How to Keep Presentations Under Time Limits

I present to our Board next week on cybersecurity. The most powerful cheat code I rarely mention? It's this one 👇🏽 Page numbers. No, really – hear me out. We try to pack a lot into the limited time we're allotted, right? But we don't know how long a conversation thread might take. What the Board wants, they get. How then to get back on track? "I'll just zoom through the rest of the material, Aurobindo." Bad move. You lose credibility, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 it makes them wonder if those slides were really important if you raced through them. The answer. Page numbers.  • I print my slides & notes (although this holds for virtual presentations as well).  • On each slide, I write two things. "Prev X" and "Next Y".  • Prev x means that if I have skipped ahead (perhaps someone asked a question), then, given time, I should go back to slide X.  • Next Y means that if I've spent too long on a topic, I should skip ahead to slide Y and skip the slides in between.  • When the time comes to skip ahead (that's 95% of the time!), I simply say, "In the interest of time, I'm going to move to Slide Y. Here, I discuss ..." No apologies, no requests, just taking firm control of the time. Remember, the slides you mark as "Y" are the critical slides you do not want to skip. Take some time looking at your deck and deciding which ones are critical versus "just" important. Here's an example: Slide 1: Next 2 Slide 2: Next 4 Slide 3: Prev 2, Next 4 Slide 4: Prev 2, Next 8 Slide 5: Prev 4, Next 8 Slide 6: Prev 4, Next 8 Slide 7: Prev 4, Next 8 Slide 8: Prev 4, Next 10 Slide 9: Prev 8, Next 10 Slide 10: Prev 8 Your key slides? 2, 4, 8, 10 If you're on slide 5 and the conversation goes off on a tangent and you realize you're running out of time? Your next slide is 8 (𝗦𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝟱: 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘃 𝟰, 𝗡𝗲𝘅𝘁 𝟴). I can do this in real-time, Aurobindo. You probably can't. Stress and the conversation will mess you up. Prep is key, so you're not figuring this out on the fly. So, two lessons: 1. Prep well before your presentation. Plan for 25-50% of your slides to be critical. 2. 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 move it along as you need to. Nobody will object. You are the expert after all. What's 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 greatest hack for Board presentations? –  Interested in more content like this and don't want to miss a post? Connect with me for ~3x/week posts on cybersecurity, leadership, photography, life lessons & personal finance (View my profile, click 🔔). PS: Opinions are my own. #lessonsfromaCISO #commonsense #leadership #leadershipadvice 🎓

When presentations or meetings run over, I often hear complaints that leaders “asked too many questions.”   In my experience, presentations and meetings run over because:   1.    No firm agenda was set or agreed on. 2.    Materials weren’t shared in advance. 3.    Presenters didn’t practice and ran over (or way over) their allotted time. 4.    Redundant engagement is allowed from non-presenters or non-decision makers. 5.    Presenters don’t think about what leaders will ask ahead of time.   Some advice:   1.    Seek input from shared stakeholders ahead of time and incorporate their feedback. 2.    Share materials in advance to give a sneak preview of your content and get your audience on the same page. 3.    Think about what you’re going to be asked – build that into your opening and more importantly, hit those highlights in your talking points. 4.    Ask how much time you have, then turn the stopwatch on your phone on to monitor yourself. 5.    Remember the objective of presenting to leaders is to ensure the content or product is as good as it can be. This means they should ask questions we haven’t thought of… and that’s a good thing. 

The content at a recent conference was great, but some presenters had not prepared their talks for a 15-minute time slot. Here are some #PresentationTips that I use: 1. Always practice your talk for TIMING! The more you practice, the smoother you get. 2. Prune slides, if you must. Removing slides is better than talking faster! 3. Allow time for introductions and questions. For a 50-minute talk, I want 5 minutes for Q/A. So, I aim to speak for 45 minutes. 4. Over time, you will learn how long each slide (on average) takes to present. Use that to estimate the maximum number of slides. For example, my talks often require 1.25 minutes per slide. So, if I want to talk for 45 minutes, I limit myself to at most 45/1.25 = 36 slides. 5. Presentations are not the place for highly technical discussions. Give an overview of the technical results and leave the details for a paper or GitHub site. 6. No one has ever complained that a presenter finished early or on time. Don't be that person who exceeds the allotted time and puts the whole session behind schedule!