PowerPoint is Bull S*** Part 1 ~ Paul M Johnstone Why do so many PowerPoint presentations put you to sleep? Sorry folks but I’m here to tell you it’s nothing to do with PowerPoint! Death by PowerPoint and PowerPoint Poisoning, we have all sat through these at some time in our careers. I say once again the problem is nothing to do with PowerPoint. After reading this blog, you, me every business presenter should vow we are not going to be guilty of delivering dull, mind numbing unstructured presentations ever again. The first step is to understand how and why we screw up as often as we do. Just like the question I often get asked is why is PowerPoint such rubbish? The answer is PowerPoint is not the issue. The trouble with bad PowerPoint presentations is the fault of the presenter! Or is it the result of ‘Osmosis’ Management? You know it. When you get promoted and everyone expects you to come back the next working day with all the skills you need to do your new job! Sadly if that job includes PowerPoint, all too often, your managers don’t believe you need any training. Managers think they don’t need to do anything more than they have in the past. This is usually – nothing! I for one think it’s because you get PowerPoint free with Office. And because it’s effectively Free anyone can use it! This is at the heart of the problem.deathbypowerpoint 003 Well you can all use Word and Excel really well so PowerPoint is a breeze- Right? Wrong. Its true anyone can use PowerPoint, the issue is no one has shown you how to use it really well. No one has shown you how to engage with your audience. Nor have they shown you how to avoid Death by PowerPoint. In fact its odds on you have been left on your own, and expected to be successful! And some companies just don’t get it! Why is it they tell their staff to knock up a quick PowerPoint presentation? And then get upset when the result is nowhere as good as they wanted? How did it get like this? If you are like me you’ll have experienced, one or two presentations that were truly awful. Now is the time to own up. OK, I guess I gave a few awful PowerPoint presentations in the past. Now I’ll say it once again – It’s not PowerPoint’s fault! A few guide-lines There are a few simple rules that will make it real easy for you to give great PowerPoint presentations. These come in three parts: Part 1 deals with layout of your slides and helps you with some simple guidelines for how to best use the product and get your message across. Part 2 looks at some simple techniques and PowerPoint futures some great some not so great, and looks at why some of the work so well Part 3 will focus on how to get the best out of your presentation by examining some of the techniques that all the great presenters use, so you avoid Death by PowerPoint Where did it all go wrong? It could just be a case of Bad design. When you cram too much text in a slide, or use poor quality pictures often distracts your audience. Here in Part 1 you’ll find a quick guide, which I hope will help you to create great presentations, time after time. Here are ten quick and easy tips to help you add a little WOW factor to your presentations. This is a good place for you to start and you already know you get better with practice. Feel free to share your own tips in the comments section at the end of this Blog. 1 Presentations Start on Paper! It’s easy to get suckered into preparing your presentation using PowerPoint itself! Sadly that is often the cause of business presenters reading their slides! They fell into the trap of audience-sleeping death by powerpoint 1writing their pitch on the slides and as a result are left with nothing else to say! The purpose of a Visual Aid (PowerPoint) for your presentation is just that- to aid your presentation. When creating on the slides we often get carried away and use all the features and stack everything we know about the topic on the slides. We do this often with the view of reviewing them later. Sadly this is often the case and people run out of time and ‘go with what they have’ Taking just a few moments to set out your presentation, I use Post it Notes for this. It’s quick a way of getting in to the flow of my presentation. And being on Post it’s you can change the order quickly till you are happy with your contact. Oh and reading to your audience! I heard one person ask the presenter if he thought the audience were illiterate. When the presenter said no, he got a tirade for reading his slides. Now that is a severe reaction but it’s an illustration of why you should never read your slides. 2 One Concept Per slide It is that simple. Stick to one concept per slide and you will have a much better chance of engaging with your audience. If your talk is about finance, resist the temptation to tell non financial stories. Or stories with a financier in because it’s funny. They detract from your presentation. Split your talk into manageable chunks, ideally chunks that are related so you can stay on one concept with that slide. Staying with these concepts, a good tip is to rehearse your presentations and note how long it takes you to cover each concept. Then add the times to your slides, we will show you some great tips in the next part in PowerPoint is Bull S***. I use Post it notes. Compile you presentation one concept at a time to set out your headings. You now should have some post it notes with an intro, several with one concept and one with a close. Then all you do is move them round till you have a running order that ‘feels’ right. Once you are rehearsed you will know where all the slide transition points are. This will help you stay calm while you are presenting because you know what and where things happen Stay on track with one concept per slide and you will avoid the temptation to wander- Believe me this looses your audience faster than just about anything else. Related Blogs Do you have the ABC of presenting? Why some people worry when they have to present Seven ways to make your presentation amazing How to write an Elevator pitch 3 Bullets are used to Kill People – Don’t be tempted You have seen the slides, full of bullet points. Somehow you just can’t stop filling your slides with bullet points. Recent research from Harvard University tells us, as presenters if we are really good we will have 87% of our audiences attention. Let’s be honest most business presenters are not greatFive_bullets presenters. The average attention we get is down to 51%. Meaning 4 out of every 10 people are not listening to us! The moment your audience sees a bullet point a further 24% of the remainder tune out at that point. It’s time for some simple maths. This means that out of an audience of 20 people only 9 will be taking in the message you have spent ages preparing! Do you consider that acceptable? If you must ‘cram’ data onto your slides ‘un-check’ the bullet point option, because the default is set to on. 4 Use Quality Images Always! One of the best way to lose an audience is by using clip art and other low resolution images. When you are thinking about your Brand, does cheap and low resolutions crop up? It would surprise me if these words were used. You’ll benefit from using quality images in several ways. First up you will be able to fill a large screen knowing your chosen picture will not get distorted. This also helps your audience get into what you are presenting. Now time to go back to yours or your company’s brand. Quality shows through so best start with a quality image. 5 Discernability I’m going to introduce a name to you, Stephen Kosslyn. Probably someone you don’t know too much about. In his book ‘Clear and to the Point’ he sets out from a behavioural stand point why some visuals work and why so many don’t. By understanding how your audience receives information helps you deliver what the audience wants’. For instance how many times have you seen a slide with a chart displayed? OK so far but then it’s crammed with data because the presenter thinks you need to see everything. When in fact all you need to see to get the point is the smallest and largest numbers. This is so your brain quickly discerns the difference between the figures. It’s how your brain works and by a happy coincidence is how your audiences brain work! Present in a way your audience wants, not the way you think they should receive information. 6 Loose the Logo This may be a shock to many marketers and branding specialists out there. But the simple truth is that if you have been speaking to your audience for 10 minutes or more, and they Lost and Confused Signpostcan’t remember who you are, a logo in the corner of your slide is not going to help. In fact it gets in the way of your presentation. Think about watching a move. Would you be put off if the studio logo was always there in the bottom right hand corner? I wonder why this does not happen? Well I guess the studio bosses realize their logo would get in the way of the viewers enjoyment. The best place for all your corporate and branding is on the First and Last slides as they are displayed longest. Just like the opening and closing parts of a movie. 7 Cut down on the animation PowerPoint is great, you can become an animator with PowerPoint. Slides whizzing in from all angles and spinning triangles with dizzying pentagons that you think look great. The problem is your audience frequently just want your basic message presented in a form that is easy for them to understand (see point 6). Animation will not help you make your message easy to understand. Some of the best business presentations you will probably have seen often only use high quality graphics. For a moment think Steve jobs and his fantastic presentations on Keynote (Apples version of PowerPoint) to get the picture. He only uses a hand full of slides to make his point. He hardly uses animation and frequently he’s on his feed presenting for over an hour. I don’t know about you but I can’t remember any of his presentations using anything other than fairly simple slide transitions. 8 Slide That Support You One of the best ways of engaging your audience is to use your visual support, PowerPoint. Use it in a way that it supports you. As you found in the first point your presentation starts on paper, so know you should not need lots of words on your slides. People learn quicker when you engage both halves of the brain (hemispheres) left and right. When you use images this is processed by the right half and words are processeda mixed message by the left half of the brain. The other technique for getting the audience on your side is to use lots of images and fewer words. As you know your subject its best practice to do it without lots of text that can take ages for your audience to read. 9 Ten- Twenty- Thirty A proven technique for PowerPoint presentations is this: No More Than 10 Slides 20 Minutes and 30 Point font size The biggest fault that most business presenters have is thinking the audience needs to be amazed by their knowledge and experiences. Thinking this is the way to present they cram in stacks of slides. When the truth is much simpler, your audience don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care*. By restricting the slides and time your creativity is stretched. And this is a proven way of improving your communication skills. And font size, well its sods law that the person you need to influence is sitting at the back of the room and has forgotten their glasses. Make ALL the words you use on your slide readable from the back of the room. If you are in doubt, set up your presentation and go sit at the back of the room, it you can read everything clearly you should be OK. *Source anon 10 If in doubt try Pecha Kucha! Never heard of Pecha Kucha? It is Japanese for chatter and is a presentation style devised by two architects, as a way of getting a presentation across in a short, set time, with a simple structure that gave maximum benefit to the audience. In a Pecha Kucha presentation you have 20 slides that change every 20 seconds. This means the presentation lasts only 6 minutes and 40 seconds, allowing time to get your message across, without boring your audience. At a Pecha Kucha event it’s normal to have a presentation followed by a question and answer session. This keeps presentation fresh and the audience constantly involved. If you want to know more about Pecha Kucha just go to You Tube and check out some examples. Or you can contact me. A Recap – Presentations Start on Paper One Concept per Slide Bullets are used to Kill People Use High Quality Images Make Your Slides Discernible Lose Your Logo Cut Down the Animation Slides that Support you 10-20-30 Pecha Kucha These steps that will help you deliver your next PowerPoint presentation without sending your audience of to La-La land In Part 2 of PowerPoint is Bull S*** you will discover how and when to use some of the features that are built in to PowerPoint. Some of these add greatly to any presentation, others are not so helpful.
Posted on: Tue, 08 Oct 2013 15:07:22 +0000
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