Death by PowerPoint—The High Performance Igniter?
The High Performance Igniter? is a brief perspective on what I’m seeing in the market, topics of interest for leaders and resources and tidbits to help you with your business. Here’s my take for June 26, 2024.
?
Things I’ve been thinking about
?I’m not a huge PowerPoint fan.
?Presentations should be informative and engaging.
They should tell you something you don’t know.
If you can read the info from the slides and don’t have questions, there’s no point in the presentation.
The material can be circulated without convening people.
Too often, the same PowerPoint presentation is made without modification to varying audiences that have varying interests and understanding of the subject.
When the same presentation is given over and over without questions, the energy level of presenters typically goes down.
And while the pandemic brought an expansion of technology that has allowed people to collaborate and communicate remotely, it has made remote presentations challenging when presenters aren’t able to read the room and gain energy from interacting with the audience.
It’s like death by PowerPoint.
Either people are required to be there, or they show up thinking there will be a great presentation only to find that the presenter is phoning it in.
So what to do?
When giving presentations, ask:
What is the point?
Where should people have an aha moment?
Who is the audience?
Is the material appropriate for them?
Why would they care about this topic?
What do you want them to do with the information?
领英推荐
How do you want them to engage with you?
Can they read a memo and be informed without the presentation?
?
If the slide is text heavy, it is not appropriate and should be distilled to the key points.
Text heavy slides cause people to read rather than listen to the speaker.
There should be an aha moment that causes people to do something different when they leave the room.
Did they walk away with the message?
Or did their mind drift to the other things they should be doing?
Or did they pull out their phone and start scrolling through email or texts?
Presentations are expensive.
The value of a group executives is expensive.
Even more expensive is the opportunity cost of what they didn’t do during that time.
The next time you are giving a presentation or listening to one, why not make sure the presentation is a good use of time.
And if you are on the receiving end of a presentation, seek to understand if you will have an ROI on your time.
You can set the tone for the people who work for you and support those who make the presentation worthwhile.
There’s no need for death by PowerPoint today.
??
To your growth and success,
Heidi
?
?
Leveraging data and information to transform the agriculture industry
8 个月Again, spot on. This is one of those areas where we, as leaders, need to apply the “just because we can doesn’t mean we should” philosophy. Improvements to these softwares means we can do snazzier looking decks with higher resolution and polished look - but should we? How much does it cost the company to prepare these internally facing presentations? People with the creative skills needed to pull this off are a unique headcount. Is this spend value-add? Will a plain white 3-bullet point text on the slide allow for the conversation you want and need? Rather than putting together 40 hours of deck work, isn’t the time better invested in 40 hours or robust action-oriented work?