How Presentations are like Amoebas (and what to do about it)
Trainers and presenters, particularly those who are experts in their fields, have long struggled with selecting the right content for a presentation. How much is too much? How deep do I go? Where do I stop?
Unfortunately, what often happens is analogous to something that many of us witnessed in high school biology class. Do you recall the lab activity where your biology teacher put a warm drop of pond water on a slide, and, through a microscope, you got to see what actually lives in pond water? As you focused the lens, a translucent amoeba appeared, shimmering and pulsating in the light. If you watched long enough, a smaller pond organism floated into view, and, when it approached the amoeba too closely, it was enveloped by the amoeba, causing the amoeba to grow slightly in size. Sometime later, a second micro-organism drifted past and, sure enough, it was consumed by the amoeba which again expanded its own dimensions.
The same thing often happens when presentations are put together. Tantalizing bits of content (facts, anecdotes, related topics, stories, statistics) drift through the presenter’s mind and are captured and included in the presentation. These pieces of information have been referred to as “seductive detail.” And the presentation expands in a random and unpredictable way, getting larger and larger…
This is sometimes called the “amoeba design process.”
What’s the problem with the amoeba? According to cognitive scientists, people have a very limited capacity in short-term memory and are easily overwhelmed with information. When that happens, we enter a state called “cognitive overload” and the brain’s processing literally shuts down. As if that’s not enough, we also have a very short attention span and tend to forget things very quickly. It is therefore in the vital, vested interest of a presenter to include the least information necessary to achieve the objectives of a presentation.
According to noted cognitive scientist Dr. Ruth Clark:
“While my early lectures included just about everything I knew, I quickly realized that content covered does not translate into content learned. Participants would leave these bloated sessions feeling overwhelmed and demotivated rather than energized. I needed to do some drastic trimming and leave participants with additional follow-up resources to pursue at a later time…”
So, how to kill the amoeba? Two simple steps:
1) Be very specific about your objective. By the end of the presentation, the audience
should be able to know or do what?
2) Include the least content necessary to achieve it.
We’ve actually known this for a long time. According to Francois Fenelon in the 1600s:
“The more you say, the less people remember.”