A Presentation Is Not A Document
Loughlin O'Nolan
PowerPoint continues its march towards domination, but it is doing so by cannibalising its cousin.
Some people really dislike Microsoft PowerPoint. Edward Tufte, a
professor emeritus of statistics, information design, interface design, and political economy at Yale University is one of these. In a famous essay, 'The cognitive style of PowerPoint', he criticises the almost ubiquitous presentation software for being presenter-oriented rather than audience-oriented. He also argues that the dominant bullet-point after bullet-point presentation replaces the traditional beginning-narrative-end story structure, to the detriment of the overall message.
One of the most well-known responses to this essay was Donald Norman's 'In defence of PowerPoint'. The essence of Norman's argument was that PowerPoint doesn't kill people, people do. There's nothing wrong with the tool, it's the way it is being used that is flawed.
So those are the two sides of the argument regarding PowerPoint as a presentation tool. Hardly surprising to anyone who has sat through any of the estimated 30 million PowerPoint presentations given every day.
I'd like to examine a slightly different but related phenomenon that has been on the rise for the last number of years.
It has become increasingly commonplace for presentations to be emailed to clients, prospects, colleagues, partners etc. entirely bereft of context.
RULE: Properly prepared presentation files should usually not make a lot of sense to a reader in the absence of the presenter. Presentations are not supposed to be read.
In an ideal world, the communications process should be as follows
- A presentation is given to an audience. This can be anything from an internal presentation or a sales pitch to a conference address.
- Supplementary / supporting material is supplied immediately afterwards - if possible this should be more than just a transcript of the presentation
- A call to action is provided with this supplementary material (e.g., 'for even more detail contact moc.ynapmoc|eod.enaj#moc.ynapmoc|eod.enaj, or visit http://www.company.com/more')
- "If people request a copy of the slides, tell them that if they want to show the slides to their boss / colleagues, then you come with the slides and give the presentation again" [thanks to Seth Godin for that one]
What usually happens is quite some distance from this, unfortunately.
- The presenter hands out printouts of the slides and the handouts text before beginning the presentation.
- The presenter gives the presentation whilst the audience are reading through the handouts, i.e. not listening.
- Several members of the audience ask for copies of the presentation afterwards. The presenter (particularly if a salesperson) is delighted, as this gives her an opportunity to make that all-important follow-up contact.
- When she gets back to the office / hotel room, she emails a copy of the presentation to all those who asked for one. Of course, since the recipients were busy reading the handouts when the presentation was given, it doesn't make that much sense to them after a day or two. They send it to their boss anyway, perhaps to prove that they actually were at that conference session.
So far so good. Nothing too far out of the ordinary, sadly. It's the next step that really breaks decent communications into little pieces though.
Becoming aware of the problems this lack of context is causing when their slides are viewed by people who didn't attend the presentation, the presenters start cramming more and more information into their PowerPoint files. Font sizes decrease, bullet points become sentences, white space disappears.
Because the prospect / client / partner wants the presentation, every effort is made to give them the presentation with more - a misplaced attempt to really delight the customer.
Once a single copy of the presentation has got into the wild, all control over it is lost. Different operating systems and versions will destroy lovingly crafted animations abstracting the presentation even further from any meaning it may have conveyed without context.
All of this leaves poor old Microsoft Word out in the cold. Nobody wants a document any more because nobody has time to read a document, right? Documents are boring, bullet-points are where it's at.
Not true. Some documents, like contracts, service level agreements and requests for tenders are boring. They're supposed to be.
Other documents can, actually, be quite interesting. In my experience, there's quite a level of resistance in many organisations to actually providing the prospect / client with some quality collateral at this stage of the process. Some of the most popular include
- 'We don't have a soft copy of our brochure'
- Worse - 'we do have a soft copy of our brochure which is a low-res PDF the designers gave us as a proof. We'll send this to the customer as it's better than nothing'
- 'We don't want to give them a detailed document yet. They're only a prospect, not a customer' (implication - they will steal our souls secrets)
Firstly, sending your brochure to people you have already presented to is not going to provide them with any new information. It might be nice for them to have, but it's not helping advance your cause.
Secondly, sending them another, lengthier presentation (it happens a lot) just repeats the cycle above.
Following the best practice cycle outlined above, you should follow up with additional supplementary information that has not already been received by the audience. This should also reinforce the key messages in the presentation.
It should be a document, because a document allows scope to provide context. It is preferable to put it online and provide a URL as well as emailing If you have even more content (e.g. multimedia), put it all up on the web.
This can also help give the impression that you are giving the recipient the VIP treatment.
Now, make the document less boring.
1. Use (relevant) images. Documents don't have to be walls of text.
2. Make it a PDF. This will help to allay any internal fears that the text will be copied, pasted and used elsewhere.
3. Call it an eBook. That sounds much more interesting than a document, doesn't it?
4. Link to and reference third party sources. This always increases credibility.
Now the collateral gap between presentations and documents has been filled, and a flexible communications process has been established.
As an example of a well prepared eBook on a related subject, read
'Work is Broken'.
More:
'Create e-books that sell' (Copyblogger)
'Making your presentation stick' (Chip Heath & Dan Heath) PDF, 1.3MB
'Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets. As a decision-making aid, PowerPoint is a poor tool', T.X. Hammes
Postscript: additional bonus presentation mistakes
Event organisers, when will you realise that using numbers of slides as a means to control the length of speaking slots is totally meaningless? I have seen 'Maximum 20 slides' or similar more times than I care to remember.
As a corollary, presenters, slides are free. If it doesn't fit on one slide, split the slide in two.
Post-postscript: additional bonus document mistakes
Know your limitations. Microsoft Word is not a professional desktop publishing tool. If you are preparing a high quality document to be sent to a printer, give it to a professional designer to set for print.
Image credit: Rene Magritte, modifications mine ;-)
