So I have been working on this powerpoint presentation this week at work and really reflecting on how corporate citizens abuse powerpoint. Sometimes I wonder when did powerpoint become a tool for taking notes or writing memos. Even worse, when did we start writing business plans and proposals in ppt. Ridiculous! At my workplace, powerpoint usage is very high and I would say 80-90% of the attachments distributed via our exchange servers must be ppt (ok, maybe its an exxageration but you get the point). I always wonder when the job descriptions companies are hiring for have the “must have good communication skills” - I wonder if that is where we test how people would use visual presentation tools like ppt. Don’t get me wrong, I like ppt for what it is and what you use it for - but please use it wisely. I have been to so many industry conferences and internal presentations where people have so many bullets on the slide and pages and pages of text. What’s worse is that I have seen so many of them read right of the screen. Now I believe that you have to a very good understanding of your material or content and that you shouldn’t have to read off of the screen. Anyways, back to my real issue - how do you change a corporate culture that is so ppt-reliant? I know my boss stays away from using or doing ppt presentations - actually he hates it and these days so do I. I mean I do work in a research company and that we are so data oriented but come on! - who needs more data on the screen. The real value in us as researchers is taking complex research information and turning into nuggets of insight and presented in a very simple way. And, they dont have to be 200 pages long either. Too often we get caught up on having everything spelled out on the ppt slides and forget that people come to presentations to listen to you and not just look at you read from the slides or fill them with all the facts and text. I get a lot of tips and insights from Garr Reynolds’ blog - PresentationZen. Infact, I just got his latest book titles PresentationZen and I highly recommend anyone creating presentations to read it. One of my favorite posts from him is Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic where he illustrates the differences in the styles of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Look at the image below (I got this from his blog):

This is how I feel so many ppt are today and not to mention that all of them will have the corporate branding on them too. Look at this compared to Steve Jobs slides:

Look at the difference in visual complexity of both presentations. Granted, Steve Jobs is a master presenter but I think every CEO or execuive should have that regardless of their background or experience/expertise. Ok, back to my ppt presentation and I hope to make it clean and simple as Mr. Jobs!