The Grade School Science Fair Approach to Business Presentations
It’s widely agreed to by professional speakers that visual aids, used prudently, can enrich a presentation and contribute to the ultimate purpose of any speech: to convey information, to get a point across.
We can do no better for inspiration in these matters than to look back to the science fairs we took part in during the last couple of years of grade school.
These affairs, generally held in the church basement or the long dark hall at the lowest level of the school building, did little to advance science, but did bring some structure to the wild investigations and passions of – mostly, in those days – the boys in class.
At that age, rockets you built from kits ordered from the back pages of Popular Science or Popular Mechanics and set off in the back yard or in the local park became not just another nutty hobby but the stuff of disciplined research into aerodynamics and space exploration.
While some of us had quickly thrown together experiments the night before the exhibits were due roughly matching what we said were going to do some weeks before – say, originally, The Effects of Modified Sunlight and Nutrient Supplies on Gerbil Populations, now titled by way of a long period of forgetfulness at home regarding the experiment, Small Animal Dehydration, Nature’s Taxidermy Tool – others took their plans to heart and presented the entire array of charts, graphics, hypotheses, pluses or minuses, prior research in the field, and ultimate outcomes.
These tables and the associated scholars were – rightly – the star of the science fairs year after year, not least for what you might call their special effects.
Various means of producing smoke, vibrating tectonic plates, and destructive weather events were brought to bear to bring across a fuller understanding of the underlying data.
Other exhibits, of course, not only lacked underlying data, but lacked even an interesting presentation of their entirely specious data, collected assiduously and recorded over the space of three or four minutes the night before.
Today’s public speaker can learn from these lessons from the past.
It is not hard to picture the business executive scheduled to speak halfway through the quarterly meeting, right after Recent Adjustments to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and right before Further Maddening Complications to the Stupid Expense Report Form, where he intends to report on the sales record of the various regions over the last few quarters.
How though to spice up what is generally a dismal picture?
In his preparations he has hearkened back to an earlier, simpler time, and when the appointed hour arrives he steps up to the podium with confidence. He clears his throat.
“Let us first examine the sales record of the Southwest Region. Now, everyone knows this is a tough territory. But we all thought we could expect something a little better than this.”
At this point the executive, perhaps with a bit of showbiz flourish, swivels into view a tableaux, or perhaps a diorama is a better way to put it, showing, from left to right:
A barren wasteland of sand
Several cactus-like pieces of vegetation now resembling nothing more than dead sticks
An image of a pitiless sun bearing down
A set of miniature cow or perhaps coyote skulls arranged artfully over the landscape
A toppled windmill of the type you often see on small farming homesteads, and now of course quite useless
As it turns out, a scattering of human skulls
And, rather ingeniously done, a flock of circling black cardboard vultures attached by black thread to a rotating clothes hanger from the top of the structure.
Now this is the type of thing that really gets a point across!
Seeing this display leaves the viewer in little doubt as to the actual sales performance of the region, and a gasp of admiration goes through the crowd as the sales leaders of the Northeast and Southeast and Midwest and Upper Midwest and Lower Midwest and Upper Lower Midwest (Lower Upper Lower Section), nod their heads knowingly, and thank their own personal deity that they didn’t get saddled with the Southwest Region.
The executive at this point holds up a finger, that universal signal of saying “we’re not done quite yet,” and flips a switch at the side of the display.
At this point a small fan from his mother’s kitchen to the side of the exhibit begins to stir up drifts and heaps of talcum powder into first, a shimmer of dust, and then a towering cloud of it that sweeps across the landscape in a creditable recreation of one of the great dust storms of the 1930s.
“What we have in the Southeast Region, my friends, as regards sales, is a modern version of The Dust Bowl.”
Do people at this point break out in appreciative applause? Maybe, maybe they do. Though it is likely that the guys present from the Southwest Region do not join in.
At another presentation, at entirely a different company, this one in the legal line of work, a hard-hit industry these days, the Chief Financial Officer comes to the front of the room to report on The Future of the Company in the Face of Changing Industry Conditions.
This fellow is intent on communicating the gravity of the situation, and has called from memory one of the best illustrations of total destruction that he has ever known, Billy McDonald’s science fair exhibit from 1965 conveying the wiping out of all life on earth.
It is an inspiring model.
The title of his speech — The Future of the Company in the Face of Changing Industry Conditions — is right there on the first powerpoint slide, but he utters not a word.
Instead he pulls back a curtain that reveals a model of the blue earth hanging, again by a black thread, from the ceiling. The painted background shows multiple pinpoints of stars, swirls of galaxies, immense stretches of black void, and off in the distance reasonably good approximations of the nearby planets. See, there’s the rings of Saturn!
It is a beautiful sight, majestic, awe-inspiring, and sobering all at once.
This peaceful mood however is not due to last long.
From the upper reaches of one side of the boardroom, on a path level with the Earth, comes a smaller celestial object, trailing a well-done depiction of flame, employing strips cut out of a colorful kite from the summer just past.
It is an asteroid! Or a comet! The speaker forgets which and only wishes that he had Billy McDonald here to consult with, recalling that he, Billy, was a stickler for the distinction between the two.
No matter, the asteroid or comet, itself hanging from a black thread and sliding along a fixed runner in the ceiling, speeds towards the Earth… and inevitably collides violently with it.
Smoke issues from the site of the collision, triggered by vinegar pouring over baking soda, and then, unspeakably, comes the ultimate destruction: the Earth splits into pieces, each falling to the floor with an ominous boom.
“That, my friends and colleagues,” says the speaker, “that is The Future of the Company in the Face of Changing Industry Conditions.”
A whole world of visual enhancements opens up to anyone who has ever been to grade school.
Pea sprouts that fail to bloom under ultraviolet light conditions… is there possibly a better way for your financial advisor to communicate to you the state of your investment portfolio?
The Mechanics of the Guillotine, Alien Invasions from Outer Space: How Might it Happen?, The Rain of Death: Volcanos’ Spew of Destruction, A Plague of Locusts Descends, these and many other colorful exhibits offer a richness of illustration to executives, professional speakers, teachers, and politicians of all stripes.
It is an untapped resource and is only as far away as our memories of those days.
