Mark McDonald

We all have to give presentations; most of which are part of our day to day responsibilities.  A sales presentation, status report, talking with your team, making an internal proposal all represent presentations that we have to make that have an impact on our lives and caresses.

Joey Asher’s book “15 minutes including Q&A” provides an outstanding guide for making these types of presentations. The book is the best 30 minutes I have ever invested in reading a book in a very long time.  I wrote about this issue a while ago in a post entitled “How big is your deck?”, but this book provides a much better answer to the question of creating engaging presentations.

Highly recommended as a tool to raise your personal performance as well as driving a new level of efficiency across the organization.  Recommended for anyone who has to give these everyday talks or who needs to rally a group to take collective action.  Further recommended as a change in your management teams — make everyone give only 15 minute presentations.

Asher’s premise is straightforward, it takes no more than 7 minutes to put any important idea across to an audience.  Then you leave the other 7 minutes for them to ask questions.  Asher is right, particularly for the everyday presentations we have to give.  Go much more than 15 minutes and you an literally see people begin to lose the will to live.  Covering your key points in 7 minutes and stopping creates interest and the demand to know more.

But how do you do this?

That is what the book is all about.

In keeping with the book’s theme, here are the three main strengths of this book

It’s clear and focused on teaching you how to give a talk based on 15 minutes including Q&A.  There is no wasted material in the book.

It covers everything you need to know to prepare, develop and give a great presentation.  It’s remarkable that Asher can cover message development, delivery techniques, prep and how to handle Q&A in just 106 booklet pages, but he does.

It is packaged in a way that leads you to put these ideas into practice.  The book is small, light and easy to read.  This book is going in my briefcase where I will not notice the size or the weight, but I will welcome the ability to refresh my thinking.

The 15 minute presentation including Q&A is among the most useful book’s that I have read in a long time.  It’s not for every presentation you give, but it’s ideal for the vast majority of presentation you have to give everyday to get your job done.

Something every manager, executive and team leader should read.

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Category: Book Review Tools     Tags: Book Review, Tools

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