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PowerPoint, Killer App

By Peter Lloyd

You dim the lights. From the box in the middle of the room flows a soft, steady, soothing hum. Your audience focuses on the bright rectangle of light on the wall. As you speak, the images in the rectangle repeat again and again. Over and over, your consistent theme and logo appear and reappear. Only the grey mass of bullet points changes. Within minutes, a good part of your audience has descended into inattention. Though they struggle to keep their eyes open, others drift off to sleep.

Even with hot, humming projectors all but gone, the hypnotic effect barely diminishes. Whether it’s PowerPoint, Impress, Flash, Keynote... presentation software beats the best cures for insomnia. If only because it’s what everybody else uses. The lowest common denominator. The laziest, most mediocre way to get your point across.

Stop the Slaughter!
Among the many web pages of PowerPoint Tips, Dos and Don’ts, and Rules, I found this Rule No. 1: “Start with an attention getter...” Why just start? Your job as a presenter is to hold attention from start to finish. Another rule says: “Use animations sparingly...” Why? So you don’t wake your audience? Another: “no more than ten slides...” Finally, we’re getting somewhere!

The author of the ten-slide rule advises people making presentations to venture capitalists. A tough audience. You’d do well to consider every audience just as demanding, every presentation as critical—a make-or-break-it, last-chance pitch for your survival. If you were proposing marriage or pleading with a judge or jury for your life, would you work up a PowerPoint?

Every audience deserves all-or-nothing respect. You can find a creative way to make your point without defaulting to the most pedestrian tool. Give them the best of you. In Think Naked, we recommend going back to the grade-school staple Show N Tell. That is, incorporating what you love to do into everything you do. Why not bring that love to your presentations?

You love to build model airplanes? How can you incorporate models into your pitch? How can you make your pet, volunteer work, hobby, or artistic passion the analogy from which you launch your demonstration? Sing or dance, if that’s what it takes. But avoid the ordinary.

When you’re doing what you love, you’re at your best. Give every presentation your creative best.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.