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Explore the first three steps of presenting: concept, visualization, and storyboarding. And these are just three of the eleven steps!
Author: Geetesh Bajaj
Product/Version: PowerPoint
Introduction
Step 1 - Conceptualize
The Macro Statement
The Micro Statement
Step 2 - Visualize
Step 3 - Storyboard
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Quick Quiz
No ripples in ponds
No concepts in mind
Yet presentations aplenty
No thread through the beads
No plot to the slides
Just forty-two bullet points, and the audience is sleepy
A good presentation does more than inform. It moves people toward a decision or at least gets them to see things differently. That kind of impact doesn't happen by accident. Getting there takes a few deliberate steps, and we'll walk through eleven of them. Eleven steps probably sound excessive at first glance, especially with “presentation wizards” offering three-click promises.
Wizards are not without merit. They work well for a quick, low-stakes presentation, or when a deadline leaves you no choice. But the results usually look it. Templated slides tend to broadcast a simple message: the presenter had nothing new to say and no time to say it. Or worse, the presenter ran out of ideas and enthusiasm. That is not the reputation you want walking into a room with you.
Here is the part most presenters underestimate: you already have more insight than a template will ever show. The eleven steps exist to get that insight onto the screen intact. Think of this less as a checklist and more as a set of decisions worth making deliberately instead of by default.
You have already read this far, so you might as well keep going. The only way to learn to swim is to get in the water. Consider this your first step in.
This page was first written in 2001, when presentations relied on far fewer tools and templates, and far fewer distractions competed for attention. We've updated the details since, but the core ideas haven't changed, because they were never tied to a particular tool. Whether you're presenting in a boardroom, on a video call, or through AI-generated slides, the fundamentals still decide the outcome: a clear concept, a visual plan, and a story your audience can follow. These eleven steps hold up because they're about thinking, not software, and good thinking doesn't go out of style.
Clarify your big idea, audience, and outcome before you touch any slide.
Imagine the flow of your message as scenes, moments, and transitions.
Sketch slide-by-slide structure before you design in PowerPoint.
No presentation survives without a concept. That is the whole rule.
Start by talking it through, on paper or with someone else, until an idea takes shape. Keep a notebook rather than loose pages; ideas you can't find later are ideas you didn't have. Once you have more material than you can use, the real work begins, which is deciding what belongs and what doesn't.
Here's a useful way to think about it. Stand at any window and describe what you see. There is no shortage of detail to write about, yet the window itself sets the limit. You can't describe what's behind you, above you, or out of frame. That limit is not a flaw. It's what turns a view into a picture.
Presentation concepts are similar. Include what's relevant to your point and your audience. Leave out everything else. Most presentations fail not from having too little content, but too much. Presenters try to cover every possible angle out of fear of missing something, and the actual point gets buried. A clear frame is what prevents that.
BackWrite a page, maybe two, about your concept. Don't worry about polish. Just write, staying inside the frame you've set.
Then edit. A few things to focus on:
What remains is your macro statement: the concept, distilled to its essential argument.
BackNow go further. Turn your macro statement into a headline of no more than seven words.
Compressing fifty words into seven sounds impossible until you remember how much a short, well-chosen phrase can carry. A few pointers:
Here are some ideas for headings:
If you get stuck, borrow the structure of A call to action, swap in your own verb and noun, and adjust from there.
That headline is your micro statement. With both statements in hand, you have the foundation for everything that follows.
BackYou already have macro and micro statements for your presentation. This means that you already have a foundation. In other words, you now know what you want to say. The next question is how you'll say it, and that means finding your story.
Some presenters resist the word story, associating it with fiction rather than business content. Fair enough, but the word still applies. Every presentation, however technical, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and how you sequence those matters as much as what's in them.
You don't need a film degree, a director's ego, or a team of editors to tell a good story. All you need is the willingness to see it in your head before anyone sees it on a screen. That's called visualizing, and it's your new best friend.
To find that sequence, you need to visualize: to picture the presentation in your mind before you build a single slide. To inspire others, you must first be inspired, and that means to see it with your mind's eye.
Sit somewhere quiet, close your eyes if it helps, and imagine your audience first. What do they already know? What are they hoping to hear? Then picture the presentation itself: how it opens, how it develops, how it lands. The opening and closing deserve as much attention as the middle. They're what people remember.
This won't come easily on the first try, and that's normal. Some people visualize naturally; others need practice, or a subject they actually care about. Experiment until you find what works.
Once the structure is clear, go further: think about color, motion, pacing, and how each element reinforces the next. Our guide to color combinations is a good place to start.
Do remember that overall, you are creating a story using visualization. A story here does not always mean a human story. It may just mean an end that has a beginning and a subject matter that is the central theme of your presentation.
One caution: your story needs to work for your audience, not just for you. Being interested in your own material doesn't guarantee anyone else will be. If a presentation drags, the usual culprits are complexity, irrelevance, or length. Respect your audience's time. Cut subplots, cut detours, and keep the story small enough to hold in one hand.
If all this sounds abstract, it is, a little. But there's no cost to trying it, and the upside is a presentation that holds together instead of one that simply lists facts in order. Keep notes as you go. The only step you can skip is closing your eyes, provided you can concentrate without it.
BackCreating a story and storyboarding it are two different exercises. The first happens with your eyes closed. The second requires them wide open.
A storyboard is simply your story translated into a rough visual sequence: one small sketch per slide, with notes alongside it. You can download storyboard templates from the Internet or create your own in a word processor. Print a fair amount of them to make a thin pad which you can staple and keep ready whenever you need.
You can print these templates, sketch on paper, use sticky notes, or work digitally on a tablet. Download a sample storyboard template here, or read our longer piece on storyboarding. The format matters less than the habit of laying out each slide before you build it.
If you'd rather work digitally, Springboard is a solid option, especially on a touch screen, and it exports to standard graphic formats. The medium doesn't matter as much as the discipline of thinking it through before you open PowerPoint.
Storyboarding forces a useful kind of honesty. Gaps in your logic show up as gaps on the page, long before they show up in front of an audience. Here's a video from Google experts that explains the use of storyboarding for YouTube videos. Most of the ideas explained work for PowerPoint slides and other presentation software too.
BackStillness Speaks, by Eckhart Tolle
Back11 Steps to Presentations - Page 2 of 4
11 Steps to Presentations - Page 3 of 4
11 Steps to Presentations - Page 4 of 4
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