6 Reasons I Gave Up PowerPoint
Love it or hate it, PowerPoint is a cornerstone of the modern corporate world. I know that I spent the first 15 years of my career attempting to master my PowerPoint ninja skills. And now I can put most of those skills on hold since I’ve seen the light of banning PowerPoint as a tool for internal discussions. I still use PowerPoint or Keynote for public presentations and internal all-hands meetings, but I do my best to avoid it whenever I can. When I look back, it seems almost crazy to calculate how much time I feel was wasted sitting in every meeting of every day and they were all orchestrated via PowerPoint.
My first corporate experience without PowerPoint was when I changed jobs to a culture that didn’t use it at all. And while no one explained to me how to think about the adjustment, I’ve come to some realizations on my own that make it hard for me to ever go back and instead I’ve come to rely almost exclusively on documents. To see a well-written post on the power of writing, follow the link I shared via Twitter a few weeks ago.
To replace the barrage of internal PowerPoint meetings, I now simply ask my team to prepare a document that covers the relevant information about the topics they’d like to discuss. I’m not particular about the document structure so long as it covers the key points. Ultimately, most meetings with presentations are trying to do three things: 1) educate on a topic, 2) make a recommendation, and 3) possibly ask for an endorsement of the recommendation.
My ask is just that any document be distributed two days before the meeting and that everyone is expected to have read the doc in advance. Then, when everyone joins the meeting, we already have context and we focus on the discussion instead of losing time to educate everyone on the recommendation.
I rationalized my personal “Death to PowerPoint” mantra with these 6 points:
1. You‘re already telling a story
When you are creating a presentation, you are planning out your story to tell in your head. “I’ll cover these three bullets, verbally provide details on X and Y, use a datapoint to reinforce Z, and then move to the next slide.” We walk into the meeting, ready to tell our story and take the group through an education, a recommendation, and then ask for an endorsement. Except…
2. You always get interrupted by Slide 2
Never fails. There’s always someone in the meeting that starts firing questions at you before you’ve gotten to that part of your story. You start trying to handle the questions like you’re catching golf balls at a driving range, “But wait, that’s on slide 7!” or “Hold on, I’ll cover that on slide 12!” You’re forced to jump around like a trained animal instead of being able to tell your story the way you intended. Now, you’ll be lucky to get out of the room with an agreement to have another meeting and not have your battleship sunk right in the room.
3. Miss the meeting? You’re Screwed
Another problem with PowerPoint is that all the real information and wisdom is in the presenter’s head. It’s not written down anywhere. Trying to read typical slides after the meeting holds close to zero value. Plus, the number of people I’ve met that actually write their entire talk track into the slides notes I can count on one hand. So if you weren’t at the meeting, there is almost no way for you to know what information was shared, what recommendation was made. The only part you’ll hear about is the decision and then you’re asked to take action on that decision when you don’t have all the context. And that never ends well.
On the other hand… Imagine if you replace the presentation with a document that was shared with the attendees in advance. A few amazing things happen:
4. No More Interruptions
By writing your proposal down in a document and expecting everyone to read it before the meeting, your entire proposal (education, recommendation, ask for endorsement) gets consumed without interruptions. No more jumping to slide 12 when Bob asks a question. No more jumping around like a trained animal. You get to communicate your point of view the way you intended.
5. Everyone Gets Better
A funny thing happens when everyone on your team is communicating by docs instead of PowerPoint. Everyone’s writing gets better. The team’s ability to present and consume information get better. The collective ability to analyze new information improves. By forcing the team to write, read, and analyze, it makes the team better.
6. Can’t Attend; Send Notes
Remember what happens if you miss the meeting with the presentation? You never received the context of the discussion, only the result. But when everyone writes a document, all you need to do is read your email. In fact, when the documents are sent ahead of time, you can send your feedback ahead of the meeting too. You simply reply-all with your questions and now your questions can be answered by email (in writing again) or they can be part of the discussion. Not only do you have the context, you get to contribute to the discussion even if you can’t make the meeting.
I don’t expect PowerPoint to go away anytime soon. As much as I may not want to use it for my internal discussions with my team, it still has its place for facilitating a presentation. Somewhere along the way, presentations became a viable substitute for communicating complex topics and that’s what I wish would go away. Hopefully this sounds interesting enough for at least a few people to try out a different way to run a meeting and write it down instead. There’s not a lot to lose, and there’s a ton to gain. If you try it, please drop a comment back and let me know how it worked out for you.
If you’re interested in a change of scenery and want to come work in an environment like I’ve described in some of my posts (e.g. here and here), my team is always looking for people to join us in our offices across Europe and Asia. Please reach out to me directly (twitter.com/bdove99) or check out our jobs site (skyscanner.net/jobs).
