Business Plus - November 2005

The Perils of PowerPoint - By Vere Wynne - Jones

Try to remember when you last attended a formal corporate presentation that didn’t involve the use of PowerPoint. Everybody seems to love it: for its efficiency, its sleekness, its ease of use. PowerPoint allows the work-a-day executive to devise and mount a professional looking show without any help from outsiders: no slides, no clunky projectors – just a quick hook-up to the screen and off you go.

The promise of this technology is that all presentations can be highly informative, interesting events where the speaker comes across as a seasoned campaigner and the audience sits in rapt attention.

So much for the promise! The reality, as we all know from long (and often boring) experience, is somewhat different, because too many of us fall into the trap of confusing medium and message. No matter how many bells and whistles are employed, your audience will quickly tire of the technology if the rest of the package does not measure up.

If PowerPoint has a problem it is that it’s too good at its job, lulling us into a certain mindset whereby the software determines the style of presentation, (and to a certain degree the content), because we allow it to take over the entire event. We tailor the message to the medium rather than the audience.

At the same time, we become overly dependent on the medium, believing that it’s so good, such a clever and efficient piece of technology, that it simply has to be better than some little ol’ human being. The end result, unsurprisingly, is that we don’t deliver a corporate presentation; so much as a series of on-screen bullet points that demand the attention of everybody in the room – the presenter included.

We’ve all seen what happens next: a well-informed, articulate, educated, and able person stands at the top of the room, directing their gaze to a screen and inviting us to read with them through a series of slides. There is no sense of conviction in the speaker’s voice; no hint of the urgency or conviction necessary to carry a group of people with them. (How can there be, when they’re talking to a machine?).

PowerPoint is supposed to help us, not take over our lives, and used properly it is a hugely advantageous accessory. But proper use demands that we must recognise that it is merely an accessory; a little bit of technical wizardry to help us deliver our message to our audience.

That means using it for emphasis and illustration, drawing our audience’s attention to the points we really want to hammer into their consciousness. Used this way, PowerPoint reinforces the messages that we deliver through the proven (human) techniques of logic, argument, and persuasion – without hijacking the event.

So, by all means direct your audience’s gaze to the screen; give them the visual stimuli and reminders that will get them on your side and keep them there. But be sure to draw their attention back as your presentation develops, so they remain engaged with you – the speaker – and the key messages you want to convey.

A tip I offer to participants in my courses is to prepare their presentation as they would a radio broadcast, where the objective (as with all broadcasters) is to keep the listener tuned in. The power of the voice is the only tool available to get the message across, and it must be used to keep the listener so engaged that their hand never strays toward the ‘off’ switch.

As every professional broadcaster knows, it’s possible to re-work radio material for a television programme, but the reverse is rarely true. Likewise, for the corporate speaker, the primary medium is the human voice and the quality, and relevance, of the information being imparted. And, like the radio broadcast, the material can be augmented with images to reinforce and illustrate the core message, except in this case the extra visual element is provided through PowerPoint rather than television.

In essence, I would urge anyone making a corporate presentation to reclaim control over the delivery medium. By all means, use PowerPoint, but use it judiciously, and keep it in its proper context as an accessory to the spoken word.


In-house training
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Phone : Loretto Mara 01 853 2215
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