How To Avoid Death by PowerPoint

Let me begin somewhere rather unfashionable: nothing much is wrong with PowerPoint.

I have watched it used to genuinely powerful effect, complementing a speaker’s key point and bringing something to life that words alone would have left flat; in the right hands, a visual is an asset, not a liability. I have also watched precisely the same software drain the life out of a room full of intelligent adults who had arrived willing to listen.

The software is not the problem. What we do with it is.

The Strangest Thing About Bullet Points

For as long as I have done this work, I have read articles condemning the bullet point. Death by PowerPoint is hardly a new complaint, and everybody I meet has sat through it at one time or another. Most honest presenters will admit, if you ask them kindly, that they have inflicted it on an audience of their own at some point, and yet every single day I still see slides smothered in them.

It’s really interesting to take a moment to reflect on this, because it’s quite unusual. Most people agree, at least intellectually and without much disagreement, that overloading a slide with too much text isn’t the best approach. Still, many of those same people will find themselves back at their desks later that week, creating another one. Clearly, more is going on here than ignorance, and until we figure out what it is, things aren’t likely to change.

A Slide Full Of Text Is Not A Slide

It is a document.

Documents are a fine thing, and I have nothing whatever against them, because they are built to be read quietly, at the reader’s own pace and in the comfort of their own head, and they can carry detail and nuance that no spoken presentation ever could. They are not built to be projected onto a wall and read aloud, word for word, to a room of people who finished reading them some time before the speaker did.

If you are planning to present a deck fraught with bullet points, you may as well hand it over at the door and invite everybody to read it for themselves, because that is more or less what they are going to do anyway.

Why It Cannot Work

The moment any text appears on a screen, you have issued an unspoken instruction to your audience to read it, and they will follow that instruction whether they intended to or not.

What happens next has a name. Cognitive load researchers call it the redundancy effect, and it is among the field’s better-established findings: when the same information is presented as written text and spoken aloud at the same time, the two do not reinforce one another; they compete. Printed words do not arrive down some separate channel of their own. They go in through the eyes, alongside the slide and alongside you, and then have to be reconciled against the version coming in through the ears, which costs your audience effort that should be going toward understanding what you are saying.

Text alongside speech does help in some cases: somebody following in a second language, or somebody working through a recording they can pause and replay, but a roomful of people watching you present in real time is not one of them. That is worth reading twice, because it is the exact opposite of what most presenters believe they are doing. The slide isn’t supporting you; it is competing with you, and when people are forced to choose between reading and listening, most will read. Which makes you redundant, in both senses of the word.

Reading Your Slides Out Loud

One version deserves special mention, as it’s widely used and often feels subtly hurtful.

When you read a slide aloud to a room full of adults, it can sometimes sound like you’re saying, “I know you can’t read, so I’ll do it for you,” but nobody ever intends it that way. Often, people interpret it that way without even realising it, and it can create a disconnect that’s surprisingly hard to fix.

Why We Do It Anyway

We prefer to use bullet points mainly for ourselves, not for the audience. They help us remember everything and serve as a script to hold onto when nerves set in. Since everyone else uses them too, they must be okay, and with our busy schedules, it’s the fastest way to make things look complete.

We also use them because somebody always asks for the slides afterwards, and we would rather not build two decks.

All those reasons are perfectly valid and understandable. However, they don’t really focus on the people in the room.

The Question To Ask Before You Open The Software

Ask what the slides are actually for.

What will they add for the people in front of you? How will they help that audience to understand, to connect with and to act on what you have come to say? Most uncomfortably of all, is this slide for them or is it for you? If you are genuinely confident the answer is them, build it properly, and decide here and now to avoid bullet points at all costs. There are four questions worth answering before you build anything at all.

If You Need Five Bullet Points, Have Five Slides

That one change will do more for you than anything else on this page.

Try to include just one idea on each slide. Keeping it simple helps each slide show the main point clearly. This way, your slide and your voice work together smoothly, making your message even stronger.

Create billboards, not slides. Think of a billboard as a quick hello to drivers passing by; it needs to share one clear idea in a few words, in big letters, so it’s easy to read in a moment. Nobody stops to study a billboard because that would mean taking their eyes off the road. When drivers have to work hard to understand it, the billboard isn’t doing its job.

Your slide is almost exactly in the same position. Your audience will look up, take it in, and come back to you within a few seconds. Give them something that needs studying, and they will study it, because the text leaves them no real choice. For every second they spend working on your slide, they stop listening to you.

Most Of Us Think In Pictures

Think of your car. Or your front door, or somebody you love.

Something arrived, and it wasn’t just a list of words. Usually, an image flashes into our mind almost instantly, and the clearer it is, the more confident and less confused we feel. This is a big part of how our thinking naturally works. That’s why a single, well-chosen picture on a screen can communicate so much more than a long, bulleted list ever can.

Be bold. Be colourful. Above all else, put the audience first.

A Few Practical Things

– Avoid the corporate template wherever you can. Most are too restrictive to let a good idea through.

– One idea per slide.

– Keep the background clear and simple.

– Keep the text to a minimum and the font large.

– Avoid animations. Most are unnecessary, and many are cheesy.

– Never rely on your slides. Plan for the projector failing or your notes staying on the train, internalise your message rather than memorising it, and you will still be able to speak when things go wrong.

And If They Want The Slides Afterwards

Build two decks.

One for the screen, carrying the message and ideas and very little else, and a second with the detail, written so it makes sense on its own without you standing beside it. That is more work than a single deck and far less than presenting badly to a room that has stopped listening.

If you cannot make the first of those compelling, the second is unlikely to help anybody much either.

What It Comes Down To

It all rests on one decision, and you make it before you ever open the software. Either the next twenty minutes will be about what you need to get through, or what these people need to leave with. Everything else, including every bullet point you were about to type, follows from that.

If any of this was useful, please pass it on. Somebody you work with is building a deck this week with eleven bullet points on slide four, and they are doing it because they are busy and quietly frightened of forgetting something, which is a far more forgivable reason than anybody ever gives them credit for.

If you would like some help with your presentation skills:

• Book yourself onto a powerful public speaking course.
• Invest in some really good one to one public speaking coaching.
• Get yourself some excellent presentation skills training.

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