He doesn’t DO PowerPoint!

Posted on April 1, 2010 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

We should all learn from a senior corporate executive I know. This guy once participated in a meeting where half the attendees were in another geographic location, and were hearing our location via teleconference. At some point one of the people in the remote location asked “Are you showing any PowerPoint slides? Because we aren’t seeing them on our screen here”. And the exec said, emphatically:
“I don’t DO PowerPoint!”

I was overjoyed when I heard that. He didn’t do PowerPoint; instead, he talked to his audiences, explaining, instructing, directing, managing, leading, role modeling… all the things a manager ought to do, none of which really necessitates slide presentations.

Of course, PowerPoint and its like are useful; I use them myself, when the need arises. But I do my best not to make them the main thing; after all, a slide deck is but a support tool to help the speaker get the message across. Unfortunately this obvious truth is often forgotten. We’ve all sat drowsily through meeting after meeting where 80-slide presentations are droned through by one presenter after the other, to no conceivable use. The mind boggles at the accumulated effort and time invested worldwide in preparing snazzy slides (many of them quite confusing) and in listening to them being read mechanically. And the medium isn’t conducive to critical thinking, as pointed out by Edward Tufte in his insightful but sad booklet “The cognitive style of PowerPoint”, where he goes so far as to attribute the Columbia space shuttle disaster to the deficient managerial process triggered by the presentations used at NASA.

I myself had a jarring wakeup call years ago when our plant got a new training manager. The newcomer sat through a few meetings (we had lots of those) and told me “I don’t get it. Why do you guys read endless bullets from slides? Why can’t you just say what you want to say?”  This had a serious influence on my slidemanship from that day on… I began to use slides for pictures that would illustrate what I had to say, rather than for text to read from. It did my lectures a world of good.

So – next time you or those around you use PowerPoint, try to use it sensibly, like that exec I mentioned. Or at least try to avoid the style of the hilarious Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation (don’t miss slide 5 – it always cracks me up :-)).

 

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We should all learn from a senior corporate executive I know. This guy once participated in a meeting where half the attendees were in another geographic location, and were hearing our location via teleconference. At some point one of the people in the remote location asked “Are you showing any PowerPoint slides? Because we aren’t seeing them on our screen here”. And the exec said, emphatically: “I don’t DO PowerPoint!”

I was overjoyed when I heard that. He didn’t do PowerPoint; instead, he talked to his audiences, explaining, instructing, directing, managing, leading, role modeling… all the things a manager ought to do, none of which really necessitates slide presentations.

Of course, PowerPoint and its like are useful; I use them myself, when the need arises. But I do my best not to make them the main thing; after all, a slide deck is but a support tool to help the lecturer get the message across. Unfortunately this obvious truth is usually forgotten. We’ve all sat drowsily through meeting after meeting where 80-slide presentations are droned through by one presenter after the other, to no conceivable use. The mind boggles at the accumulated effort and time invested worldwide in preparing snazzy slides (many of them quite confusing) and in listening to them being read mechanically. And the medium isn’t conducive to critical thinking, as pointed out by Edward Tufte in his insightful but sad booklet “The cognitive style of PowerPoint”, where he goes so far as to attribute the Columbia space shuttle disaster to the deficient managerial process triggered by the presentations used at NASA.

I myself had a jarring wakeup call years ago when our plant got a new training manager. The newcomer sat through a few meetings (we had lots of those) and told me “I don’t get it. Why do you guys read endless bullets from slides? Why can’t you just say what you want to say?”This had a serious influence on my slidemanship from that day on… I began to use slides for pictures that would illustrate what I had to say, rather than for text to read from. It did my lectures a world of good.

So – next time you or those around you use PowerPoint, try to use it sensibly, like that exec I mentioned. Or at least try to avoid the style of the hilarious Gettysburg PowerPoint Presentation (don’t miss slide 5 – it always cracks me up).