Powerpointless

It’s a cheap shot, I know, but it rather warms my soul to read this story in the WSJ about the high crimes & misdemeanors associated with PowerPoint.

It’s not a completely one-sided rant, because—after all—PPT basically a neutral tool for communication; it’s what you do with it that’s evil. PPT doesn’t kill people; people kill people.

Really, it is rather like having a Glock with a chambered round holstered under your Armani jacket: you’re standing up with the remote control & your 56 slides (the electronic equivalent of Arlo’s eight-by-ten-color-glossy-photos-with-circles-&-arrows-&-a-paragraph-on-the-back-of-each-one-explaining-what-each-one-is), reading every bullet point & then flogging it thoroughly into the ground before moving on. & the entire room has to do your bidding.

(I’m convinced this is partly responsible for people bringing their laptops & smartphones to meetings & tap-tap-tapping throughout the hour, occasionally raising their heads to bark, “I missed that last—what were you saying?”)

Web 2.0 & all-round guru Guy Kawasaki has a mantra governing PPT: 10/20/30. No more than ten slides; no more than 20 minutes; no smaller than 30-point font (meaning: no more than four bullet points per slide). Would that more business people learned from the master on this.

(Years ago I was told that a PPT presentation should be only the framework of what you’re going to talk about. If someone can pick up the preso & grasp your entire case without hearing your spiel, you’re doing it wrong. Most of the world is doing it wrong.)

In my own company, it’s infinitely worse: we use PPT for what should in all sanity be painstakingly built in documents: the one that just eats my lunch is the business plan. Our business plans are 98 slides long minimum. (What this also means is that management doesn’t have to read the biz plan; it’s presented to them in ephemeral form & they can pronounce judgment by shooting from the hip, not via thoughtful analysis.)

Well, really, it doesn’t matter what any of us says; PPT has taken over & resistance is futile.