Communication
What Is, What Could Be
Establish the status quo, contrast it with what could be, and make the gap as big as possible. End on the new bliss, never a summary slide.
At the beginning of any presentation, you need to establish what is.
Founder of Duarte Inc., author of Resonate and Slide:ology
Nancy Duarte is CEO of Duarte Incorporated, which has helped create over 250,000 presentations, including Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Her models start from empathy: the audience is the hero, and the presenter comes alongside them to help them get unstuck. The structure she returns to moves between what is and what could be, then lands on the new bliss. She uses that contrast in meetings, on phone calls and to get her husband to do weekend chores.
Positioning
The Big Idea Formula
The Big Idea is a single sentence that combines your unique point of view with what is at stake for the audience. It serves as the filter through which every element of…
Your Big Idea must be expressible as a single sentence that combines your point of view plus what is at stake. Every element of your presentation must reinforce this one sentence.
Defining the core message before building any slides or content
Before building a single slide, define the audience transformation: who are they when they walk in the room, and who do you want them to be when they leave?
Pre-presentation planning and audience analysis
If your audience cannot summarize your presentation in one sentence after hearing it, your Big Idea was not clear enough.
Testing whether a presentation achieved its primary communication goal
Content & audience
The Audience Transformation Framework
Before building any content, define the transformation you want the audience to undergo. Identify who they are when they walk in and who you want them to be when they…
Three Types of Contrast
Duarte identifies three distinct types of contrast that speakers can deploy to keep audiences engaged: content contrast (what is vs. what could be), emotion contrast…
The Call to Adventure Structure
Borrowed from Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey and adapted for presentations, the Call to Adventure is the moment when the speaker introduces the Big Idea, destabilizing…
Wrap content in story. Story serves as the sugarcoating on a pill - it makes complex ideas easier to absorb. Preliterate generations passed stories intact for generations, yet people cannot remember the last presentation they sat through.
Justifying why story structure matters for business and technical presentations
TED Blog Q&A
Sales
Communication
Establish the status quo, contrast it with what could be, and make the gap as big as possible. End on the new bliss, never a summary slide.
At the beginning of any presentation, you need to establish what is.
End your presentation on a higher plane than where it began. The ending must paint a vivid picture of the 'new bliss' - the transformed world after your idea is adopted.
Closing a presentation with maximum impact, leveraging the recency effect
Follow up every call to action with a vivid picture of the potential reward. The audience must see and feel what the transformed future looks like if they act.
Structuring the conclusion of a presentation after requesting audience action
If the ending of your presentation is a summary slide with bullet points, you have wasted the most memorable moment. End with the 'new bliss' vision instead.
Designing the final moments of a presentation for maximum emotional impact
Presentations exist to create transformation, not to transfer information.
If the goal were merely to transfer information, a document would suffice. The unique power of a live presentation is its ability to transform beliefs, emotions, and…
Nancy Duarte
deliberately withholds resolution, alternating what is with what could be so the audience feels the gap before it gets an answer.
Barbara Minto
says lead with the answer, then support it, which is the house style at most consulting firms and in most executive readouts.