The Story Behind Your Back: PowerPoint

 

“We don’t know where we get our ideas from. We do know that we do not get them from our laptops.” — John Cleese

An estimated 95 percent of all presentations worldwide are allegedly delivered with PowerPoint. Information scientist and graphic designer Edward Tufte estimates that well over 100 billion slides are created in PowerPoint every year.

“Punch the button and you’ll have a presentation.”

That line is how Bob Gaskins, one of the fathers of PowerPoint, described the program’s core idea—and its name as well. “The idea was crazy, and the name was really meant as a joke, but Microsoft simply kept it,” Gaskins said of the origins of what would become one of the most successful software programs of all time. Today, people have a love-hate relationship with the program Microsoft bought from Forethought in 1987 for 14 million U.S. dollars.

“Death by PowerPoint” is one of the most frequently quoted lines at corporate events and conferences. Among the many accusations one can level at PowerPoint—or rather at its inept users—three stand out above all others: the triple-delivery problem, oversimplification, and dehumanization.

Video tip: Anyone who wants to see the worst PowerPoint offenses on display will likely enjoy Don McMillan’s parody Life After Death by PowerPoint. Although it dates back to 2009, it still rings true in many ways. And it is still fun to watch.

Served Three Times: The Triple-Delivery Problem

Many presenters use PowerPoint slides as notes—or worse, as cheat sheets. In the worst-case scenario, they simply read directly from the slide. That is why audiences are so often served the exact same story three times over: first by listening to the speaker’s spoken words, second by reading the sentences and bullet points on the slide, and third by reviewing the handout distributed afterward, which is often nothing more than a copy of the very same PowerPoint slides already shown.

As Simple as That: Oversimplification

“PowerPoint could lead us to believe that information is all there is.” Clifford Nass, a professor at the prestigious Stanford University, understood the danger inherent in PowerPoint. Slides tempt us to simplify and trivialize content.

That is precisely the effect Bob Gaskins had in mind when he developed PowerPoint. He wanted his program to help presenters visualize complex topics in a simple way. But simplification has its darker side. All too quickly, we begin to assume that everything shown in PowerPoint must be important, while everything not visible on the slide can be ignored. Moreover, one of the program’s strengths lies in presenting results, outcomes, and static states. It becomes much more difficult when the goal is to visualize fluid conditions, evolving ideas, and processes in motion. This is where PowerPoint clearly reaches its limits.

Is this how humans talk? Dehumanization

Yet the greatest criticism leveled at PowerPoint is one shared even by some of the people who helped create the program in the late 1980s. Cathy Belleville, graphic designer and one of the mothers of the clip art included with PowerPoint, admits:

“I think that we as a people have become unaccustomed to having real conversations with each other, where we actually give and take to arrive at a new answer. We present to each other, instead of discussing.”

All of this helps explain why Amazon banned PowerPoint and similar slide-based software. Instead they championed storytelling:

“We don’t do PowerPoint presentations at Amazon. Instead, we write narratively structured six-page memos. We silently read one at the beginning of each meeting in a kind of ‘study hall.’ Not surprisingly, the quality of these memos varies widely. Some have the clarity of angels singing. They are brilliant and thoughtful and set up the meeting for high-quality discussions. Sometimes they come in at the other end of the spectrum.”

That is how Jeff Bezos described Amazon’s meeting culture in a letter to employees and shareholders. In one of his executive meetings, he also said, “I’m actually a big fan of anecdotes in business. (…) Amazon uses a ton of metrics to measure success. I’ve noticed when the anecdotes and the metrics disagree, the anecdotes are usually right. (…) That’s why it’s so important to check that data with your intuition and instincts, and you need to teach that to your executives and junior executives.”

PowerPoint need not be demonized quite so thoroughly. The program certainly has its strengths—but anyone who wants to tell a compelling story with the help of a set of slides should keep a few things in mind. Here are some simple, practical tips:

Less is more: Check whether you can reduce the text on your slides even further. Text should serve as an anchor for your audience, not as a cheat sheet for you as the speaker.

Keep it simple: Use keywords or short phrases on slides. Never use complex sentence structures.

Make the visual turn: Increase the visual share of your presentation to more than 50 percent. Images are processed more quickly than text and therefore support your talk far better than text ever can.

Bigger is better: One large, crisp image is better than many small ones. The aesthetic impact of a single visual is much stronger when you commit to one motif.

Authentic, relevant, sensory: Avoid boring stock material and generic symbolic imagery people have seen a hundred times before. Use real, original visuals—perhaps even photographs you have taken yourself. Use images that engage the senses and delight the eye.

Simple or complex—make your choice: The more minimalist your slides are, the more of them you may show. The more complex your slides are, the fewer slides you should use, because every slide requires careful explanation.

Hands off AI: Yes, of course AI can help you create a presentation. AI-app Gamma, for example, needs only a few bullet points and then independently adds the full text, organizes the structure and flow, and designs all the slides in an appealing way—even including matching AI-generated images. 

The problem is that while such a presentation may look professional at first glance, on closer inspection it often turns out to be mediocre and generic. Which means you then have to revise it and clean up. This job may take longer than expected—perhaps even longer than if you had started from scratch yourself and only brought in AI at key moments. Another disadvantage of AI-generated presentations is that it simply is not your story. If you deliver an AI-generated PowerPoint to a live audience, you have not internalized the story before—you are merely reading it off. Audiences notice that immediately. And it takes a great deal of acting talent to conceal it. 

So: keep your hands off excessive AI support. Trust your own storytelling abilities.

More on the subject of Storytelling for Leaders: www.petrasammer.com

This text was written by a human; AI tools were used for spelling and grammar checks.