Life After PowerPoint!

A PowerPoint diagram meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan certainly succeeded in that aim.

The New York Times ran a great article yesterday — great, because I agree with so much of it — called “We have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint.” Read it here.

(My book Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint, which was published last year, addresses some of the same concerns. Read more about it here.)

The article raises issues about how PowerPoint is used in the military (and, by extension, everywhere else). These are the three main problems I’ve picked out of the article:

1. It is a poorly used presentation tool. When it is poorly used — that is, most of the time — PowerPoint produces some of the most confusing and boring presentations imaginable. That’s for two reasons.

   First, presenters don’t think through their presentations. They don’t analyze their audience, establish a goal, create a logical and persuasive structure, select the most telling evidence, and create a clear message. They don’t consider what other types of support material — like handouts or white papers or demonstrations — might better help them communicate their message. They simply turn on PowerPoint and begin “populating slides.” They then read the slides to their audience, inevitably speeding up at the end of their presentations because they’ve run out of time. They print up PowerPoint notes as pre-reading material, as handouts, and as leave-behinds.

   And second, presenters don’t even use well the one thing PowerPoint is good for — projecting images. They create confusing graphics (like the one pictured above), charts and graphs that can’t be read (have you ever tried to decipher a spread sheet imported directly from Excel?), endless lists of bullet points or, worse, entire paragraphs of text.

2. It is the wrong presentation tool to use.The real problem with PowerPoint, to my thinking, isn’t that it’s so poorly used so frequently. (It is poorly used more times than not.) The real problem is that, even when relatively well used, it dumbs down most presentations.

   PowerPoint makes it hard — not impossible, but hard — to present complex material and sophisticated ideas. You cannot present the same amount of detail on a slide that you can on a hand out, for example. Complex thought, which isn’t the same thing as complicated or confusing thought, requires you to string together a lot of material in a coherent and meaningful argument. The connections are what matter, the way information is ordered and tied together. PowerPoint allows, even encourages, you to present discrete bits of information without needing to make any connections. You can simply show a slide, talk about it, and say “next slide.” You don’t have to show how the information on one slide leads logically to the information on the next slide. You can present a succession of slides — tons of information — without giving your audience any sense of what it all adds up to.

   PowerPoint’s best feature — its ability to project images — is also one of its greatest flaws. Images can be problematic, because they can impede reflection and deep thinking. We can see something — the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison, for example — and think we understand what is being shown and what it means. And when we see a rapid succession of images, especially if they’re powerful or visually stimulating images, we are even less likely to probe their meaning and implications.

3. It is time consuming and costly.
   
   To avoid the errors associated with my first point above — the poor use of PowerPoint — you have to spend a fair deal of time and energy on creating each presentation.There are some great PowerPoint Presentations out there. (Go to TED: Ideas Worth Spreading for examples of how to use PowerPoint in a way that will blow your audiences away.) If every PowerPoint presentation were as well designed and rehearsed, you wouldn’t hear people talking about “death by PowerPoint.” But imagine how much time, energy, expertise, and money goes into producing those great presentations. Do you have that many resources available to you?

What do you think?

Last week I listed some of my least favorite words and phrases – words to avoid. And a number of people added their own.

But there are two phrases I hear all too often that rank at the top of any list I could compile of phrases to be avoided, derided, deplored.

It’s a toss up, in my mind, which phrase is worse. You decide.

1. “You probably can’t read this, but…”
Which means: “I’ve lifted a graphic or a spread sheet from some other program. I haven’t taken the time or the care to change it in any way before importing it directly into PowerPoint. It looked fine on my monitor. I mean, I could read it and everything. I didn’t think that an audience might not be able to read it when it was projected onto a screen in a large, well-lit auditorium. Oh well, too bad. I’m going to talk about it anyway.”

2. “Next slide.”
Which means: “I haven’t thought about how all the information I’m talking about ties together. I’m treating my presentation like a series of free-standing, independent slides. I simply talk about the information that’s on one. And then I talk about the information that’s on the next one. And so on and so on. I don’t sum things up. I don’t give an overview. Why bother explaining how the information is related or how one point connects to another? The important thing is that I communicate as much information as possible, right? Let the audience figure it out, if they can.”

I’m sure there are other phrases that rank right up there (or down there) with these two phrases. What are your least favorite phrases?

Samuel Goldwyn, the movie producer, said, “If you want to send a message, try Western Union.” He was talking about movies, and if by “send a message” he meant “make an obvious, preachy statement” he was right.

But I think a speech should have a message.

A speech’s message is different from its main idea.

An idea is a thought that structures, unifies, and gives meaning and value to the other information that you present or that your audience already knows.

The message is your moral vision, your vision of how to act in the world.

Your idea is, or should be, explicit. If at the end of a speech the audience is unable to clearly articulate your main point, the speech was, in my opinion, a failure. It was either disjointed or confusing. But your message doesn’t have to be — often shouldn’t be — so obvious. An explicitly stated message can be heavy handed and off putting.

At Gettysburg Lincoln’s idea was this: This nation, founded in the belief that “all men are created equal,” is being tested by war, but it will emerge renewed and strengthened. His (unspoken) message: We must continue fighting to preserve the union and to end slavery. His idea was a way of interpreting — making sense of — the war. That message came from his moral conviction about the rightness of the Union’s cause and about what needs to be done as a result.

Sarah Palin and Barak Obama have radically different ideas about healthcare. But they also have radically different moral visions.

Whether you know it or not, whether you intend to or not, you are always communicating some sort of message, because you are always speaking from your moral vision.

Do you agree or disagree?

Photo courtesy of Natalie Maynor at Flickr.

I always love lists of overused, trite, important-sounding words. The list from Lake Superior State University (found here) holds these words (rightly) up to ridicule:

1. Shovel-Ready
2. Transparent/Transparency
3. Czar
4. Tweet
5. App
6. Friend as a verb
7. Teachable moment
8. In these economic times….
9. Stimulus
10. Toxic assets
11. Too big to fail
12. Bromance
13. Chillaxin’
14. Obama-prefix or roots

My least favorite phrase — it’s been around a long time — is “to make a long story short.” I appreciate the concept, but in my experience people who use the phrase are merely pausing in the middle of a boring recitation to catch their breaths. They then continue making a long story longer.

What phrase or word irks, irritates, or rankles you?

I believe that speeches and presentations should be built around an idea. One idea. It can be a complex idea, but it still has to be a single, unified idea. Of course, it’s got to be a good idea.

I like the Matthew Frederick’s definition of an idea, which he gives in 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School:

An idea is a specific mental structure by which we organize, understand, and give meaning to external experiences and information.

The purpose of a speech or presentation, then, is to help audiences organize, understand, and give meaning to their experiences and to the information they already know or that you’re presenting. Simply giving people information — even if it’s original, verifiable, and relevant– isn’t enough. People already have access to more information than they can possibly assimilate or use. You have to help them make sense of it and know how to value it.

Clearly, not all ideas are created equal. Some ideas — way too many ideas, these days — are irrational, crazy, and demonstrably false. Just because they are widely disseminated doesn’t mean they’re true. Bad ideas that make the rounds of the internet or the talk shows are still bad ideas.

Here are three basic questions to ask about any idea you’re considering, whether you’re preparing a speech or listening to one:

• What’s the evidence?
  What experience, observation, or information is being put forth? How do you know it is accurate? What degree of confidence do you have in it? What is its source? Is it supported by other material you know to be trustworthy? What evidence contradicts it?
• What are the assumptions?
  An assumption is a hypothesis that is assumed to be true and that may or may not be stated. It’s your job to ferret out all the assumptions being made and to make them explicit. Then you need to decide if they are true. Assumptions often lead to conclusions. If you begin with a false, inaccurate, or misleading assumption, you’ll end up with a bad idea.
• Is it logical?
  Logic is a way of tying things together in a way that makes sense. Pay special attention to the three most common logical fallacies: 1. post hoc, ergo propter hoc; 2) false dichotomy; and 3) ad hominem.

What other ways do you use to determine whether an idea is a good one or not?

Photo courtesy of Zaldy Icaonapo at PublicDomainPictures.net.