Write a one-page outline of your talk that you can speak from.
Close your slide software, take one sheet of A4 or open one blank screen, and give yourself about twenty-five minutes. You will put your whole talk on that page before any slides exist.
The usual mistake is to open slide software and start dragging charts in before the middle of the talk exists. That usually ends with thirty slides and no clear route through them. A one-page outline is the whole talk on one side of A4 or one screen. You can see all of it at a glance, and it is easy to change. If the projector fails on the day, you can speak from it.
Write your core message as the first line. Word it exactly as you tested it in Lesson 1.4, Write and test your message and audience profile. Everything below that line has to serve it. Under it, write the length of your slot and your target, which is the slot length minus at least one minute.
Arjun works for a group of clinics. He has a 12-minute slot (an example figure) at the clinic managers' meeting, where he is presenting a recommendation to people senior to him. From module 1 he has a core message and an audience profile, and he has an opening and close he is fairly happy with. He has no middle. His instinct is to open his slide software and start dragging charts in. Instead, he writes this top line: "Moving our one reminder from one day before to two days before would cut missed appointments." Below it he writes: slot 12 minutes, target 11 minutes or less.
Choose a structure from Lesson 2.1, Structures that work for most talks. Arjun is recommending something to senior people, so he uses situation, complication and resolution. That means the current state, then the problem the data shows, then the proposal. He states the recommendation early, which is what Lesson 2.2, Open strong in the first 30 seconds, advises for senior audiences.
Give each part of the talk its own line or two: the opening, three main points, and the close with your ask. Each main point gets a signpost, a short spoken phrase that marks it, such as "First, where we are." Keep every line short. The outline is a map of the talk that you glance at, and you should not read from it like a script. Write full sentences only for the opening, the signposts and the close. If you write full sentences for everything, you will read them out on the day instead of speaking.
Arjun's outline looks like this, with the signposts in quotation marks:
Opening: "I'm going to ask two of your clinics to try sending our reminder a day earlier." Then one sentence on why it matters to them: fewer empty slots and less time spent on rebooking calls. Point 1, situation: "First, where we are." The clinics send one reminder the day before each appointment. Point 2, complication: "Second, what the data shows." Missed appointments are highest on Mondays and after public holidays, when the day-before reminder lands on a day off. Point 3, resolution: "Third, what I'm proposing." The same single message sent two days before, trialled at two clinics for three months, with no extra work for front-desk staff. Close: the message in the same words, then the ask: two volunteer clinics by the end of the meeting.
Next to each main point, write one piece of evidence or one example. One per point is enough. A point with no evidence is an opinion, and the audience will treat it as one. When you give the talk, name your sources out loud.
For point 1, Arjun's evidence is a screenshot of the current reminder text. For point 2, he uses a bar chart of missed appointments by weekday over six months, taken from the group's booking system. For point 3, he uses the messaging vendor's reply confirming that changing the send time is a settings change with no extra cost. All three are his own sources, and he names each one as he speaks.
Mark the places where a story would help. A placeholder is fine for now. Arjun writes "story: the patient who missed two appointments after Deepavali". Module 3 covers stories in detail.
Stand up, set a timer and talk the whole thing through aloud from the outline alone. Don't use slides or a full script, and speak at the pace you would use in the room. Reading silently tells you nothing about length, because people read much faster than they speak. Write the time of each run at the bottom of the page. Then cut and run it again until you are inside the target. If you still can't get under the target after three runs, go back to the keep, move or cut test in Lesson 1.3, Cut what you love but they do not need.
Arjun's first run took 14 minutes 20 seconds against a target of 11 minutes, so he needed to cut 3 minutes 20 seconds. Point 2 caused the overrun, because he walked through every weekday instead of the two that mattered. He cut point 2 down to Mondays and post-holiday days and moved the full table to the appendix. This is a common way to save time: keep only the details that matter and put complete data at the back. His second run took 11 minutes 40 seconds. He then trimmed his opening story to two sentences. His third run took 10 minutes 50 seconds, inside the target with a minute to spare in the slot.
Your outline is finished when it fits on one side of A4 or one screen and follows this order: core message, opening, three main points each with a signpost and one piece of evidence, then the close with the ask. Your run times go at the bottom of the page, and the last one must be inside the target. You should be able to glance at the page once and give the talk from it. Keep the outline where you can find it again. The next module adds stories and examples to it, and module 4 builds your slides from it.
Your own outline, timer and first run come next.
Write your one-page outline, talk through it with a timer running, and adjust it until it fits your slot with a minute to spare.
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