“Powerless” Point

By Sarah Lary and Karen Pruente, APR

Four score and 17 gazillion slides ago, PowerPoint lost the power to make a point. Recently, as a joke, someone produced the Gettysburg address on PowerPoint.

Dated Nov. 19, 1863, the first slide reads “Agenda” and is followed by these bulleted points:

• Met on battlefield (great)
• Dedicate portion of field-fitting!
• Unfinished work (great tasks)

Funny, yes. But the message is clear: PowerPoint has become pointless. It's a great tool, but the issues lie in how people use it and its effect on corporate culture. If not used correctly, PowerPoint stifles creativity. It has transformed meetings from discussions to presentations. Unless the speaker instinctively understands how to interact throughout the presentation, discussion is dampened and often eliminated.

It's time we all examine how our organizations use PowerPoint. Counsel those in your keep that PowerPoint isn't in charge of the presentation. They are. Tell them you want to make sure they don't fall victim to one or more of PowerPoint's five all-too-common offenses.

PowerPoint Offense #1: Jam-packed slides

Financial executives are especially bad about this one. We've all seen it. They've stuffed a decade or more of financial data into one graph which they put on the screen with the disclaimer, “I know you can't see this, but...”

No one is immune, however. I often see slides with 10 bullet points, or only three points but each containing a paragraph of text. Then there are the slides that completely ignore bullet points because that would take up the space needed for the presenter's encyclopedia-like text, which he or she will read to the audience word for word. (See Offense #3.)

Used correctly, PowerPoint is an ideal benchmarking tool. It can visually create an outline to help the audience digest a speech. There should be no more than five bullet points to a page, and only a few words or brief sentences per item. It's the speaker's job to fill in the blanks for the reader.

PowerPoint Offense #2: Too many slides

Once we were working with a corporate team about to roll out a new employee program. When it came time for rehearsal, we started going through their slides. They had about 50 slides for a half-hour presentation. When we protested, the lead presenter said, “That's OK, we'll just go through them fast.” Two slides a minute? And they expected the audience to keep up? It's just not going to happen.

The guideline is one slide for every 3 to 4 minutes of a presentation. Translation: Where they had 50 slides, they should have had 10, tops. They needed to find other ways to drive the material home.

PowerPoint Offense #3: Reading (yawn!) slides

This problem typically crops up with Offense #1. Because so many presenters put their speeches on slides, they're tempted to turn to the screen and read. When a speaker's slides are read, presentation-style, the element that makes a speech dynamic is lost. Even worse, most of the time speakers hand out the presentation, too.

As communicators, we need to recognize that PowerPoint for presentations must be differentiated from PowerPoint used for handouts or internal plans. Reading slides and distracting your audience with handouts drastically reduces eye contact between the presenter and audience because the speaker's back is turned to his audience or the audience feels that they already have the information. Really, why not just pass around the handouts and send everyone home?

The same thing goes for body language and energy. A presenter's vocal tone and pace are deadened. Again, PowerPoint should use key words and phrases to reinforce a point. It's up to the speaker to deliver the speech. Remember, television ads don't feature entire text of what a speaker is saying on screen, but we get the message.

PowerPoint Offense #4: Underutilizing PowerPoint's best assets

Monotony makes PowerPoint dangerous. Thomas A. Stewart said it best in a Fortune article when he commented on presentations with the same slide design: “Friends don't let friends use PowerPoint.”

Speakers need to inject humor into their presentations. Learn how to animate your slides. Play with sound effects. Experiment with entrances and exits. PowerPoint is easy to use—it's like any Microsoft program. Its capabilities are hidden in the pull down windows, and speakers just have to hunt a little to find what they're looking for.

If there is a slide with five bullet points, and the speaker hasn't learned how to make the bullet points enter one at a time, turn the computer off and print black-and-white slides from Word.

PowerPoint Offense #5: Overutilizing PowerPoint's best assets

Just as speakers can underutilize PowerPoint's special features, they can overuse them as well. PowerPoint's font, animation, color and sound graphic features are there to be used—but overusing them can be a detriment. The basic rule: Every special effect has to have a purpose. Speakers shouldn't use the clapping sound simply because it's there.

Also remember that everyone in the room needs to be able to read the slides. Don't trust what is on your computer screen. Have the speaker pretend he's part of the audience. Project the show and stand at the back of the room. Can he read the font? Is the point size right? Do the colors strain the eyes? Make adjustments as needed.

Concluding Thoughts

PowerPoint is here to stay. It's time for corporate communications and PR professionals to take a leadership position and begin the corporate dialogue. How will your organization use PowerPoint? How can you help your executives and managers be more effective using PowerPoint? What kind of presentation skills would make our speakers more persuasive and memorable?

Sometimes PowerPoint is pointless. There's the famous exchange between Lou Gerstner, who had just become president of IBM, and the head of a business unit who was asked to present the status of the business. Upon reaching the second slide, Gerstner politely turned off the projector, looked at the presenter and said, “Let's just talk about your business.” Gerstner later noted in his book that, “It was as if the president of the United States had banned the use of English at White House meetings.”

Pass along the Gettysburg example to companies and organizations. Perhaps they'll get the (power) point.

© 2004 PR Tactics. Used by permission from the Public Relations Society of America, www.prsa.org

To learn more about developing your presentation skills, consider these AMA seminars:

• Strategies for Developing Effective Presentation Skills
• Effective Presentation Skills for IT and Technical Professionals

Author Bio: Karen Pruente, APR and Sarah Lary coach corporate spokespeople for internal and external speaking engagements for Dallas-based Spaeth Communications, www.spaethcom.com.