Death by Power Point

Couple of weeks back I attended a conference. As the key note speaker we had an expert from one of the top notch institutions in the world, who had recently relocated from London. As the topic was close to my heart, I parked myself in the front seat. The speaker had a distinct western accent as he had been out of the country for a long time.

As expected from any expert speaker today, he had a power point presentation to support his talk. The slides started moving one by one. Extremely colorful, quite complex diagrams with wide variety of shapes and colours linked and interlinked using arrows and lines flowing in and out and very densely packed text. Quite visually impressive!

Even front row, I found it difficult to read most of the text. The message that was expected to be understood from the various cubes, pyramids and animations were too complex for me to follow; especially when I attempted to follow the speech. The speaker expected me to quickly assimilate each slide in milliseconds and then connect it to the pearls of wisdom that came from his mouth.

The audio and the visuals were impressive; but, failed to communicate to the audience. This is a phenomenon that has become quite common these days. Power Point presentation is a killer utility that Computer revolution has contributed to the modern day manager. With more and more functionalities and features Power Point has become more important to corporate executives than even food and water. (The only other killer functionality that can beat this is the is ‘copy paste’ function)

A good Power Point presentation can be a powerful tool to make penetrating communications; especially in presentations. It can help the presenter as cue card to help in keeping a structured story line, it can pictorially present some difficult concepts, it can help the audience to quickly refer to the broader context of what is being presented so on and so forth

But overuse of the funky features is making this to a tool that kills effective communication. Power Point helps in building excellent visual presentations and diagrammatic representations.

The diagrams pie charts we use as a part of a written document can afford to be a bit complex and dense (though I would not recommend overdose of it). This is because the reader has the flexibility to read the text, look at the model, ruminate and go back to the text and the model again if he feels the need. In this case he sets the pace. Even when we provide an electronic copy of the presentation and the receiver can view it at his pace, we can afford to have some element of complexity.

But if we are using our PPT as a complement to our oral presentation we cannot afford such complex and dense slide show. If our presentation is to a small audience who are very much clued on to the topic we are presenting (say our department colleagues, our board, our client) we can get away with some of these gimmicks.

But if we are making a presentation to a larger audience then these colorful animations dampens the effectiveness of the presentation. Very often when we make presentations and the speeches to a large audience, the level to which most of the people are clued into the topic will be to a much lesser extent. In such circumstances, if we make our PPT and speech complex and heavy, it will fail to communicate though it may appear erudite. The complex slide deck will then become a distraction. Human beings cannot listen, read and assimilate complex messages in real time as his working memory have limited capacity and has limited duration, especially when it comes to new and novel information. The visuals could act as an intuitive complement; but, if it is anything more, it can be very frustrating and ineffective. What is worse is the presenter referring to the slides all the time taking away one of the most important component of oral presentation; the eye contact.

The new breed “MBA” varieties (I can vouch for that. I am one too) who are computer savvy (A very critical skill these days) get carried away by everything the computer can do without assessing how useful and how relevant they are in the context. The slide deck for them becomes a tool to intimidate, a means to prove how smart they are and not an aid to communicate and to relate. But in reality they become crutches to the speaker and not an aid to the audience. Should we consider banning power point presentation? Absolutely not; if we do that there will be many more (like consultants) to join Dodo as an extinct species.(don’t deny me my daily bread)

"If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won't make them relevant." - Edward Tufte Professor Emeritus, Yale University

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