Alfred Hitchcock, like Disney, was a believer in the power of dreaming big. Before the movie-maker started work on a new production he’d go and sit at the back of an empty cinema and ‘watch’ his own movie from start to finish. He dreamed up the project and then he went out and made it.

I’d advise you to think this big when you plan a presentation. Get creative first then organise later. The same strategy works well at the very beginning of your preparation.

1. Find a comfortable place to sit. Close your eyes and picture yourself sitting at the back of an auditorium. It’s dark and there are rows of empty seats in front of you. When the lights come up you will see yourself on that screen doing your presentation exactly as you planned. See it, hear it, feel it. Make it bright, appealing and exactly how you want it to be. It can take as long as you like to get the movie just right and you can go back to it as much as you want.

2. Replay that movie reel in your head as you write down any ideas and phrases that come to you. Ask yourself, what excites me? What would I enjoy sharing with my audience? What are the ideas I want them to remember? What drives me to share this information with my audience? Make your notes as visual and colourful as possible. The trick is to start from a really good feeling – it’s going to be the energy that allows you to prepare in a professional and thorough way and in a way that is – crucially – also fun.

3. Once you’ve got the core ideas, create a storyboard to record key images and ideas. It can be on a pinboard or in a notebook. You can add newspaper articles or images that inspire you. This is a process of pulling all the ideas in. Then the realist can organise them (see below). If you know how to use mind maps (and if you don’t look at Tony Buzan’s tips for mind-mapping on www.buzanworld.com), they are also a great way to make patterns and connections.

Mark out the four quadrants on the sheet of paper and put the appropriate heading in each quadrant, following the map. You have two options now. Take your work from dreamer and either write ideas directly on to the message map in the sections that they fit best, or, and this is my preference, take Post-it notes and stick them in the sections. Then you can move them around and edit as you refine the message.

1. Problem • What’s the challenge your audience are facing? What do they want to escape from? • Why is solving the problem important and what will it be like for them when the problem is solved? • Make sure you frame the problem in a way that keeps the audience’s spirits high. • Any problem can be framed positively: ‘Nice weather for ducks’ over ‘What a gloomy day’.

2. Solution/Transforming Insight • What can you offer as ideas to move the audience forward? • What have your transformational insights been when struggling with the problem yourself? It’s a good point to disclose something from your own life here – to build connection with the audience. • This is a good place to tell your story about your diamond insight.

3. How To – What’s in it for the audience? • Here help the audience to understand how they should commit to the ideas. Give them practical steps and also motivate them as to why it matters and what’s in it for them. Give examples of how they have helped you or others. • This is a section that can stretch in terms of time (speech coach KC Baker calls it the accordion section for that reason). You can have five minutes of practical ideas in a short presentation or 40 minutes in a workshop.

4. Call to Action – What’s next? • What are the action steps you want the audience to take? • If the context of your presentation is a professional one, make the call to action very clear. Do you want them to sell your idea for you in the wider world? To connect you with people or make things happen? To influence tricky people? To help you move the idea forward creatively? • Know what you want, make it crystal clear to your audience and make it achievable. It can help to describe a future vision as if it’s already happening: ‘Wouldn’t it be great … to be sitting in … to be able to say …’ etc

Aim for at least three pieces of content per quadrant: points, stories, examples or statistics that will form the building blocks of your talk. So you’ll have about 12 pieces of core content across the four quadrants of the map. If the presentation is short you won’t use all of them – the critic will cut many of them.

But the point is to be able to choose the right ideas for this audience. Get the big rocks in first; you can put the smaller details into the talk later. At this stage it can help to sit down with a voice recorder and record the content that you have so far (keep it loose and chatty – a very rough draft). Listen to it and see what you like. See what flows. See what sticks. Write down what works. And where you falter, alter.