You can have great tomatoes and basil and still mess up the tomato sauce. How you put the ingredients together makes a difference. The seasonings you use to blend the flavors and even technique influence the outcome.
The same is true with speaking. You can have great content, great graphics, but the way you put them together and how you transition from one idea to the next have a huge impact.
Audiences easily misinterpret graphics, for example. The virgin viewer doesn’t see the graphic the same way the speaker does. The cliche that a picture is worth 1,000 words doesn’t always hold true. Even pictures need context.
Just recently, a guest spoke to a group of my clients and, inadvertently, put several to sleep. Gorgeous photos were allowed to fly past on a screen. There was little context, and the speaker’s otherwise delightful anecdotes seemed random and unrelated to what was on the screen. As a result, the speaker droned.
A great talk and a great sauce both start with good ingredients. Great speakers and cooks transform those foundations into something magical.