Last week we took short trips to presentation heaven and hell; now let’s now look at what was missing.

Have you ever re-read an essay you wrote at school? I haven’t. And likely, no-one else did, past the teacher marking it. That’s kind of odd, if you think about it. Why are we doing all that late-night last-minute homework, if it’s destined to lie in the dusty pile of your parent’s attic, never to be read again?

It’s because the artefact is an afterthought. I mean that quite literally: lots of thinking happens as you write, but the final, polished essay is the result of the reasoning, it’s not the reasoning itself.

The act of writing makes us practise reasoning - the real point of education. The resulting words in the essay are a snapshot, a summary. This is what most people miss when they present: they haven’t got the story straight first, jump straight to the outputs, then assume the thinking will be obvious.

Remember that presentation hell story from last week? (TLDR: designer tried explaining some work to the CEO, he didn’t understand it, got annoyed). I coached her for weeks afterwards, and in one session, while we were outlining her next presentation with sticky-notes on the wall, she said:

I was a little taken aback: this was a seasoned creative, who’d never been shown how to make a strong case for their work. And it’s likely that the reason is the same as above: everyone she’s worked with helped her work on the artefacts, not the reasoning. So could we turn what she thought into a strong argument?

It turned out we could. Time spent writing, sharpening, deleting points, changing the order - all this meant that her next presentation to the CEO was a resounding success. Budget unlocked, roadmap determined by her ideas. He was able to follow her thoughts because of all the work she did before going near slides or screens.

When you can write down clear, concise reasoning for what you’re doing, others can follow your thoughts. Otherwise, showing fancy-looking slides is like showing people a shopping list and forcing them to guess what you’re cooking.

Most people assume the problem lies in your presentation or performance, but upstream of that, is your thinking. And it's non-linear: it’s a spaghetti mess of firing neurons inside your head. If you don’t tidy it up and ensure it makes sense, well… that’s how you end up with verbal word-salad, and often, Death by Screens.

So… write. your. thinking. down. The shorter and sharper, the better. This is the audience of nobody: it’s for you, to clarify to yourself that you got your story straight.

Much more coming on how to do that in the coming weeks. But I’ll leave you with a quick test…

Next week: why this gets worse, the more you know.

The next Get Your Story Straight workshop: London, 13th November.

Early bird price ends 31st October.