PowerPoint Presentations
The 'normal' approach to presentations using PowerPoint (30 slides, blue background, yellow text, all the same layout, a heading and five bullet points) is so prevalent, and so universally ill-received, that it has recently become the subject of considerable academic and journalistic comment, and it is the slides that come in for the greatest criticism.
For instance, in America a well-known and respected academic, Edward R. Tufte of Yale, who is an acknowledged corporate communications expert, has written a strong condemnation of PowerPoint in The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (which you can read in full by accessing www.edwardtufte.com). One fascinating example he uses concerns the Columbia space shuttle disaster. In a slide presentation - which Tufte calls 'an exercise in misdirection' - a crucial piece of information about the foam section which detached and crippled the craft, is described as 640 times larger than ones which reassuring pre-flight advice described, was buried in small type several layers down in a busy PowerPoint list. Though the danger this might pose was actually flagged, the warning was not noticed.
So are these pundits right? Is PowerPoint intrinsically evil? Not so. Edward Tufte et al certainly have a sound argument based on what the vast majority of the world's 450 million PowerPoint users (yes, there really are that many) are doing with it. But this is the issue; it is how it is used that causes the problem and the audience abuse. The PowerPoint system itself is not to blame. Transform its use and you transform its effect.
How well do you really know PowerPoint?
What are the two most useful features within PowerPoint?
The use of the 'B' key
What happens in show mode (i.e. during a presentation) when the presenter presses the 'B' key? It is probably the most important feature of PowerPoint. Why?
Because a presentation is delivered by a living, breathing person, the contribution they make to the totality of a presentation is crucial. Sometimes the full attention of the group must be on them, on what they are saying and how they are saying it. Steps need to be taken to make this so. Press the 'B' key and the screen goes blank, so that attention necessarily must then focus on the presenter. Too often, audiences are left staring at an image on a screen that is, for the moment, irrelevant to what is being said. The facility to blank out the screen is invaluable. Press the 'B' key again and the blanked image lights up again. So simple, yet relatively few people seem to know or use it. You might also like to try the 'W' key which turns the screen white.
The ability to locate a particular slide
So, somewhere in your presentation you have a killer slide; the slide that summarises the value proposition; the one slide you need to show the CEO, after which they will be interested, or not! How do you get there?
If you think that the process is 'Esc', followed by Slide Sorter, scroll down, double click the slide and then press Slide Show; then you don't really understand PowerPoint.
You need to be familiar with your slides, but if you want to jump to, say, Slide 24, perhaps to answer a question, hit the numbers '2' and '4' and then the 'Return' key, and up comes Slide 24. Again this is an invaluable, and often little used, feature. Also try the 'Home' key for going to the first slide or the 'End' for the last slide (try pressing F1 whilst in show mode and PowerPoint will bring up a list of in-show commands).
PowerPoint is surely something that must be regarded as an essential working tool. As such, we must be familiar with it. This is especially so for sales people and their sales pitches. Most sales people are drivers (that is a comment about owning cars not a personality type, although.. .!). There will be few, if any, buttons on the dashboard of their cars for which they do not know the function. Maybe PowerPoint should be regarded in the same way.
