If you have attended a meeting or conference in the last 10 years you will recognize this routine. The speaker approaches the stage, fires up his laptop and as he clears his throat he taps the microphone to check it is on. And so it begins – the PowerPoint presentation.
As the speaker drones on reading endless slides crammed with endless information written in the tiniest font, the audience is guaranteed to do one of three things: some settle into their seats and take a nap ( a Power nap from PowerPoint); others take out their phones or mobile units and spend the time answering emails, texting or playing games ( “Angry Birds seems to be the current game of choice), and the remainder of the audience will check their watches and resign themselves to a couple of hours of torture.
In my previous job we used to call these presentations “Death By PowerPoint”. One particular very senior director’s PowerPoint presentations were otherwise known as “Killing Me Microsoftly” and staff members would construct various excuses to not attend or if compulsory, bring a good book or ask their secretaries to invent an urgent phone call that had to be taken.
Whilst boring presentations and badly presented slides can be great fodder for department jokes and boardroom banter, on a serious note important key messages may fail to be delivered effectively if a presentation is poor. On average senior managers will make between 12 to 52 presentations a year. That means regularly presenting either once a month or as often as once a week. At director level this becomes much more.
Large international firms already understand the importance of good presentation skills and assess these as part of their graduate recruitment process. I myself have asked candidates to make presentations to various audiences during their interview process, starting with a presentation to a panel of three interviewers and at final interview presenting to a business unit or 20 potential peers. As a career skill, the ability to present information effectively to a variety of audiences is key because it is a requirement that will continue to increase as you progress in your career.
Even if the corporate boardroom is not your career of choice, do not think that you have escaped painful PowerPoint presentations. Corporate presentation software continues to proliferate beyond the boardroom, and is rearing its head in classrooms, hospitals and even in the battlefield. A former colleague of mine who now works for the Pentagon told me that you cannot speak to anyone in the US military without knowing PowerPoint. Military strategists bombard soldiers and officers with flowcharts and tables that are so complex they look like plates of spaghetti. America’s top commanding officer in Afghanistan General David Petraeus has described sitting through one of these PowerPoint presentations as “just agony”. There is a well-known story of a Russian officer sitting through a US PowerPoint presentation on war strategy in Bosnia who was heard to quip that if Russia and America had ever fought each other, Russia would win. “While you are making your slides, we would be killing you.” he said.
So why are so many presentations so bad? As a media professional one glaring reason that I can see is that most corporate presenters have assumed that presentation software like PowerPoint is the panacea that will solve all their presentation problems and effectively do the presentation for them. They seem to think that transferring a paragraph from a Word document exactly as it is to a PowerPoint slide somehow makes it more compelling and that audiences will automatically sit up, take notice and remember the information till their dying day. I continually have to remind people that PowerPoint is a visual aid. It is there to aid you in making the presentation, not to replace you. Also, remember the word visual. You are speaking the words, the computer merely provides pictures or summarized bullet points, nothing more.
Renowned Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan predicted just this over reliance on media technology over half a century ago when he said, “The medium will become the message”. He was describing the influence of television, computers and other technology, saying that society and mass culture would become increasingly influenced by how a message was delivered rather than its content.
This is exactly what happens with the use of PowerPoint. Deliverers of a message use PowerPoint as the weapon of choice without thinking if it is actually the most effective way to get their point across. PowerPoint can leave an audience persuaded, but not necessarily better- informed. Is that what you want from your corporate presentation?
As a media professional I am very aware of the power of media and how style can sometimes replace substance. Mis-used media leads to the inefficient or imprecise transfer of information. More importantly it can devalue what in my view is the most powerful element of communication: the human voice.
When Winston Churchill said “We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender…”; and when a common painter by the name of Adolph Hitler said “Always before God and the world the stronger has the right to carry through what he wills.”, there mere words took the World to war. They galvanized nations of men and women to take up arms, risk their lives and defend their homelands.
They did not use a single PowerPoint slide.
(Next Week: Seven Secrets to make a Powerful Presentation. Tanya has spent over 20 years working in the media and corporate communications industry in the UK and abroad. She will be running a half day workshop on June 29 at the EFC on “How to make Powerful Presentations” using the latest trends and tips in corporate presenting. For more information and to enroll please contact the EFC on 0094 112 867 966-8 or email shenaliw@empfed.lk) |
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