Are you getting enough Power from your Point? (Saturated Market)

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Are you getting enough Power from your Point?

Strategy Every day in boardrooms everywhere, people are suffering from a common affliction: Death by PowerPoint. The symptoms come in all shapes and sizes: boredom, confusion, anger and helplessness. So too do the underlying causes: too much info, not enough info, too much fluff, and animation addiction. But there is a cure. Proper understanding of the purpose and application of effective PowerPoint techniques can alleviate symptoms and make your presentation (at the very least) tolerable.

How much?

One of the most hotly debated topics in this area is that of how much content is appropriate. Do you load up slides with as much information as possible, or keep it absolutely brief with a minimum of points and sparse wording for each? My answer: it depends. There are so many situations where one approach is better than another. If you're delivering a presentation on a highly technical topic, or a presentation where the PP will serve as a hard-copy report, it's better to get more nitty-gritty. These presentations will often result in hand-outs being consulted as guides, and can be consulted and reviewed long after your presentation has ended. You want to make sure that your audience has all the facts, especially if anyone happened to be absent. This is well suited to proposals.

On the flip side, there are many situations where it is more to your advantage to use only a couple points on each slide, and keep each point very brief. If you're presenting to people who don't care about the inner workings or just want a summary of the topic (such as shareholders), this is far more appropriate. As well, if you're just demonstrating an idea, or the presentation is accompanying a report (which itself will contain all the important data), you should stick to this. The absolute best time to use this form of slide is when you're presenting something technical to a non-technical audience. Sum it up and keep it brief in this case.

Confusing PowerPoint slides with a slideshow

If you're trying to convey important data, it's probably best to keep pictures to a minimum. Adding a few graphics to help illustrate a point or to add some "lift" to a horrifically dry topic is advised, but keep it low-key. If every slide has a goofy graphic (or animation), it can serve to distract your audience and hurt your credibility. Of course, if you're presenting to a more relaxed group, you can scale up the pictures a little. Just don't get carried away. It can still be pretty distracting.

Your slides shouldn't be more animated than you are

Many peoples' use of PowerPoint animations is akin to a mountain-climber's explanation for their passion: because it's there. I've seen and heard horror stories of otherwise terrific presentations that were maimed by overuse of animations. Be it animated pictures, text appearances, or even screen wipes, doing these for everything will slow down your presentation and get old really quickly. This feature was created to add emphasis, or to hide important points that you didn't want your audience to see until you decided in order to get the right effect. Adding animations to every section is akin to highlighting everything in a passage or book- sure it looks flashy, but it defeats the entire purpose.

Every presentation is different; the hard and fast rule is that you have to look at your audience and the purpose of your presentation to decide exactly how to put it together. And remember to make it follow a logical order and be easy to read; your own PowerPoint can serve as a terrific way to keep you on track with the verbal part of your presentation, similar to cue cards.

Until next time,