Time to rethink corporate presentations
It's time to pull the plug on PowerPoint
06 Nov 2008, Steve Hipwell, Computing
http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/opinion/1848796/its-pull-plug-powerpoint
In the era of the podcast and myriad other pervasive, rich media, view-anytime communications technologies, do we need live presentations?
PowerPoint has become synonymous with the slick technology salesman type, ratcheting up his acquisitive hard-sell spiel. Dressed like a modern-day mobster of the 1930s in his crisp Italian suit, peacocking around the stage. No tie; ties are passé. He reeks of deception. Held captive, the audience suffers the pitch and disarming platitudes before he attempts to infiltrate their psyches with nefarious sales techniques. The punters mostly comprise corporate conscripts, taking it all in; all that is missing is canned laughter.
I do not like corporate presentations because so few are any good. PowerPoint, although admittedly useful, has become a social crutch for those not wanting to look into the eyes of their audience. The result is often a set of dull slides with embedded banal clip-art of crazed ducks hitting computers with sledgehammers.
More poignantly, we seem to live in an age where everything requires a presentation. Where managers feel the need to gather their workers around them to be sure that delivery of the corporate message has been successful.
I wonder how many company communications gurus have questioned this
PowerPoint-driven herd mentality. Are those who give presentations forced into
it and terrified by the experience? Or maybe, if not mentally incapacitated by
fear, they feel they do not possess any thespian or oratory-type qualities of
note?
It seems that most people who feel comfortable presenting are confident that
what they have to say is something everyone else wants to hear, although I
suspect this is rarely the case.
The answer is to do away with the presentation as a common occurrence. Also, champion the business value of more emotionally intelligent communication mechanisms.
Employees should never be forced into giving presentations they should be voluntary and rare. As long as the method of communication is effective and appropriate, the delivery mechanism is inconsequential.
The economics of gathering large numbers of people in one place does not add up; especially if those staff have had to travel a long way to attend a presentation. What is the return on investment of causing staff to break their routines, incur travel costs and be unproductive for hours or a full day?
There are some great speakers out there, but they are few and far between. It
is more likely that the average presentation will be thoroughly uninspiring and
littered with statistics, narcolepsy-inducing Gantt charts or unpalatable SSADM
models.
So, if you are an alpha male-type bent on forcing your staff to give pointless
presentations, maybe it is time to question your business rationale. I offer you
the following common-sense arguments to avoid oblivion by PowerPoint.
Often people do not like doing or seeing workplace presentations.
Technology has provided many imaginative forms of alternative communications.
If you make your staff uncomfortable, they will be unproductive or leave your
employment, maybe taking valuable commercial knowledge to a competitor.
Just because staff are physically present in a presentation does not mean they
are listening or engaged.
PowerPoint is an off-the-peg, one-size-fits-all product; we are in the tailored, Web 2.0, consumer-centric, inspired productivity era. Turn on, tune in and drop out of PowerPoint presentations.
Steve Hipwell is an IT officer at Birmingham City University
Reader comments
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Life after "Death by PowerPoint"
Poor old PowerPoint...constantly the whipping boy for bad presentations, the one Office application it's OK to laugh at and, allegedly, the source of all that is evil in business today. Seems a little unfair if we factor in that it's merely a software application that has been criminally misused by business people since it joined the MS Office fold.
The reality is that PowerPoint, when used properly, can be a wonderful communication tool. It can work interactively, it can simplify (but not dumb down) complex messages and can form the basis of clear and focused messaging. It can do all of those things (and more) if you refine one part of the "application experience"... What is the element? The human being driving it.
Don't blame the tool...that's too easy. Work on figuring quite what you're looking to communicate, to whom and IF PowerPoint can help you deliver that. Engage the brain before double clicking on the PowerPoint icon - that's the best way of addressing the scourge of "Death by PowerPoint"
Posted by: Simon Morton, Eyeful Presentations Ltd 06 Nov 2008
Re Life after "Death by PowerPoint"
Right on, Simon! And if people want to see interactive PowerPoint in action, they should watch the demo videos on the Relational Presentations site www.aspirecommunications.com
Steve Hards
http://www.opazity.com
Posted by: Steve Hards 06 Nov 2008
PowerPointless
Edward R Tufte says it all in his excellent pamphlet 'The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint'. This should be mandatory reading for anyone even contemplating a PowerPoint presentation.
Posted by: Duncan Edelsten 07 Nov 2008
Another presentation? No, a visual communication tool!
Presentations can indeed be bad for companies because people focus on the tool instead of the message. This is why I now train people on how they can turn their presentations into great "Visual Communication Tools"!
Posted by: Chantal Bosse 07 Nov 2008
Re Tufte on PowerPoint
IMHO Tufte's target should have been Microsoft, not PowerPoint, which is a graphics program that can be used in many ways of which he would approve. But someone decided that the slide after the title slide should default to a bulleted list, and for twenty years now the whole visually creative and presenter-focused process has been undermined.
Steve Hards
www.opazity.com
Posted by: Steve Hards 07 Nov 2008
Blame the business, not the software
Another put down of PowerPoint...disappointing from such an eloquent writer. It must be the skills of Word software that created such prose, because obviously its all in the software. I mean if it is the PowerPoint that is the determinant of presentation quality, the same must be said of Word, yes? Or could it actually be the user in both cases? Cause for pause.
Its about time that business recognised that a stragtegic approach to PowerPoint is more than creating a template. It IS the main means of communication in the corporate world (73% in one MIT study) yet there is minimal training for those who both create and deliver it, despite the billions of dollars it ties up with people in meetings or are at stake in the presentation itself. Would Toyota putting secretary in charge of their marketing budget? No, there is too much at stake.
Bad presentations are a symptom not the cause and a flippant comment of a move to web 2.0 is not a cure, its like telling someone who is no good at maths to do engineering.
Posted by: Lee Featherby 13 Nov 2008
PowerPoint is Vital
First off, I love embracing new tools and techniques for communcation - video, podcast, interactive sites, yadi yadh
However, here's a common scenario for the company I work with...
You need approval from your management board for a multi-million pound strategy project. They need to know enough detail to feel confident about the depth of your work and be able to ask questions but not so much as to be meaningless and take x many days to understand. After all, we're the experts in the technical stuff - they just need to ask the big questions...
So we do a 3 hour PowerPoint session. Lots of slides with summaries of complex information. It's tough going but there's enough there to prompt discussion and hopefully validation. We're face to face in the room. Standing ready for questions, responding, discussing, challenging. All the time, the facts are on the screen - £10m for this, 23% rise in that. It's hard work for everyone but for that couple of hours, everyone is together focusing on trying to make the right decisions. And PowerPoint is there helping to communicate the message visually and when the meeting is done, they can take away a copy to read over and share.
Creating great PowerPoint is tough but it's still one of the most powerful communication tools we have at our disposal. It can be created quickly, changed on the fly, re-used, standardised... Of course making sure the presenter doesn't just read out the text on the slide is another challenge! And trying to help a presenter not speak in a monotone voice and to add a little modulation is professionally tricky
Other communication tools just don't cut it for many corporate comms. If you send a link to a funky site, wiki, blog, forum, etc you've developed - how can you ensure that all the relevant parties will read and respond and understand and question the materials in your defined time period.
As for video and audio, it's great as supporting materials but tricky to produce, difficult to re-use content and isn't interactive. Very much a push type channel.
Getting people in a room and using humble PowerPoint to start a discussion is still (and I think will remain) one of the most powerful tools in the corporate communications world. It isn't always fun, but hey, it's work and it works.
Posted by: Neil Walsh 20 Nov 2008
Dont blame .ppt
It is true that powerpoints have been done to death. But why blame that helpful software. It is always the man who makes more mess than technology. Going overboard with toys is human.
For a good presentation-making exercise, go away from the computer, think about your story board, draw your points on paper. Then use the Powerpoint. You will be surprised that you need a fraction of the slides on ppt to effectively convey your idea.
Posted by: Ishrath H 01 Dec 2008
Communications dogma
This is a very interesting discussion from a cognitive-behavioural perspective. The writer makes some very worthy points regarding the transmission and reception of information in live situations. PowerPoint is acknowledged as a useful tool in the article, but I feel that the writer's key points challenge questionable communication behaviours and dogmatic culture. This is imaginative thinking on a universally applicable topic. If humans hadn't questioned common standards and processes to see if they could be improved we'd still be living in caves.
Posted by: Louise Turner 03 Dec 2008