We’ve all been there at one time or another. It’s Friday afternoon after a big lunch. As the lights dim and the laptop begins to purr, we are suddenly lulled into a semi-comatose state. The presenter prepares to introduce the first of more than 30 slides, and we prepare for the grueling endurance test that lies ahead, perhaps second only to the Iditarod.
But if we dread it so much, why has it been estimated that there are more than 30 million PowerPoint presentations taking place all around the world each day, even though the result may be businessmen and -women staring glassy-eyed at endless slides in boardrooms?
There has to be a reason that PowerPoint has been the industry program and the most common presentation software on the market since Microsoft introduced it in 1990, effectively replacing the 35mm projector, presentation boards and, in some cases, even handouts.
Unfortunately, the No. 1 reason for PowerPoint’s popularity may be the wrong reason. Too many people use it as a crutch, a way to circumvent their most dreaded fear – public speaking.
“Fear of public speaking ranks slightly below night landing a plane on an aircraft carrier during a storm,” said John Falck, a partner at a proprietary trading firm. But he did note that PowerPoint can help those with a public-speaking phobia: “When they freeze up and forget their own name, they can just read it off the first slide.”
In our haste to hide in the dark, however, glaring errors are committed that can prove lethal to even the most well thought-out presentation. A recent survey of 750 business professionals who incorporate PowerPoint presentations in their work, conducted by Geetesh Bajaj, who publishes an online marketing newsletter called Indezine, and Claudia Wilder, who owns Wilder Presentations, found only 22 percent were happy with what they had accomplished, and 88 percent said they felt they needed to shorten their presentation.
Explained one industry leader, “Presenters mistakenly assume that if the number of slides is modest, the audience will not believe the presentation adds much value.”
The problem isn’t usually the number of slides, but what is actually on them, which in many cases is too much text. In a medium made for bullet points, why do so many people write whole paragraphs and then recite them from the slides? This is something that particularly angered Mark Glackin, an advertising VP. “If you are going to just read the slides, why not e-mail them and don’t make everyone come to the meeting?”
The slides should not serve as notes. Most grownups haven’t enjoyed being read to since they were 4 years old. And if the audience is doing all the reading, then they aren’t listening.
Also, before they can listen to you, they have to find you – which means you can’t be attached to your laptop in the back of the room. It’s like saying, “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m not important; I’m just an accessory to the equipment.” Use a remote, not a mouse. Get out front and lead the presentation – don’t let it lead you.
Proponents of PowerPoint tell us it can be an effective tool, one that puts powerful features at our fingertips, once we learn how to use them. PowerPoint doesn’t bore people – people bore people, they say. Perhaps the key is to understand what not to do.
Here are the “Seven Deadly Sins of PowerPoint,” as put forth by Dr. Joseph Sommerville, head of a Houston firm specializing in helping professionals develop their presentation skills:
* Avoid distracting special effects and sound effects.
* Avoid clip art. It shows a lack of creativity. Try to use only your own scanned photos or purchase a CD of good-quality stock photos.
* Avoid templates. Why fit your original ideas into somebody else’s pre-packaged design? Create your own distinctive look, and put your company logo in the bottom right-hand corner.
* Avoid text-heavy slides. Don’t use paragraphs, quotes or even complete sentences. Limit your slides to no more five lines of text.
* Avoid small type. It’s OK to read 12-point type in this article, but for a PowerPoint presentation, a minimum of 40-point type is the way to go.
* Avoid passing out handouts of your PowerPoint presentation before the event. They will be reading it rather than listening to you.
* Avoid faith in technology. It’s the law of nature – machines break down. Have a backup of either another machine or transparencies or, at the very least, handouts.
Even though one legal scholar has proposed a constitutional amendment banning PowerPoint – we assume he was speaking in jest – millions of business people throughout the world will continue to use it and refine it as the technology upgrades. If used correctly and in tandem with a strong and confident speaker, it can be a powerful tool, one that holds the audience’s attention and accomplishes its ultimate goal – to drive home a single, indelible point.
However, if used with little foresight and preparation, with graphics that appear to have been drawn by a small child, an overabundance of text that flies around the screen like a swarm of locusts, and a narration that drones on like verbal elevator music, the result will be like comparing PowerPoint to what Larry Chung, a software developer calls “corporate karaoke.”
“Like karaoke, for the most part it’s tough to listen to,” he explains. “But we all applaud each other when it’s over – even though we know how bad it is.”
Steve White is public relations manager for Graham Communications in Quincy, Mass.
