meaning of high level presentation

The Leader's Guide to Presenting by Tom Bird, Jeremy Cassell

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A high-level structure for all presentations

When planning a presentation it is easy to focus on the detail – the content – at the expense of keeping the big picture in mind. But the ‘big-picture’ structure is critical in ensuring that your presentation achieves your objectives.

Whenever you present, having a high-level structure that underpins the content you deliver has a number of benefits both for you and for your audience.

A high-level structure helps:

• engage your audience effectively at the start of the presentation;
• ensure that your message is presented clearly;
• maximise the impact of your presentation;
• ensure that you finish your presentation in a positive way;
• increase the chance of your audience recalling the information ...

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high-level presentation

• Thread starter Anya Smitty
• Start date Apr 7, 2013

Anya Smitty

Senior member.

• Apr 7, 2013

What's the meaning of "high-level presentation"? I saw it in my professor's handout.  

Hello, Anya Smitty. Thank you for telling us where you saw the term. Please give us the full sentence, too.  

Ok. The whole sentence is: Audit reports may be provided in the form of a high-level presentation that highlights the objectives and results in a series of headlines.  

Hello Anya High-level is an adjective normally used in reference to ranks and status. In the context you provide, a possible meaning of 'a high-level presentation' would be a presentation meant for people at high levels in an organization, say, the management. (As an exercise, of course.) (More context might reveal whether that is a farfetched interpretation.)  

A high-level presentation is a presentation that provides a general description of something without a lot of detail. For example, a high-level presentation of company sales might give the sales figures for each division but would not break down the data beyond that. A detailed presentation, by contrast, might give sales figures for each product that those divisions make. A high-level presentation may be intended for higher levels of management, but not necessarily. In employee training programs, for example, it is common to give high-level presentations about what each part of the company does. The people in these training programs are usually not high-level managers, but they don't need a lot of detail on this topic. You will sometimes see the expression "30,000-foot view" for this sort of presentation. It refers to the amount of detail that can be seen on the ground from an airplane flying at 30,000' feet altitude, or about 9,000 meters. (Flight altitudes are always given in feet, even in regions that use metric units, for historical reasons and because international standardization is important.)  

How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

by Guy Kawasaki

Summary .   

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

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Ideas and insights from Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning

Powerful and Effective Presentation Skills: More in Demand Now Than Ever

When we talk with our L&D colleagues from around the globe, we often hear that presentation skills training is one of the top opportunities they’re looking to provide their learners. And this holds true whether their learners are individual contributors, people managers, or senior leaders. This is not surprising.

Effective communications skills are a powerful career activator, and most of us are called upon to communicate in some type of formal presentation mode at some point along the way.

For instance, you might be asked to brief management on market research results, walk your team through a new process, lay out the new budget, or explain a new product to a client or prospect. Or you may want to build support for a new idea, bring a new employee into the fold, or even just present your achievements to your manager during your performance review.

And now, with so many employees working from home or in hybrid mode, and business travel in decline, there’s a growing need to find new ways to make effective presentations when the audience may be fully virtual or a combination of in person and remote attendees.

Whether you’re making a standup presentation to a large live audience, or a sit-down one-on-one, whether you’re delivering your presentation face to face or virtually, solid presentation skills matter.

Even the most seasoned and accomplished presenters may need to fine-tune or update their skills. Expectations have changed over the last decade or so. Yesterday’s PowerPoint which primarily relied on bulleted points, broken up by the occasional clip-art image, won’t cut it with today’s audience.

The digital revolution has revolutionized the way people want to receive information. People expect presentations that are more visually interesting. They expect to see data, metrics that support assertions. And now, with so many previously in-person meetings occurring virtually, there’s an entirely new level of technical preparedness required.

The leadership development tools and the individual learning opportunities you’re providing should include presentation skills training that covers both the evergreen fundamentals and the up-to-date capabilities that can make or break a presentation.

So, just what should be included in solid presentation skills training? Here’s what I think.

The fundamentals will always apply When it comes to making a powerful and effective presentation, the fundamentals will always apply. You need to understand your objective. Is it strictly to convey information, so that your audience’s knowledge is increased? Is it to persuade your audience to take some action? Is it to convince people to support your idea? Once you understand what your objective is, you need to define your central message. There may be a lot of things you want to share with your audience during your presentation, but find – and stick with – the core, the most important point you want them to walk away with. And make sure that your message is clear and compelling.

You also need to tailor your presentation to your audience. Who are they and what might they be expecting? Say you’re giving a product pitch to a client. A technical team may be interested in a lot of nitty-gritty product detail. The business side will no doubt be more interested in what returns they can expect on their investment.

Another consideration is the setting: is this a formal presentation to a large audience with questions reserved for the end, or a presentation in a smaller setting where there’s the possibility for conversation throughout? Is your presentation virtual or in-person? To be delivered individually or as a group? What time of the day will you be speaking? Will there be others speaking before you and might that impact how your message will be received?

Once these fundamentals are established, you’re in building mode. What are the specific points you want to share that will help you best meet your objective and get across your core message? Now figure out how to convey those points in the clearest, most straightforward, and succinct way. This doesn’t mean that your presentation has to be a series of clipped bullet points. No one wants to sit through a presentation in which the presenter reads through what’s on the slide. You can get your points across using stories, fact, diagrams, videos, props, and other types of media.

Visual design matters While you don’t want to clutter up your presentation with too many visual elements that don’t serve your objective and can be distracting, using a variety of visual formats to convey your core message will make your presentation more memorable than slides filled with text. A couple of tips: avoid images that are cliched and overdone. Be careful not to mix up too many different types of images. If you’re using photos, stick with photos. If you’re using drawn images, keep the style consistent. When data are presented, stay consistent with colors and fonts from one type of chart to the next. Keep things clear and simple, using data to support key points without overwhelming your audience with too much information. And don’t assume that your audience is composed of statisticians (unless, of course, it is).

When presenting qualitative data, brief videos provide a way to engage your audience and create emotional connection and impact. Word clouds are another way to get qualitative data across.

Practice makes perfect You’ve pulled together a perfect presentation. But it likely won’t be perfect unless it’s well delivered. So don’t forget to practice your presentation ahead of time. Pro tip: record yourself as you practice out loud. This will force you to think through what you’re going to say for each element of your presentation. And watching your recording will help you identify your mistakes—such as fidgeting, using too many fillers (such as “umm,” or “like”), or speaking too fast.

A key element of your preparation should involve anticipating any technical difficulties. If you’ve embedded videos, make sure they work. If you’re presenting virtually, make sure that the lighting is good, and that your speaker and camera are working. Whether presenting in person or virtually, get there early enough to work out any technical glitches before your presentation is scheduled to begin. Few things are a bigger audience turn-off than sitting there watching the presenter struggle with the delivery mechanisms!

Finally, be kind to yourself. Despite thorough preparation and practice, sometimes, things go wrong, and you need to recover in the moment, adapt, and carry on. It’s unlikely that you’ll have caused any lasting damage and the important thing is to learn from your experience, so your next presentation is stronger.

How are you providing presentation skills training for your learners?

Manika Gandhi is Senior Learning Design Manager at Harvard Business Publishing Corporate Learning. Email her at [email protected] .

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Professional Skills Development

How to create powerful executive level presentations [+ template].

Taking these steps will start the process towards a more resilient, innovative, and client-focused approach to key account management.

How many times have you been in a presentation and drifted into a daydream? Thinking about what you’ll do when you get back to your desk or what you’ll have for lunch?

We’ve all been there.

Because we got bored listening to someone drone on about a topic we already knew (or didn’t care) about.

Don’t let that happen to your presentations. Especially when your audience is a room full of executives

Executive-level presentation framework in 22 minutes

• Introduction (2 minutes) . Keep it simple – who you are and why you’re there.
• The hook (2 minutes) . Introduce your value proposition and start with your conclusion. In other words, put the last slide first.
• Current situation (3 minutes). Explain where your client is today.
• New opportunity (3 minutes) . Explain your vision.
• Evidence (2 minutes) . Be selective and choose one data set that gets their attention and they will remember.
• More evidence (2 minutes) . Again choose a single data set that reflects the objectives of your presentation.
• Alternatives (2 minutes) . Discuss alternative solutions.
• Recommendations (2 minutes) . Which option is the best course of action and why?
• Next steps (2 minutes) . Describe when and how you’ll implement your recommendation and the immediate next steps.
• The grand finale (2 minutes) . Revisit the hook from your introduction to close the story and leave them inspired and compelled to act.

Transformation not information

FACT: At some point in your career, you’ll need to present to senior executives.

Either to someone inside or outside your organisation. The reasons are many:

• relationship building;
• confirmation of strategy or tactics;
• seeking clarity to help deal with uncertainty;
• advice on decisions;
• get a decision changed;
• get action.

A compelling presentation needs to answer the question, “so what?”

Transformation, not information.

Dan Roam, in his outstanding book  Show and Tell , describes the story lines of three different presentations – each delivers some sort of transformation.

• The report.  Changes the audiences information and brings data to life by making the facts insightful and memorable.
• The explanation.  Shows the audience how and changes their knowledge and ability effortlessly.
• The pitch.  Changes the audiences actions. It provides not only a solution to a problem, but makes that solution undeniable.

How can your presentation inspire some sort of transformation? In one or two sentences describe the change your presentation will bring to the audience. It will help you stay focused on what’s important as you write it.

I am presenting to my audience because ____________________ so that by the end they will ___________________.

When you’re clear on the “why” and the “so what” you’re ready to create your executive level presentation.

Executive level presentation framework

This 10 step framework is designed to help you present anything and based on what executives want to know in the shortest amount of time.

Each step introduces a new element of your story to maintain interest and intrigue right up until the end.

It only runs 22 minutes. Which means for a 30 minute meeting you have plenty of time to answer questions, or get things back on track if you run overtime on a slide or end up in a detour.

It’s also format neutral. You don’t need to use slides. In fact I encourage you not to. But I’ve created this  executive level presentation PowerPoint template  you can download.

1. Introduction (2 minutes)

• Keep it simple – who you are and why you’re there. Spend the briefest amount of time possible on introducing yourself, your organisation, the topic you’re there to discuss and any other relevant background information that adds some context.

2. The hook (2 minutes)

• Introduce your value proposition and start with your conclusion. In other words, put the last slide first. Let them know the return on investment (ROI) and the impact to the bottom line right up front, so they sit up and take notice.
• Brain research  shows we don’t pay attention to boring things and you’ve only got 30 seconds to grab their attention. So make the opening memorable:
• Surprise them with interesting statistics.
• Use humour. It lightens the mood and make your audience (and you) more comfortable.
• Ask rhetorical questions. It gets the audience thinking without actually needing to answer.
• Use an inspiring quote.

3. Current situation (3 minutes)

• Explain where your client is today. Introduce the challenge they’re facing, why it occurs and the impact it has. Talk their language and frame this around metrics and key performance indicators that matter to your audience.

4. New opportunity (3 minutes)

• Share your vision. How can you solve the problem or help them do even better? Discuss the opportunities you’ve identified, including potential upside.
• Consider potential risk and any strategies you have to mitigate them.

5. Evidence (2 minutes)

• Be selective and choose one data set that gets their attention and they will remember. What have you discovered they need to know? It’s not enough to share information. Share insights, in other words, what does the data mean?
• The more specific, the easier your insights can be acted on. Look for something new or unusual that sparks curiosity and be clear on why it’s important to your audience.
• Be prepared for questions on these slides. What data did you use? How did you calculate it? How will you measure it? Have you got any case studies or testimonials to demonstrate previous success?

6. More evidence (2 minutes)

• Focus on what you believe things could look like in the future. Again choose a single data set that reflects the objectives of your presentation. For this slide think about how you can promote the good news like cost avoidance, cost reduction, efficiency, quality or satisfaction.
• Executives love data but bombarding them will overwhelm them. Your goal is to highlight the most important numbers and to reassure them whatever your recommending has sound analysis behind it.

7. Alternatives (2 minutes)

• Let them know you’ve considered other options, what they were and why they aren’t the right choice. Try to keep it to two – one you considered and one you chose (which you will reveal in the next slide)
• Or this could be a good place to talk about what happens if they do nothing?

8. Recommendations (2 minutes)

• Which of your options do you suggest is the best course of action and why. Be definitive and have a point of view. This is not the time to sit on the fence.
• Bring them back to the ROI you shared at the beginning of the presentation. Be clear on time frames for which they will see a return.

9. Next steps (2 minutes)

• Give a high level explanation of the when and how you will make this happen and the next steps, including anything you need from your audience. Save the details for the project plan.

10. The grand finale (2 minutes)

• Finish big. Revisit the hook from your introduction to close the story and leave them inspired and compelled to act.
• Have a very clear ask that makes it easy for them to say yes. Ideally it’s a simple one they can make on the spot rather than one they have to go away and think about.

The best way to conquer stage fright is to know what you're talking about Michael H. Mescon

How to avoid death by PowerPoint

Use PowerPoint sparingly for your presentation. Senior executives want a discussion not a lecture.

In fact, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has gone so far as to ban PowerPoint presentations at Amazon HQ and replaced them with  six-page structured memos .

However if the subject matter demands it, or you feel you’ll be more effective with slides, here’s some great advice to avoid “death by PowerPoint.”

Design principles

David Phillips is a leading authority on the art of making presentations and author of the book How to Avoid Death by PowerPoint . In his entertaining and informative TED Talk, he shares his five presentation design principles:

• One message per slide.
• Use an image and short phrases. Avoid sentences and you shouldn’t read the slide out loud.
• The most important parts of your slide should be the biggest. Try making the headline smaller so it isn’t distracting.
• Use contrast to make your point stand out. Use a dark background instead of white and highlight the text related to your current topic so that it stands out from other text on the screen.
• No more than 6 objects per slide (for instance, one image and 5 bullet points). Your brain has to use 500% more energy and cognitive resources to understand what’s in your PowerPoint.

The glance test

It should be skimmable and still have your message come through loud and clear. Presentation guru, Nancy Duarte calls this the “ Glance Test “.

Duarte says to focus on your high level findings, conclusions, recommendations and next steps. Keep supporting data and other materials in the appendix so you can quickly pull up the slides and go deeper if you need to.

• Can you audience understand the meaning of your slides in 3 seconds or less?
• Do you have a single, clear message for each slide?
• Are you using contrast and white space effectively to emphasis important information
• Is there a logical structure and flow to your presentation?
• Do diagrams, images and other visuals add clarity and highlight your main point?

Slide titles

Powerful executive level presentations begin with a good headline. Try writing  slide titles like a newspaper  and tell a story that conveys exactly what it’s about.

For example instead of a boring title like “Q1 2023 Results”, write a title that says “Record Growth” – can you see the difference it makes?

• 5 to 10 words
• Accurate and specific
• Don’t use articles like  a ,  an ,  the
• Don’t use conjunctions, like  and  use a comma instead.
• Don’t repeat what’s on the slide. Titles summarise. For example say Record Growth, not Record Growth of 30% Year on Year

Visualise data

Don’t load up your slides with too much detail. Structure your presentation around high level concepts but be ready with the facts. Keep copies of the data and reports nearby just in case.

Tell your data story with charts and infographics instead of reports. Only include the best most compelling data that directly supports your conclusions and keep it simple.

According to one CEO, “Eighty percent of your success at the top is your facilitation skills. Only 20 percent is your content.”

Things may not go according to plan. Anticipate some of the more common challenges you may face and decide how you’ll respond to them.

Rick Gilbert, founder and chairman of  PowerSpeaking  says to expect these challenges when presenting to an executive audience and and how to solve them.

• Time cut.  Be prepared with a shorter, five-minute version of your presentation. Use slides 2, 4, 5 & 10.
• Disengaged executives.  When people start checking their email, reconfirm that the topic is still important.
• Decision maker leaves.  Before this person gets out the door, ask her what to do next, such as wait until she returns or move forward with the decision.
• Topic change . Be prepared to improvise the agenda and change directions.
• Side talk.  Refocus the audience on the agenda. Request help from your sponsor or the most senior person.
• Energetic discussion.  When executives are fully engaged and throwing out new ideas, capture what is said and then reconfirm after the meeting.

If companies would have as little respect for business as they have for presentations, the majority would go bankrupt Dr. John Medina

Presentation Resources

Bring your executive presentation to life with facts, figures and imagery that adds credibility to your recommendations. Here are a few of my favourite resources.

Presentation and diagram templates

Slide libraries with some exciting done-for-you presentations and a very executive, data-centric focus. They also have lots of diagram slides to help you visually explain your ideas.

There are many places to get statistics from: Government agencies, trade organisations, Chambers of Commerce and all the big consulting firms like PwC, Deloitte, KPMG and so many others. Or try these. Just make sure you quote your sources on your slides.

• Google public data . Great place to find hot topics and trending data and also links up with  Google Dataset Search .
• Knoema . The world’s largest integrated global data base with 2.8b time series from thousands of sources and topics.
• Gallup . They practically invented the poll and have a vast number of research reports on business, politics, world, education, social and economics.
• Statista . Online access to over 1 million statistics and facts within 600 industries and 50+ countries.

Free stock photos

Images can make or break your executive level presentation. Add a few relevant photos that represent the message of each slide.

Don’t be too literal. If your presentation is about saving money, don’t use a picture of piles of cash. Think about what saving money means to your client and choose that picture instead. Something that triggers an emotional reaction.

For example, if it means happy shareholders, you could use a picture of people applauding at an annual general meeting. If it means they’ll be in a better position to invest in new technology next year, use a picture of a sprinter at the starting blocks.

Go to these resources for stunning, royalty free, high quality stock photos:

Ditch the bullet points and use icons to illustrate your message. They’re very effective and creative. Here are the libraries I use.

• Flaticon . Check out their free set of 380 essential icons.
• The Noun Project . 2m+ diverse icons and they even have a plugin for PowerPoint.
• Icons8 . Over 1m+ icons with new icons added daily. The best features is their consistent styles—over 30 of them. They have everything from hand drawn to retro to doodles and more. So your presentations will always look polished and professional.

Illustrations

Sometimes a stock photo just doesn’t convey the message you want to share. A useful alternative is illustration. They add a modern twist to your presentations. Try these:

• unDraw . Completely free. Browse to find the images that fit your needs and click to download. Use the on-the-fly color image generation to match your brand identity.
• Freepik . I use Freepik every day. They have hundreds of thousands of vectors available for free. You just need to provide attribution in your slides to the artist. The choice can be overwhelming so be sure to use the search features and filters. Power tip is to follow any artists you like and then you can search within their portfolio for illustrations.
• Ouch, a free 3D and Vector illustration tool  if you need media for your presentations.

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