Speaking PowerPoint, Book Review
Bruce Gabrielle sent me his book, Speaking PowerPoint: The New Language of Business. Get it here.
Since I’m the author of Real Leaders Don’t Do PowerPoint and no great fan of the software, I put off reading it for some time. But I’m glad I finally got around to it. I’m about half way through it, and I find it one of the best books on the subject I’ve come across. If you use PowerPoint, I strongly urge you to pick up a copy and give it a read.
I haven’t changed my mind. I still believe that leaders shouldn’t use PowerPoint. They should be giving speeches, which are meant to influence and inspire, not making presentations, which are about communicating information that people can understand and put to use.
To influence and inspire your audience you have to appeal to their emotions and imaginations, which is done better by telling stories and relying on the power of the spoken word.
To inform people and enable them to take action, you need to use visual aids. PowerPoint is the most commonly used visual aid in business (and elsewhere) today. Bruce makes a great case for its use and for how to use it effectively.
Speaking PowerPoint is almost 300 8-by-10-inch pages. It’s crammed with great information. Much of it reads like a manual, making it something you’ll want to refer to from time to time, not read through in one sitting. But I suggest you read the first 60 pages or so to get started.
I especially like the distinction Gabrielle makes between boardroom- versus ballroom-style presentations. I quote what he says in length because I think it’s so important:
Ballroom-style PowerPoint has a single use: to provide visual support for a speaker. It contains little text and so doesn’t work well as standalone reading. Without the speaker, the slides make little sense.
Boardroom-style PowerPoint may have several uses. It may be read standalone at a computer screen — a reading deck — or printed and discussed in a team meeting — a discussion deck –or presented to a roomful of decision-makers — a briefing deck. Sometimes a single deck has to work in all three situations. The audience wants to read your slides before the meeting, or after the meeting, or instead of attending the meeting. They want to forward your deck to others in the company. Boardroom-style slides need to work as both presentations and standalone documents.
In ballroom-style presentations the speaker speaks and the audience listens. There may be opportunity for questions and answers at some point, but the speaker is not looking for feedback or lengthy discussion. The speaker controls the pace of the presentation.
Boardroom-style PowerPoint involves decision makers of different levels in the company. When you present to a vice president, they do not meekly listen; they have questions, they will challenge assumptions, they will tell you what they want to see modified. When you collaborate with colleagues, they have opinions and want to shape the deck. So boardroom-style PowerPoint is interactive.
Because boardroom-style slides are intended for a different kind of audience and different kinds of uses, the typical PowerPoint advice does not apply. In fact, the typical advice is often the wrong thing to do. [My emphasis]
If you’ve read Speaking PowerPoint, what do you think? Do you like the distinction Bruce makes between boardroom- and ballroom-style presentations?
May 20th, 2011 at 10:47 pm
Thanks for the kind mention, Chris.
I agree with you. There are many kinds of presentations and some are improved with PowerPoint and some are not.
Leaders inspire confidence, rile emotions and galvanize resolve to pursue an ambitious goal. That requires authentic connection and developing a vision for the future through storytelling, metaphor, etc. PowerPoint slides interfere in these kinds of presentations. Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech would not be improved with PowerPoint slides.
May 21st, 2011 at 12:44 pm
I really liked the distinction between ballroom and boardroom presentations. I learned all the rules for designing ballroom slides long ago and I’ve struggled with using those rules in the business world where PowerPoint decks are largely replacing formal reports. I see now that the old rules don’t apply to slides that are meant to be reviewed rather than presented to a large audience.
P.S., The book also has some great examples of slide layouts for charts.
May 24th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
Brilliant advice from both sides of a discussion. I think and feel that you’ve captured exactly when PPT works and when to leave PPT well alone. Nice work guys.
May 24th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
Let me first confess that I have NOT (yet ) read “Speaking PowerPoint,” but it’s on my list now. I am a fan of Nancy Duarte’s “Slide:ology” and David Sibbet’s “Visual Meetings.” So my comment here is driven by the quotes Chris has provided and my own experience. That said, the hair on the back of my neck goes up when discussions turn to the explicit acception of PowerPoint in lieu of formal reports or, for that matter, just speaking.
As a military officer, I was taught how to write position papers, executive summaries, and point papers for senior officers. It was a skill expected of every good staff officer. I’m still trying to figure out the value added by now substituting a page of sharp concise writing with a slide of bulleted phrases – the “slideocument.” If the information needs to “stand alone” then why use a tool intended for presentation?
My wife serves in local government, and one of her colleagues once commented, when handed a written report, “I don’t read. Can’t someone make this into bullets?” I have heard executives say, “I don’t do 12 pt. font” implying that unless the information is boiled down to 32 pitch bullets, they can’t bother to read it. If you can’t say it in a 140 character tweet, I just don’t have the time.
We seem to searching for ways to condense the vast information coming at us from all directions. How do we package more relevant information into denser ‘packages?’ We seem to think we are doing our audiences a favor by “boiling down” information into what Tufte refers to as “PowerPoint grunts.” Yet the reductionist approach of the typical text-bulleted PowerPoint slide has the opposite effect, creating a paucity of information. But if you then add more (and more) text to “fill in the gaps,” then why not just create a word document?
To the “interactive boardroom style” comment, I would counter that there is nothing inherently interactive about PowerPoint per se. You can act upon the slide, it doesn’t react back. It is with the presenter that you interact. The vice president can challenge my views in my point paper or my spoken comments just as easily as my PowerPoint slide, as can my colleagues share their edits of my written report. I have witnessed far too many “PowerPoint in Public” sessions tend to degenerate into discussions of form over content.
I realize it’s an uphill battle, and I wage it every day. I often prepare both a PowerPoint presentation and a separate Word handout. More work? Yes. Does it take more time? Yes. Does it result in a better presentation AND and better handout, since neither is trying to do double duty as the other? I like to think so.
I know, I tend to sound like anti-PowerPoint idealist raging against the Microsoft Office machine. In truth I use PowerPoint in some form almost every day. In fact, last week I was at Microsoft running a workshop using, yes, what else, PowerPoint. But as a lecturer and public speaker, I’m constantly looking for ways to present and utilize information better, with and without PowerPoint, hence why I’ll pick up Bruce’s book!
On the one hand, is the prevalence of slideocuments a condemnation of us as writers, or our audiences as readers? On the other, do we now read out loud rather than speak; have we conditioned our audiences to read rather than listen?
May 26th, 2011 at 4:55 pm
There’s more to Bruce’s book than I summarized in the post. It’s well worth a read.
Pete, I agree with you and add a “but…”
But #1: Some reports can be presented well using PowerPoint. (Bruce’s book shows how.)
For those times when I still think written documents might be better (white papers or research papers, for example), I still have three buts…
But #2: More and more people lack the ability to write. Schools don’t teach students how to write term papers anymore, for example. Students prepare PowerPoint presentations instead. I think it’s a mistake, but I don’t see it changing any time soon.
But #3: More and more people lack the time to write.
But #4: More and more people lack the attention span and the time to read. Most of my clients simply don’t or won’t read a 5- or 10- page document. They want pictures or visual aids of some sort, not text.
I applaud you for providing both a PowerPoint and a Word document. (I don’t use PowerPoint, as you might imagine, but I do supply a Word document as a handout.) But I think it is an uphill battle, as you say. It may be a lost cause.