I call it the blob.

You have to deliver a presentation. Not to worry, you think, I’ll just use Bill’s slide deck and add a few slides from Suzy’s board presentation and combine them with that sales meeting PowerPoint I did.

Bad move.

You’ve just taken the easy way out and cobbled together a blob: an often meaningless compendium of slideware that lacks a clear point. It’s really tough to effectively communicate the blob. It’s like trying to look good by assembling a wardrobe of borrowed clothes—an unlikely route to success.

As a presentation coach, I see a lot of blobs: untidy jumbles of bullet points and mismatched graphics that ramble and bore audiences stiff; Save As… masterpieces culled from slide decks that litter the corporate computer network. The most painful part of the blob? Watching otherwise smart, capable people try to deliver it.

The good news is there’s an easy to avoid the blob and make sure you effectively deliver a message to your audience. The bad news is it’s what George W. Bush might call “hard work.” But as a bonus you’ll actually get your message across.

Try this: a week or so before your presentation, block some time on your calendar and go somewhere quiet—a conference room, a spare office, your den, Starbucks—it doesn’t matter. But shut off all your electronic leashes and just think for a while.

Take a pad of sticky notes. Think about your audience and the key points you want them to understand after you have finished talking. Think about how much time you have and what stories and examples you can use to illustrate what you want to say. Write two or three words describing each idea on the sticky notes.

If you spend forty-five minutes in think mode, you should have dozens of sticky notes spread out on a table. Now organize them into buckets. It doesn’t have to be precise. Just group the notes by general topic.

Next, rank those groups by order of importance. Have you duplicated anything? Is there a clear message emerging? Can you think of a logical flow that connects the groups?

If so, congratulations; you’ve built a presentation that just might make sense. If not, call in the cavalry. Get some help from trusted peers or colleagues and listen to their input. Or imagine the presentation before yours runs long and the time for your presentation is cut in half. What would you say? That’s the nutshell of your presentation.
After the tableful of sticky notes points you in a clear direction, then—and only then—start thinking about PowerPoint slides. The slides are a visual aid—not an entire presentation. Want to talk about your company’s contract with General Motors? Don’t put the details up on the screen, just put the GM logo or a photo of its nearby plant, and then talk through the details. If you write it, they will read it—instead of listening to you.

After constructing your presentation’s flow, carefully picking slides and thinking through what you want the audience to take away, it’s time to rehearse—out loud and at least four to five times.

I know what you’re thinking: who has this kind of time? Well, respectfully: you do. We all do. You have fifteen minutes a day to become a better presenter—you shower, you jog, you drive to work. Use that time to carve out a few minutes and practice out loud. If Apple boss Steve Jobs spends four to five hours rehearsing his hour-long keynote presentations, you can find some time. Your audience will thank you for it.