a movie in which you identified with none of the characters? There’s nothing there for you to grab hold of. You can’t relate. The same thing is true of presentations. Too often presenters focus only on what’s important to them. They talk about who they are. What they do. What their goals are. What they want their audience to do. It’s as if they expect their audiences to act out of a sense of awe for the presenter. You can probably imagine how well this works.

Giving a presentation is ultimately an act of humility and empathy. The presenter sets aside her goals and considers things from their audience’s perspective. In her book, Resonate, Nancy Duarte says it this way: “You need to defer to your audience because if they don’t engage and believe in your message, you are the one who loses. Without their help, your idea will fail.”

Helping people with your presentation doesn’t mean that you can’t ask them to do things that will benefit you or your cause in some way, too. But you must show them how doing what you ask will have some positive benefit for them.

Ask yourself why you’re giving your next presentation. There are tons of potential reasons, but really only one of them leads to success. Go to great lengths to make sure that you’re acting in your audience’s best interest and your likelihood of success will increase dramatically.

Image courtesy of Flickr – Matthew Boyle

Just added a new piece to my Work page. These slides are from the Intergraph SG&I President’s keynote at the Hexagon 2012 Conference, which I had the privilege of working on.

The slides were created for the incredible screen at the conference which was around 80 feet wide, which explains the unusual aspect ration. It was challenging to create slides to take advantage of that kind of real estate, but it was amazing to see our work projected on such a huge canvas.

Many of the slides are empty on the right-hand side, which was intentional so we could have video of the speaker superimposed over the screen at that time. You can see this effect if you watch the YouTube video of the speech.

More on the Work page.