Speeches and presentations are delivered for any number of reasons (to persuade, to sell, to con, or even to convert you to a faith); to various audiences (your spouse, your team’s annual retreat, or to thousands of people in a foreign country); and various formats (sitting, standing, with slides, or, perhaps, accompanied by dancers).

All good.

In this note (and in life) my obsession is narrowly focused on speeches delivered, usually with some slide type format, to business audiences.

As has been confirmed to you time and time again - across countries, companies, conferences - most of these speeches suck. As a practitioner, I've observed this phenomenon as well, - and am mortified by it enough to put hours and hours into improving my own presentation skills.

The factors that contribute to a speech/presentation sucking are astonishingly obvious, even if they lurk beneath the surface evading easy identification.

Among the reasons for a speech sucking the following are stand outs:

1. The speaker is presenting someone else's work.

Perhaps a co-worker's. Perhaps work done by someone who reports to them. Perhaps work they've read about on the interweb, but have no material experience with.

You will always be superficial if you present someone else's work. You will lack passion. Your speech will be memorized, and it will sound like it. You'll lack the depth that verbally and non-verbally communicates competence. You'll fail to throw off the micro-clues that tell the audience that you know what the heck you're talking about.

If you want to be known for thing x, present your ideas/solutions/critique/outlandish theories about thing x.

Sometimes it is unavoidable. Your teammate just can't be there, so you have to go meet the client. Open by saying it is not your work, talk for two minutes about what it is that you are good at, then promise to represent the work as best as you can. It'll go well.

*Bonus: When presenting other people's work, identify it as their work and not yours, but don't say things you don't believe. You'll feel dirty, and audiences are good at smelling integrity compromises.

2. The speaker is selling themselves, not their ideas.

I am great. Look at how great I am. Don't you agree that I'm great? Here's me standing on a private jet flying at 800 miles/hr. Look at me.

Did you see me from all angles? Let me turn around.

Great. Right.

Oh. Here's something on nano-tubes.

Did I say nono-tubes? I mean Paid Search is garbage, it is all about Programmatic TV.

I went to Harvard.

You know the kind.

In the first 90 seconds you know it is going to be a looooooong 30 min talk.

Look. No one cares about you, and they certainly don't care about what they can do for you.

What do they care about? What your ideas can do for them. Get to it.

Organizers don't always listen to me, but I tell each one not to introduce me to the audience. Don't go up before I talk and tell the audience I work at x and I am a best selling author and on boards and write a popular blog and blah blah blah. My instructions are: Just tell the audience, Avinash is joining us today with a collection of ideas you can action.

If I use slides, I have zero slides on myself. My first slide goes into what I have to say.

If my ideas are fresh/valuable/unique/actionable/great, people will Google me and look me up. They will want to learn about me.

If my ideas suck, will anyone remember the seven minute pompous bio intro by the organizer - or self-pimping on the first seven slides at the start of my presentation?

Let the strength of your ideas, the remarkableness of your stories, highlight how great you are.

3. Instead of one, the speaker incorporates seven agendas into their presentation.

You want to talk about nano-tubes.

Your boss is wants you to talk about petroleum jelly.

Your boss's boss wants you to spend time talking about the last year's business success because it is a way for her to get promoted.

Your internal comms team wants you to not talk about topics M and R because... Well just because.

Your trusted peer wants to ensure you praise clients M and W but not hurt T and O's feelings.

The organizer wants you to talk about innovation edges, but "connect" with the PhDs in the room as well as the "unsophisticated" majority in the room.

Because you are a team player you create a speech that solves for almost all of these agendas.

With very positive intent, you've guaranteed failure.

The very best stories are one person's point of view, and, ideally, they solve for one agenda.

It is incredibly difficult to to do justice to even one focused agenda in the 30 or 45 minutes you'll have. Stuffing seven (often conflicting agendas), or taking things in 19 different directions ensures you 100 lumens intelligence will be dimmed to a heartbreaking 2 lumens.

When agenda stuffing is unavoidable, compromise as little as you can. Work extra hard on the one story that is solving for the audience's agenda - even if it is only 5 minutes of your presentation. If you are going to suck, disappoint the audience as little as you can.

4. There is no story (content, human, value).

Some speakers rattle off features of your product.

Others focus on the specs of your bicycle.

Others still flit from thing to thing like a bumble bee, without any overarching connective tissue.

And, there are those who string together a random collection of buzzy things that all connect together into a big fat nothingburger. Shiny, but empty.

The story matters.

In TMAI #113, (Tell amazing stories: Public speaking tips) I've shared the Care-Do-Impact storytelling framework. Please consider using it. It forces an understanding of what you are trying to say, incentivizes a focus on your customers needs (the audience), and there is an entire bit where you have to prove that what you are saying actually matters.

Content is anything that adds value to the recipient's life. Use the framework to ensure it exists, and you storify that.

There is one more thing. You matter too. Your story. What you love. What you hate. What you would die for. What you live for. Who you really are.

If your content is good, your audience will be happy. If your content comes with you as a package, your audience will be delighted and do what you say.

10 or 85 slides are just slides.

10 or 85, slides with a story where you reveal you... that's communication.

5. The speaker ignores the audience's intelligence.

It astounds me how often this happens.

An audience can see through the fact that you are BSing them.

An audience can see through when you are spinning them.

An audience can see through it when you put lipstick on a pig.

An audience can see through your bait and switch.

An audience knows when you are paying false homage, when you fail to acknowledge failure, only focus on the positive, etc. etc. etc.

None of this is hard for an audience.

When you BS/spin/lipstick, you throw off micro-clues that betray you. The pace at which you talk, the thing you skip over, the way you lean, the part you dwell on, the texture of your voice.

You won't hear anyone starting to heckle you - almost all audiences are incredibly polite - nor will they even come up and tell you that they could see through your charade. They just won't respect you. And, they won't show up the next time.

I've given you tips of what to do for each reason the presentation sucks above. For reason #5, there is no out: Just don't suck. Respect your audience, respect their intelligence.

Bonus intelligence tip: We all speak to audiences of mixed backgrounds, professional experiences, job levels, and competencies. Presenting a story that'll cut across that mix is hard. Your strategy should not be to "dumb your story down." Your strategy should be to simplify complexity. You retain the intelligence; you make it accessible for an audience of mixed backgrounds/skills.

Bottom-line: The first time I got on a public stage on Jun 01, 2005, I was scared out of my wits. I was on stage today (Cathy took the pic), and I was scared out of my wits before I went on. During that time period, I've made lots of mistakes, I've sucked - including the reasons above. But, I've also watched some of the world's most extraordinary speakers who've helped me create a set of exceptional standards that I work every hard to meet. In a very small way, I hope my accumulated lessons do the same for you.

Never compromise. Your content. Your values. You.

Break a leg.

-Avinash.

PS: This edition of TMAI started as a tweet, with four of the above five reasons. The thread that followed that tweet has great conversation in it, with lots of wisdom from the crowd. Do check it out.