Imagine you need to give a presentation about a complex business model like a hospital.  Where do you even start?

The danger in designing a presentation about a subject like this is to get bogged down in the complexities of the numbers and subsequently lose the audience’s attention.

That is why we are such big fans of using frameworks.  They not only provide a model for you to organise your ideas, they also organise information in a way that maintain’s attention. 

The Zoom-In/Zoom-Out framework is an excellent framework for putting a complex subject matter into perspective.  So how does it work?

Step One: Zoom-In

You know the saying about losing sight of the forest for the trees? Well, in this framework we start the presentation by focusing on just one tree.  In fact, you could focus on just one branch for that matter! Or even a leaf.

Let’s say your business presentation is looking at improved efficiency at a local hospital. Instead of just reeling out a number of statistics and KPI’s, you could instead recount the experience of one specific patient.

You could share their experience through each stage of the patient process. If you want, you can make it more personal by sharing threir back story before they arrived at the hospital. This is the zoom-in portion of your story.

Step Two: Zoom-Out

Now you can zoom out to the big picture. You can now focus on what this presentation is actually about.  You can demonstrate the broader narrative of how the hospital has been performing over the last 5 years.  You can even bring out all the fancy graphs you are eager to talk about.

Avoid the Messy Middle

One thing to remember: there is no need to fill in the gaps between the zoomed-in perspective and the zoomed-out perspective.

Avoid the temptation to fill in all the information gaps. Going back to the hospital example, there is no need to share perspectives of other departments or the staff etc.

Keep it simple! You are connecting with the audience through a personal connection during zoom-in section, and then demonstrating the big picture when you zoom out.

Clients find this framework really helps to weed out unnecessary information from their presentations.

Focus on the important stuff, and then get right to the point.