More Than Talk » PowerPoint is Stupid

Jun 20 08

PowerPoint is Stupid

By Dave Imperiale

I’ve recently returned from working on what felt like my hundredth sales conference. Here’s something for you people to start accepting: PowerPoint is almost universally misused, and thus, stupid.

I would say people use PowerPoint properly 14 percent of the time. That is based on a first-party, subjective study. Most of the time presenters don’t even speak to what’s on the slide. Or there’s so much crap on the slide you can’t figure out what’s going on and they don’t take the time to tell you. Or my favorite: bullet points. Presenters read them out loud, word for word. Or, they’ll ignore them entirely because the font is so small even they can’t see them. Here’s an often overlooked point: an audience can read faster than you can read to them, unless you’re talking to 7 year-olds.

Just yesterday I was walking down the hallway in our NYC office suite and I passed a conference room. There were two elderly women sitting in there, looking anxious, waiting for others to arrive. There was a slide projected on the wall which read simply: “Welcome!” Yes, with an exclamation point. Welcome to what? This isn’t your house. I’m not coming over for dinner. I’m about to walk into a shared conference room for you to bore the sh*t out of me. I don’t need a sign. People who have a slide that says “welcome” aren’t thinking about the people in the room. And who the hell taught these old ladies how to use a computer?

All this thoughtlessness results from one fundamental problem: presenters use the software for themselves, not for the audience. They use it to keep themselves on track, to remember what they’re going to say next. Here’s the thing…I don’t need to see it. And if you’re going to do that, at least give me images that are aesthetically pleasing. Or use notes. Notes are fine. If you can’t remember enough about what you want to say to expound on notes, you shouldn’t be up there in the first place.

Here’s a very simple rule to follow: if a visual does not visually support what you’re saying, then you don’t need that visual. I think one of the reasons why our conferences are usually successful is because we mandate minimal PowerPoint usage. We push people to get on stage and have a discussion or simply talk. And if there are slides, hopefully they’re supporting the content. That’s not always the case, and people have slides they just “need” to have up there, regardless of whether it helps the audience understand the concept. We don’t always win. But in all the talks and presentations I’ve seen over the years, the best ones have always been when the speaker gets up on stage and just talks. And by the way, whether you know it or not, they always have notes.

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