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April 09, 2008
The PowerPoint problem
Don’t worry; I’m not going to rail against Microsoft PowerPoint® as if it’s the devil’s tool. (That would be Edward Tufte's specialty.)
In fact, I think PowerPoint can be a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say, if used well.
But what I realized as I was listening to a senior communicator’s presentation at a recent conference, is that PowerPoint is often misused—even by communicators. Talk about Shoemaker’s Children Syndrome. If we communicators can’t do PowerPoint well, what hope is there for all the engineers and accountants and scientists and nuclear physicists out there?
I was surprised that at least half of the presentations at this recent conference were mediocre (at best). The problems were remarkably consistent, including:
Lack of navigation. Too many communicators plunged into their talk without providing an agenda or contents page. They also failed to use simple navigation tools such as numbering (“5 ways we’ve improved communication”), eyebrow titles (indicating where they were in the narrative) or summation slides (“5 ways we’ve improved . . .”). This had the effect of setting audience members adrift; we didn’t know where we were in the story, where we might go next, or how it all would end.
Too much content per slide. There were w-a-a-a-a-y too many words, jammed together, crowding each other for breathing space on a single slide. That meant the speaker talked to each slide for far too much time. After about 10 minutes on a slide, the impatient among us longed to grab the clicker to move things along.
Not enough slides. This is the same problem as above, from a different angle. It was as if speakers thought they were limited to 18 or 20 slides, therefore they had to cram all 45 minutes worth of content to fit that quota. I wanted to tell them: “Hey, slides are free! Just divide one slide into two or three, and you’re already going a long way to improve your presentation!”
Reading the slides. A beginner’s mistake, yet several speakers read word-for-word from the text on the slides. I was embarrassed for them.
A lack of visuals. If ever there was a medium that begs for photos, cartoons, drawings or other visuals, it’s PowerPoint. Yet most of the mediocre presentations contained not even one visual: just words in the form of bullets, tables, or paragraphs. Even Clip Art (which Microsoft provides for free) would have provided relief.
Am I being hard on these speakers? Absolutely. But these folks were all senior communicators, working for major corporations or consulting firms. They should be role models for presentation excellence, not poster children for how not to use PowerPoint.
Love PowerPoint or hate it, but if you’re going to use it, use it well.
Posted by Alison Davis at April 9, 2008 02:56 PM
Comments
Lots of great points Alison. There seems almost to be a crusade against PowerPoint on the web these days. The problem is probably just as much down to the user as it is down to the software.
I do find however that PowerPoint's interface and the supplied themes do lend themselves to a bad presentation-style so the critique against the program is probably not completely without merit.
In the end though, just people like yourself actually taking time to give these pointers might help us towards the promised land where no presentations are boring - ever...
Posted by: T. Benjamin Larsen at April 9, 2008 04:46 PM
I agree with you on all points, Alison.
I can excuse the speaker for skipping the "navigation" slides if they provide a roadmap for their talk verbally instead. But the other four problems are symptomatic of poor preparation or lack of knowledge about how to use slides to complement your talk.
Like you, I'm not going to jump on the "Eliminate PowerPoint" bandwagon. It's a tool with much potential to enhance a talk if it is used well.
Posted by: Andrew - Six Minutes Public Speaking Blog at April 9, 2008 05:16 PM
Allison:
I hear that the CIA has replaced "waterboarding" with forced observation of some of a former colleague's Power Point slide presentations. He was known for believing that if God gave us space on a slide we are duty-bound to fill it. Likewise, he believes that Power Point is a good replacement for the written script and that his audiences are spellbound by his reading each slide as presented on the screen.
With this new strategy, the CIA should soon know the exact location of all the world's known terrorists!
Keep smiling!
Tim
Posted by: Tim Fidler at May 22, 2008 07:44 AM