For a decade at the Lagos Business School, a Financial Times-ranked, triple-accredited institution in Africa, I’ve facilitated communication sessions for MBAs, executive MBAs, professionals, and leaders across sectors.
After reviewing the grading records and cross-referencing the participant lists I’d saved from 2015 to 2025, I stopped counting the brilliant minds I’ve had the honour to teach when I reached 1,100. That verifiable figure now supports the Global 4-Domain Communication Skills Rating Tool, which I began developing in July.
So, when delivering those sessions at the Lagos Business School or in my private training and coaching practice, I routinely offer one evergreen piece of advice on ensuring public speaking impact in this AI age, where quick perfection is celebrated:
Commit to targeted practice so you can adapt your communication to changing contexts.
Connecting to the global scene, McKinsey’s Talent Trends survey reveals the contradiction:
- Only 16% of global employers invest in adaptability and continuous learning programmes.
- Yet, just 26% of 10,000 employees surveyed worldwide rate adaptability as their top skill.
Bottom line?
All preparation techniques are not equal.
‘All preparation techniques are not equal’.
– Lucille Ossai
Why You Must Transition to the Reverse PowerPoint Preparation Technique for Speeches and Presentations
The problem with your preparation technique is your unstructured process — practising sometimes in front of a mirror, your pet, friends, or family — which produces inconsistent results.
You may know your content, and by now, you’ve realised the dangers of ‘winging it’ by speaking without preparation. That leaves you with the ‘safe’ option of memorising your presentation or speech from the beginning to the end. However, this decision could also be detrimental to your delivery, and here’s why:
When you memorise your presentation, you put too much pressure on yourself to be witty, confident, knowledgeable, and the best thing since milk chocolate. Then if something goes wrong, you’d lose your train of thought, or go off on a tangent, negating your delivery and denting your credibility.
Therefore, you need a system that works every time you speak to ensure a great outcome, in addition to sharing your relevant content.
I recommend a simple yet powerful process that I call the Reverse PowerPoint Preparation Technique — a counterintuitive three-stage framework that ensures flexibility and consistently delivers results.
This model is critical because McKinsey identifies communication and mental flexibility as foundational skills for the future of work, essential for professionals navigating fast-changing environments.
When David McGimpsey (formerly the Presentation Blogger) introduced the technique some years ago on his insightful blog, I knew he’d struck gold. I revised his ideas, incorporated elements from my proprietary frameworks, and gave it an appropriate name. Then I started using it. When I saw how it helped me structure my lectures and communication sessions to ensure a confident and memorable delivery, I began teaching it to executive MBAs.
Below is how it works:
Stage I: Plan (Steps 1-4) — Clarify Your Message and Foundation
Lay the foundation for clarity and relevance to your audience.
1) Think of your audience and address their WIIFM (the what’s in it for me) angle with your content. Asking yourself the foundational question is the first step to zeroing in on what’s essential and relevant to them.
2) Write an outline (based on the point above) and make short notes.
3) Keep your outline simple, brief, and clear.
4) Read the outline a few times to familiarise yourself with the structure of your presentation/speech and ensure logical flow.
Stage 2: Craft (Steps 5-9) — Shape and Design Your Presentation
Build structure and visual coherence.
5) Begin strong (a shocking statement, a statistic, a question, a story, a prop, etc.).
6) Practise your entire presentation/speech without the outline and notes until you nail the structure.
7) Practise with the notes at least three times.
8) Open PowerPoint (Keynote, Prezi, Gamma or your preferred presentation application), design and organise your slides, cross-check facts and sources, and then input the material from your outline/notes.
9) Use little text, more visuals, and avoid clutter during the slide design. Even when you think you’ve cut enough text, cut some more. Ensure one main idea per slide.
Stage 3: Polish (Steps 10–11) — Refine for Confidence and Flexibility
Practise intentionally until flexibility feels instinctive.
10) Practise with the slides. Practise at least 10 times from the beginning to the end, or until you get everything right five times in a row.
11) End with a bang. Provide a strong call to action with a verbal flourish. Be as dramatic/memorable as you can. Harness the power of warm/open body language to remain top of mind.
For high-stakes presentations, speeches, or talks, you’ll need to repeat steps 10-11 over several days or weeks.
This preparation process guarantees that:
(A) You know your material inside out (aka ‘cold’) and can deliver it with or without the slides or visual aids if necessary.
(B) You remain calm and confident, whatever the circumstances — power failure, tech failure, your speaking time decimated, etc. You know what to cut/highlight/reframe and still wow your audience because you’ve ‘internalised’ your content.
And recently, two speaking events reminded me of the importance of targeted practice in your delivery and why you need to pivot to this reliable model.
Event #1: Disrupt Lagos 3 – When Tech Failure Becomes Your Test in Flexibility
For the second consecutive year, I spoke at Disrupt Lagos — modelled after the global DisruptHR events, known for their high-energy timed format.
Last year at DisruptHR Lagos 2, the experience was novel for me. I (and 13 other insightful speakers) delivered presentations in the DisruptHR global format:
- Five minutes
- Twenty slides
- Fifteen seconds per slide change
So, I applied the same advice I teach others; I used the Reverse PowerPoint Preparation Technique. Afterwards, fellow speakers commented that I knew my slides so well that I handled the timed slide changes masterfully. My talk ended up among the top five talks published on the global DisruptHR website for the week of 19/2024.
So, for this year’s edition, I followed the same preparation pattern to structure my presentation. I ensured that I had premium content and practised multiple times in the weeks leading up to the event. The intentional preparation made me confident of the material, enabling me to convey my passion for the topic. I was ready for anything, but I still didn’t expect anything to go wrong.
I was mistaken.
The event organiser introduced me, and I walked on stage to begin my presentation. Knowing my slide sequence and timing, I spoke without glancing back. However, from my peripheral view, I could see that by slide three, the screen had frozen. I paused, glanced at the screen, and then calmly approached the announcer in the left corner of the stage.
I explained that my slides weren’t advancing. After a brief tech check, she advised me to restart, which I did. The second time, another slide went blank, but I continued, finished my presentation and walked to my seat amid the encouraging cheers from the audience.
The event’s presentations were to be forwarded to the global DisruptHR organisers, so the convener of Disrupt Lagos 3 asked if I’d like to deliver my presentation a third time, after all speakers had finished. She wanted me to provide a seamless version, as the tech professionals later switched the large screen that projected onto the stage. I welcomed the opportunity. I was so prepared that I could have delivered that presentation blindfolded.
So, as I stepped on the stage a third time, I made a light-hearted comment that the last two attempts were the ‘warm up’ — and that the third was the ‘real deal’. The audience chuckled and briefly applauded.
The event organiser later explained that my slides were ‘too tech’, and that caused the glitch. I’d embedded light AI animations into the slides and timed them to change every 15 seconds. Everything displayed perfectly when I rehearsed at home. But, for some reason, two slides went white at the event. I continued nonetheless, but slowed my pace and tone during those slides, without looking behind me, as I was familiar with my content.
Later, I was commended on my determination, and one of the speakers admired how confident I was despite the setbacks. (Another speaker also had technical glitches but recovered well).
The reason for my calm confidence?
The focused preparation made me flexible in my delivery.
As a speaker or presenter, note a reassuring outcome:
Flexibility is like the last arrow in your quiver when your opponent’s weapons have been spent.
‘Flexibility is like the last arrow in your quiver when your opponent’s weapons have been spent‘.
— Lucille Ossai
Flexible communicators inspire action — and that’s how organisations stay adaptable in a VUCA world.
As your differentiator and strategic advantage, flexibility also signals your professionalism and highlights your confidence. Being able to revise your content or adapt your style to a specific context, in real-time, is an invaluable skill in public speaking. Adaptability also enables you to use your nonverbal cues to enhance your delivery and showcase the mastery of your material.
In the 20 years I’ve been obsessed with effective communication, 10 of which I’ve been facilitating sessions at the business school, I’ve never had tech issues that threatened to derail my speeches or presentations. But in one event, the tech failed three times.
As trite as it sounds, always prepare for the worst. Be ready to deliver your presentation without your slides, if necessary. You may not always have the perfect conditions to speak.
If this event tested my adaptability, the second event below tested a speaker I’d coached.
Event #2: The 2025 LBS Mini-Keynote Competition — When the Audience Tests Your Resilience
Just two days after the Disrupt Lagos 3 event, I was back in a familiar arena — the annual Lagos Business School Mini-Keynote Competition. For the seventh consecutive year, I joined a panel of new judges tasked with evaluating nine MBA speakers and selecting the top three. As the communications coach at that educational powerhouse, I’d shortlisted and coached the nine MBA speakers in long, intensive sessions before the event. Therefore, I was looking forward to seeing their performance at the event.
And I wasn’t disappointed.
All speakers performed to a high standard at the hybrid competition. Two other judges and I attended in person, while two virtual judges who logged in from the Netherlands and the UAE provided a good balance to ensure judging rigour.
As the presentations progressed, the virtual judges sent a private message to one of the in-person judges. They couldn’t hear a speaker properly and advised that he redid his presentation.
After discussions, the speaker was encouraged to present again, after all other speakers. Initially, he declined, and that was understandable, given the competitive nature of the event. But he later reconsidered and presented again.
When the MBA student returned to speak, I noticed that he was more confident in his performance. He adjusted his nonverbal and verbal cues and ended on a stronger note. Although he didn’t win, he drew admiration from the audience, and one of the virtual judges commended him on his resilience. His preparation technique was thorough, and it made his delivery flexible.
Conclusion
What you should know:
You can perform tech checks before your speech or even have the equipment changed (as was the case in the first event). But other factors you can’t control could still negate your impact — unless you prepared thoroughly.
Therefore, rather than obsessing about getting standing ovations or remembering every clever expression you’d delivered to perfection at home, do this:
Prepare and practise so well that you become flexible in your delivery and can’t be ignored.
When you’re flexible, you connect better with the audience. You can then focus on sharing insights that will improve their lives in some way or make them feel something profound (so they could act differently).
The key question isn’t whether practice makes perfect — It’s whether your thorough preparation makes you flexible.
Perfection is elusive. Flexibility is empowering.
Note:
The Global 4-Domain Communication Skills Rating is approaching beta. After October 2025, it goes dark until the public launch.
In the meantime, please email Lucille@LucilleOssai.com if you’d like me to speak at your event or design and deliver communication coaching and training programmes for your organisation.
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N.B: First image is courtesy of John Hain via Pixabay. Second and third images are courtesy of Gerd Altmann via Pixaba