Description
Create and share a presentation that would be suitable for an organizational audience. Both slides and a video will be created. The presentation should contain no more than 12 slides.
Steps
Creating Your PowerPoint Presentation
Design your slides in PowerPoint.
Use the Notes feature to write your narration script.
Save the presentation.
Export your slides and notes as a PDF file:
Go to View in the menu.
Select Notes Page.
Save as a PDF.
Submit the PDF file (PowerPoint slides and notes) to the Executive Presentation drop box.
Recording and Sharing Your Video Presentation
Enter the Project Expo (Links to an external site.) discussion forum.
Begin a reply to the discussion.
Use Kaltura Capture to record a video presentation and embed it within your reply. Be sure to activate two video inputs: screen and camera. Your PowerPoint presentation should appear on your computer screen, and you should appear on your webcam. For detailed directions, see the following page: Using Kaltura Capture (Links to an external site.).
Tool bar with two active icons: screen and camera
Finish the reply to the discussion.
So your first step should be to use PowerPoint to plan your presentation. Create the slides you would use to show your presentation to your executive audience – and that you’ll show to your classmates using Kaltura.
Please submit your PowerPoint (with notes) into Canvas as you would any assignment. Follow the assignment instructions on recording and sharing your video presentation and then save as noted in the instructions. The powerpoint presentation (with notes) and video presentation are all due on the same date - which is Monday November 25, 2019 at 9:00 AM EST.
Doing an executive presentation is an entirely different skill compared to writing academic papers. When I say “executive presentation,” I am talking about making a “pitch” to your organization’s management for the following purposes:
· Describe the problem to be solved
· Describe the plan you have for solving the problem
· Gain approval and buy-in for implementing your solution
· Outline the plan of action
Here is my guidance on how to do this effectively.
- Get to the point quickly.
In each of my corporate roles, I had many occasions to make executive presentations. Sometimes I literally spoke to our CEO and executive team; other times I presented to lower-level managers and supervisors. Regardless, your aim is the same: make a compelling and persuasive case, and by all means, DO NOT WASTE THEIR TIME!
In short, executive presentations are very different than academic investigations! While CEO’s may appreciate the fact that you have much knowledge and that there is research and theory supporting your topic, they don’t care about the underlying research and theory! I frequently presented before one senior executive and he’d consistently say that power point slides are acceptable only if they have “a lot of open space” – meaning – they should have very little content! This senior executive would not tolerate more than 5-10 minutes of speaking and, by NO MEANS, would the reading of power point slides be tolerated!!! Other managers and supervisors were more tolerant – and had more time, and were more interested in an “educative” approach. Either way, as soon as I used any academic jargon, I lost their attention and their cooperation. Definitely DO NOT just read your PowerPoint slides to them! Use your PowerPoint slides as support; your audience should be listening to you, not reading your slides. These are busy people, so get to the point quickly!
By the way, this applies to you regardless of whether you work in a for-profit or non-profit organization; whether you work in social services, manufacturing, retail, or whatever. Management is busy, so do not waste their time. Be professional and respect your audience.
So here’s something that you probably never hear from a professor: do not cite any research in this presentation!
- Speak in plain language.
You have spent the entire semester in this course explaining how psychological theories and research support your ideas. Obviously I understand the language you have used; your classmates do too. But it is likely that those in management positions in your organization do not have Master’s degrees; in some cases they might not have Bachelor’s degrees. Even if they do, it’s likely that they do not have a background in psychology. So be safe: write and speak in very simple, jargon-free language. In fact, writing and speaking at a 9th-grade level is the standard advice here.
Please don’t misunderstand me: I am not insulting your audience. But if your audience has to “think hard” to decipher the words you are using, they then certainly are not going to buy into your proposal. Most of the management-level individuals I dealt with in my former organizations did have Bachelor’s degrees; some had Master’s degrees. But not all of them had degrees, particularly at the supervisor level (which was an “entry level” to management).
Again, this applies to you regardless of the organization or industry in which you work. Speak clearly, speak their language, and don’t force them to work too hard to understand your pitch. Once again I say – be professional and respect your audience.
- Design your slides to do a job, not to be fancy.
I think this is self-explanatory. Select a template and color scheme in PowerPoint that you like. Use graphics and colors sparingly, and only when they have a specific purpose. Do not use animation or fancy effects. Above all – be brief!
The Executive Presentation assignment says that you should use no more than 12 slides. That’s even pushing it. The main presentation could be 6 slides, with another 6 as supporting material. Now I want to see you present all of your slides in VoiceThread, but in the real world, you might only present the 6 main slides…or even fewer than that depending on the audience. The supporting material should contain additional data and detail that your audience might want to see, if they have time and if they have questions. It’s all about you being prepared…yet again, I encourage you to be professional and respect your audience.
If you do an Internet search on “executive presentation best practices,” you literally will get millions of articles on this topic. Here are links to a few good ones:
http://www.azzarellogroup.com/web/2014/12/09/the-best-outline-for-an-executive-presentation/#.WOuNZ_11pok (Links to an external site.)
https://slidebean.com/blog/startups/pitch-deck-presentation-complete-guide (Links to an external site.)
What is a Pitch Deck Presentation: A complete Presentation Guide with examples (Links to an external site.)
slidebean.com
What is a Pitch Deck Presentation: it is usually a 10-20 slide presentation designed to give a short summary of your company, your business plan and your startup vision. Pitch presentation also serve very different purposes, and each one of them should follow a different structure.
http://www.wilderpresentations.com/organization/13-most-convincing-actions-that-get-senior-management-to-sit-up-and-listen-to-you (Links to an external site.)
https://www.joanlloyd.com/Your-Career/The-art-of-making-presentations-to-senior-manageme.aspx (Links to an external site.)
- Protect your organization’s confidentiality.
Please do not name your organization in your presentation. Do not name any individual people either. Describe the organization in general terms to protect confidentiality. Obviously I know your organization, and I never, ever share what you tell me with anyone else. But to be safe – in case your presentation would be seen by anyone outside of this class – please protect the identities of your organization and its members.
So for example, I might have described my former organization this way: “A large financial services firm on the Fortune 500. A company offering financial services to individuals and businesses. Our company prided itself on providing high-quality customer service and innovative financial products.”
- Please use this outline to create your presentation slides.
· For your classmates
o 1-2 context slides, Overview for PSY 894: My organization; the problems to be solved; one or two theories I applied
· For your leaders
o 1 slide: Title slide
o 1 slide: Describe the problem to be solved
o 1-2 slides: Describe the plan you have for solving the problem
o 1 slide: Business benefits of the plan
o 1 slide: What you want your leaders to do next
o Additional slides with details that you anticipate your leaders asking about