Is Power Point Eating Your Profits?
If you're like the many people I talk to, when you are in the audience, you hunch over in your chair, flip through the handout of the slides and sigh. It was not going to be a presentation that uses power point to your advantage. It was going to be another typical presentation dominated by too many slides with too many bullets that the presenter was going to cover in too much detail. This syndrome is known jokingly as "death by power point." Is it really something to joke about?
Is $8000.00 something to joke about? For that amount of money a mid-level director could do market research, or develop and distribute a customer satisfaction survey, or attend a conference where he could talk face-to-face with prospects.
Instead a mid-level director wrote and revised slide after slide after slide, most of which were filled with bullets that listed his thoughts. I estimate that $8000.00 is the minimum cost of the time he and his superiors spent on this one-hour presentation for an internal audience of two. When it was deemed perfect, it was sent to the audience members and then gone through page by page during a teleconference. This is $8000.00 that comes right off the bottom line, since it is an expense that doesn't lead to any revenue.
What ever happened to agendas and conversation—dialogue—about the agenda items? The slide titles, listed on an agenda, would have provided a road map for the conversation, the director would have expressed his thoughts and the audience could discuss. A one page agenda would have taken an hour to prepare and left the director more time and thus more money to pursue activities that produced revenue and therefore increased profit.
I would like to hear from those of you who support this use of power point. Explain how power point slides are suitable for every single occasion, for every single topic and for every single meeting or teleconference. Describe to me the profit that follows—where's the income stream that this level of effort and expense generates?
Use power point to your advantage
There are many very positive uses of power point slides and I coach my clients how to identify them and incorporate them into their presentations. This is true whether the audience is two or twenty or two hundred.
Graphics (illustrations, graphs, processes)
These will be powerful when used to illustrate a point that is not expected. We don't need confirmation of what we already know. We need to see a visual representation of what we don't know or what is surprising.Pulling people together
Using logos or other icons of various team members helps the audience visualize the breadth and depth of a team comprised of different entities. This is obvious in a prime-subs situation. It is also useful when a multi-department internal team is convened. Show each department surrounding the central goal. People then see at a glance who their partners are, and how they will work together towards the goal.Photos
Using photos of your own people, your own locations, and your own successes is stimulating and energizing. People like to recognize places and people, and are drawn into the content of the presentation when they do. While many companies have professionally made photos of their headquarters or products and equipment they are proud of, presenters should snap a few pictures that will be meaningful to their specific audience. For example, take a picture of a person who won an award when you're talking about goals for the coming year. Everyone will imagine themselves holding that award next year.The Future
Capture and illustrate visions and goals for the future. These are some ways that are very effective.- Show a photo of a competitor that you are planning to beat
- Use a high-level graph to depict an increase from current numbers to future achievements
- Show the results of a process you are implementing. Results may be higher customer satisfaction ratings, fewer complaints, increase speed of technology enhancements. Here's where your understanding of why you do what you do can be turned into a visual. The presenter who does this is going to be memorable and inspiring.
Use the toggle off key
When you're showing a visual to make a point, show the visual for a few seconds only, then toggle off while you elaborate the point. Getting the important information from the presenter rather than from a slide gives the audience a feeling that they've gotten a high return on the investment they made coming to listen to you. There is no law that requires you to leave slides on for the entire presentation, no matter how many times and for how long you've been doing that. Just stop!Create new power point habits for yourself and your colleagues. Try this experiment: prepare one short presentation on a topic, using the suggestions I have made. Grab a few people for a test run. Don't tell them what you've done differently; just let them experience it for themselves. Then ask them to talk about the experience of being in this audience. Be fully present in the moment of the experience, and don't let them impose the typical response to change: "but we always do it that way." So what? If we always did everything we've always done, there would be no new inventions or enhancements. Most companies would be out of business.
