Episode #378: The Rule Of Three In Presenting In Japan

When we are planning our talk, we have to decide what is the purpose of this presentation? In business, typically, we most often deliver the “inform” type. We will pass over information we have come across in our travels and research for the edification of the audience. They have turned up to learn something they didn’t already know and expect value for the time and money they have invested. It might be the “motivate” talk to bolster the fandom numbers for our brand. We extoll the virtues of our firm and our widget and get the listeners excited about buying our offerings. If we give an “inspire” talk, then we are appealing to the audience to become the best version of themselves and maximise their potential. This is often the “rags to riches” type of encouragement, using our own example as a source of inspiration. If we could do it, then the audience can also do it. If we are giving the “entertain” talk, this will mainly be a light presentation between the arrival of the next rounds of heavy red wines after a big dinner.

Regardless of the type of talk, we face a problem of too much information for the time we have to present. I am sure you have made this fatal error like me. Before doing any serious planning, we plunder other presentations for interesting, relevant and cool slides to add to this talk. We start from the wrong point and before you know it we have fallen in love with a lot of content. We have missed the viewpoint of deciding our central thesis and then going around and matching the proof and evidence to drive home our conclusions.

This bottom-up approach usually means we have way too many slides and certainly many more than we need to make our point. What we think is adding power and strength to our argument is, in fact, weakening it. The problem is one of dilution. If we give the audience too many things to consider and take in, then they don’t gain a strong central message from us.

I notice this tendency when we are teaching the Magic Formula to give talks. There is a period at the beginning of the talk to set the stage, to draw out the context, explain the background. Then we recommend an action and we follow this up with the benefit of taking that action. It is a very simple and tight formula. What always happens though, when we do the roleplay, and the coaching is people go off the track.
They need to nominate the one central, most important action they want the audience to take. That instruction is fairly easy to understand, but most people manage to get it wrong. They wax lyrical about the many great and wondrous actions the listeners should take. They also pile on the benefits of the various actions. For the listener, it is overwhelming. They cannot remember any of it. If the audience can’t recall what we said, then we will have to count that presentation as a failure.

The idea of three things for your audience to work on is not new. However, common sense is not common and established, proven ideas have to be re-discovered every generation. For any talk, there will be three main elements which are the most powerful components of supporting the argument we are making. Within each of these points, there will be three key aspects which prove our point. We are already at nine points and we haven’t added in the start and close of the talk yet. In a forty-minute speech, we will be bumping up against the time limit. Remember, we also have a ton of sexy slides we want to use, which will blow the time out completely. We need to exercise great discipline in our selection of what to keep and what to discard.

Forcing the Rule Of Three on ourselves is a very good way of making sure we get the key point fully supported and convincing, without confusing our listeners about what it is we want to say. I would like to say it is more complex and difficult than this, to make myself look more “presentation guru” like. The reality is that simple is always best when presenting. Confusing people and therefore distracting people from our key message makes no sense. However, often we do a good job of doing just that by overcomplicating the messaging. Next time you put a talk together, apply the Rule of Three and see what you can trim to make the key ideas shine more brightly.