Wow. We are only just into April and already I have identified the best business book of the year: Garr Reynolds ‘Presentation Zen’. How can that be?
Simple really. I have seen literally thousands of presentations in companies and at conferences and have made hundreds myself. Most of them were poorly structured, full of bullets and didn’t stick in the mind. Ask a typical conference delegate what they heard the previous day and all you will hear are ‘Hmmm’ and ‘Ummm’. In fact, I would go as far as to say most of them were rubbish! And at the risk of being difficult, I would hazard a bet that most of your presentations are like that too. But it doesn’t need to be that way.
Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen sets out a tried and tested way to produce, well structured, memorable, persuasive presentations. The sort of presentations used by masters of the art of presenting, like Apple’s Steve Jobs. The sort of presentation that as Chip & Dan Heath describe in their book of the same name, were ‘Made to Stick’.
If you only read one business book this year, this should be the one. It will only take you a few hours. And I guarantee you will learn more useful stuff from this one book, than from all the rest of boring business books that will be printed during the rest of this year.
Let me know what you think once you have read it.
Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultnat
Interim CRM Manager
Further research:
Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen website
http://www.presentationzen.com/
Apple’s Steve Jobs 2007 keynote
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/mwsf07/
Chip & Dan Heath’s Made to Stick book
http://www.madetostick.com/
Edward Tufte’s website
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
Richard Saul Wurman’s website
http://www.wurman.com/publications.html
