I remember in grad school, for school assignments, teachers will require a set number of slides as part of grade elements. Many people whose only reference is that experience often complain about high slide counts in presentations. How many slides is too much? How does one go about deciding the right number to include in a presentation? Are there rules which will make this decision an easy one?

Unfortunately, there are no fast rules when it comes to the number of slides in a presentation. It depends on the duration of the presentation, the degree of details you wish to share, and your familiarity with the guidelines of a powerful presentation. Let’s examine the problem with too few slides. 

Too few slides

The first problem with the concern over slide count is the density of information crammed into one slide. Too much information on a single slide forces the presenter to use the slide as a crutch. The brain activity required to remember all the points on the slide proves overwhelming. To avoid cognitive overload, it’s very common to see some presenters carry around notes. While not a big problem, paper notes can take the audience away from the main message.

Further, too much information on the slides keeps the presenter from telling his story. Information density is a problem not just for the presenter but also for the audience. Research has shown that when given the option, the brain will always elect to tackle the easiest task available. In this case, it’s much easier to read the slides than to read the slides and listen to the presenter at the same time. Adding too many slides also creates its own troubles.

Too many slides

The primary issue with too many slides is the display speed. To cover the information on all the slides, the presenter will have to go fast. This leaves the audience too little time to capture, let alone retain, the information presented. The frantic pace of the presentation denies the audience the opportunity to learn with the presenter. Too little is a problem, and too many is also a problem. So how do we get to the right number of slides?

My approach

My preferred formula is to not spend more than two minutes on a slide. So if the presentation will last an hour, my deck will have approximately 30 slides. I found this to be a comfortable pace for an effective presentation. However, there is a significant caveat. For this approach to work, the presenter has to invest a lot of time not only in deciding what kind of information makes it onto the slides but also in what kind of information will better serve the story in the speaker notes. 

Clearly, there is an answer to the slide problem that seems to work pretty well for most speakers. Too few slides and you end up with high information density problem; too many and you create an information dissemination speed problem. Either one means that the audience has to work much harder to retain the information. A high cognitive load pushes the audience to stop trying to retain information. Great presentations have an easy flow, and the story these presentations tell is in sync with the visuals. That’s the only way to ensure a comfortable audience experience.

Presentations are a form of performance, and like any good performance, they need timing and cadence. That doesn’t mean you have to be a professional speaker or an actor—it just means that once you’ve mastered the basics of presenting, you’ll want to fine-tune your presentation so it’s more entertaining to watch and easier for your audience to follow.

The importance of timing and cadence in your presentation

It’s no secret that timing and cadence are important in all aspects of life. Whether you’re working on a presentation, writing an essay, or performing in front of an audience, being able to control the flow of events is an essential skill. If you don’t have it, your audience will be distracted—and they’ll likely start talking among themselves as well!

A good presentation will create a rhythm for your audience members to follow so they can better understand what’s happening. This rhythm should help guide them through their learning process and give them something familiar with which to identify. A bad presentation will feel like a disorganized mess that never lets the audience catch up or grow comfortable enough with the topic at hand. It may not seem like much at first glance, but having an effective cadence can make all the difference between a good presentation and one that leaves people confused and wanting more information elsewhere (or worse still: bored).

Humans respond to timing and cadence

Humans are the most responsive to rhythm and cadence. If you’ve ever noticed how your heart rate speeds up when you’re excited or slows down when you’re relaxed, it’s because humans respond to timing. The same is true for our brains: we can hear the difference between a heartbeat and a metronome—even if they’re playing identical rhythms at different tempos—because of our natural sensitivity to cadence.

If you don’t believe me, try this simple experiment: tap along with your hand or foot as you count from one to ten in an even rhythm (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10). Then try tapping along again as you count unevenly (7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16). Did your brain feel more comfortable with one pattern over another? The key here is that both patterns were equally even; they just had different amounts of beats per measure!

As speakers, we have control over how many beats we include in each measure—which means we can create our own sense of timing and rhythm on stage by varying our speech patterns accordingly.

Rhythm, rhyme, timing, and cadence in your presentation

Rhythm, rhyme, and cadence are all about timing. A presentation that has no rhythm is like a drum machine with no syncopation; it’ll get the job done, but it won’t be exciting to listen to or fun to dance along with. You want your presentation to have some bounce in its step—a good balance between the calm sections and the fast ones.

Rhythm, rhyme, and cadence make things feel alive because they appeal directly to our emotions by fueling our subconscious minds with sensations of opportunity (e.g., if I hear something that sounds familiar, I should pay attention) or urgency (e.g. if someone is shouting at me).

Rhythm also gives us pleasure by triggering our brain’s pleasure center—the nucleus accumbens—which releases dopamine when we hear something pleasurable (like music). Similarly, rhyming words activate the same area of the brain responsible for romantic feelings like trust and love (the caudate) because they sound similar enough for us to think that they’re related somehow! Rhyming words also give us a sense of control over our environment because every time we hear one come up again later on down in line-by-line text like this article or spoken sentence structure such as dialogue within movies.

How fast should you speak?

We all have different personalities, and it’s important to find the right pace for your speech. If you’re talking too slowly, people won’t be able to follow along and will get bored before the end of your talk. On the other hand, if you speak too quickly and rush through each sentence without giving yourself time to breathe or pause between thoughts, it will seem like a series of unrelated ideas rather than a cohesive narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.

The best way to determine how fast is right for you is by listening back to some recordings of past speeches (or podcasts) as well as taking note of what feels comfortable during practice sessions in front of an audience or mirroring audience members who are watching/listening so they can give feedback on whether they felt like they were able to follow along easily enough or if there were any points where they felt lost because they missed something while distracted by their surroundings (this happens more often than we’d like).

Should you speak slower or faster than normal?

In general, the slower you speak, the more you can emphasize important points. If you’re talking about a new product that will help your audience save time and money, for example, slow down as much as possible to make sure they know how much time and money they’ll be saving.

On the other hand, if you’re talking about something less important—for example, a new feature on an app that won’t have any effect on their lives—you can speed up without losing them.

Timing is what makes the difference between a bland presentation and one that sizzles.

A bad presenter will speak too fast, too slow, or get off-track altogether; their material will be too complex for an audience with little time to spare; they’ll ramble on about things no one cares about; or they’ll simply be boring. An effective speaker, on the other hand, has learned how to use timing as an effective tool in their craft: instead of sounding like they’re reading off of notes or reciting memorized lines (which most people do—and it shows), they make eye contact with people throughout the room; pause before delivering key points in order to emphasize them; and vary their tone by lowering it when talking about something serious (like a tragic event) or raising it for comedic effect (e.g., an inside joke).

To find the perfect cadence, think of the heartbeat of your presentation. Does it beat too fast or too slow?

When thinking about cadence, it’s helpful to think of the heartbeat of your presentation. The perfect cadence will be steady and predictable, with no surprises. You want to find the right speed and rhythm for your speech—the right amount of time between each slide so that you can take in what you’ve just said to convey what’s coming next. At first, this might seem like an impossible task: how do you know when a second is too long or too short? Once you get familiar with PowerPoint and how long things take (as opposed to how long they feel), however, it becomes much easier to find that perfect pace. However, beware of the relentless pursuit of the perfect cadence. 

It’s easy to get lost in the pursuit of the perfect cadence. Perfection will always be the enemy of good. Remember that different people will have different cadences, and that’s okay. If you feel confident with your current timing and cadence, don’t try to change it. But if you want to make your next presentation stand out from the crowd, I hope these tips will help you find a rhythm that works for you.

There is only one way to accomplish anything in any organization: convincing stakeholders of why the suggested idea is good and how it will further the goals of the organization. I have spoken to more than one person who expressed frustration at the tedium of the process and the uncertain outcomes that most often result from this exercise in persuasion. Inside organizations, people from various fields have to talk to each other. Cross-discipline conversations are difficult for many reasons, chief among them is the tribal language that every domain of specialty has developed.

Product managers have their own language, business people have theirs, and marketing folks equally devised their own. Audit any organization and you will find as many dialects as there are departments. The powers that be in every organization hold each tribe to a very specific set of goals. Competing and sometimes contradictory goals are not uncommon. Every time you listen to someone complain, it’s always about how the other departments do no understand how important their functions are for the bottom line of the company.

It does not matter which departments are in discussion. Sales people think, usually, that they are the engines that fuel the bottom line of the company. The marketing folks believe the same thing. The people who make the product argue that without the product, there is nothing to market or to sell. It may not surprise you to hear HR stakeholders argue that if they don’t maintain the greatest culture, there will be no one left to create the product.

This “who’s more important” game may seem like a normal part of life in any organization. However, many great ideas have died premature and unnecessary deaths because of this tribal competition. The consequences of this apparent lack of appreciation for what others contribute are well known. My goal in this article is to make the case for learning how important it is for anyone who wishes to persuade people in other tribes inside their organization to make an effort.

The effort consists in learning and becoming fluent in the language spoken by the tribe one wishes to convince. Naturally, we only see the world through our own tribal lenses. We listen better when we are spoken to in the language we understand. How do you convince the people in finance that this bright new idea that came to you last night may actually prove phenomenal for the company. If you can’t speak to it in the same terms a finance person will, you have a dead on arrival piece of a good idea on your hands.

While the idea may turn out every bit as successful as you may have thought, you are asking people whose job consist in ensuring that the company hits its quarterly numbers to make a leap of faith with you into the unknown.  The only time this happens is if you are capable to speaking in terms that are familiar to them.

I can also argue that learning the language spoken by the other tribes in your organization helps with personal growth. You will eliminate the frustrations that we see in cross-organizational communication. The price for not doing so is a huge loss in productivity, in talent, and finally in opportunity.

So next time you have to communicate with people who live outside of your organization or your professional tribe, try to understand the language they speak. Effective persuasion begins there.