I prepared my deck and was eager to present it in my first client team meeting during my summer internship. The deck had the statistics to catch the attention of the client, relevant charts to explain the data and clearly tabulated results to explain the analysis. Just when it seemed I was ready for the big task, my mentor introduced me to the harsh reality and questioned the very basis of my presentation: What is the storyline?
Has it ever happened to you that in spite of having everything in your powerpoint presentation you failed to convey your message to your audience; in spite of all the data-driven analysis you missed on securing a rank in a case competition; in spite of the fancy charts you still couldn’t impress your faculty? The reason could well be the missing storyline…
So what is this storyline?
Going by the definition, Storylining is an essential part of storytelling, which in turn is a critical element of making a presentation. It is lining of messages in a logical order to make the entire story easy to grasp while using only the relevant messages avoiding any kind of unnecessary noise.
In simple words, storylining helps in laying out the key ideas effectively while collectively creating an influencing story.
Why storylining?
The pyramid principle suggests to start with the key ideology first and then supplement it with the supporting details. The reason why it is practiced a lot is that presenting the key idea first helps in generating the interest and setting clear expectations. From there onwards, the reader will read the slides if it interests him/her. Likewise, your storyline helps communicate what the presentation is saying just by collating all the key ideas and explaining the logical flow through the slide titles.
How to frame an effective storyline?
Storylining has to be contextual and impactful and needs to be written from the audience’s perspective. They give clarity on what needs to be communicated, complete with a specific outcome offering a logical flow of ideas aligned to the central message.
A good storyline has the following three important ingredients:
1. Clear concise points
2. Logical flow of ideas
3. Powerful and engaging phrases
Let’s see storylining in perspective
Every slide should answer the questions “So What?” Like for instance, yes the data, the charts are all there but what are they communicating to the reader? The key take away needs to be highlighted in every slide to make the storyline clear. The title of each slide should convey exactly what the slide is talking about.
In essence, if you are creating a presentation on, let’s say improving the declining sales of a product, you can use the bellow narratives to create an impactful storyline:
Analysis of the industry indicates…
Traversal and analysis of customer purchase journey reveals…
Insights from the customer survey reinforce the problems identified…
Competitor benchmarking brings to light…
Resolving the constraints suggest…
Evaluation of the recommendation affirms scalability…
Implementation timeline indicates the targets are achievable in…
I recommend using phrases similar to the ones mentioned above as the titles of your slides, which will clearly bring out the key message in each slide.
So go ahead and incorporate the storylines and see how crisp and easy it becomes for the audience to understand your message!