The Real Problem with PowerPoint®
This is a guest post contributed by Rick Altman, a world-renowned presentation consultant, PowerPoint expert, author, and the organizer of PowerPoint Live.
Anyone in today’s workplace knows what’s wrong with business presentations and the software of choice for 99% of those giving them. Just about everyone has experienced Death by PowerPoint, and based on statistics, you have probably committed it on more than one occasion.
Everyone can cite the biggest offenses:
- too much text on slides,
- lack of forethought,
- little regard for message,
- unimaginative design,
- and those awful animations.
Indeed, Googling “i hate powerpoint” returns hundreds of thousands of hits. And the edgy title of my current book, Why Most PowerPoint Presentations SUCK… And how you can make them better, has struck a respondent chord among potential readers.
But these are the symptoms of the problems facing the business presentation community, they are not the reasons. Why are these things happening? What is the real problem?
You might think that it’s because the software is too hard to learn, but you’d be wrong. In fact, you would be as wrong as you could possibly be.
The problem is that PowerPoint is too easy.
We conducted a survey at the 2006 PowerPoint Live User Conference in which we asked a simple question:
How much time did you spend learning the software?
We asked this question of the 217 attendees, each of whom spent over $800 and took several days out of their work schedule in order to attend. In other words, we asked the most committed, vested, devoted users of the software that you’ll ever find.
The average time spent learning PowerPoint was 47 minutes. Most said they spent less than one hour learning PowerPoint and a handful put the number at 15 minutes. This is the tool to which they owe their livelihoods and prior to coming to PowerPoint Live, they had invested mere minutes in training time.
And that’s because the software is really quite easy to begin using. Both of my daughters created slides at eight years old. You don’t need much training to get around and do stuff.
And that’s a big, big problem.
I come to the presentation community from the publishing and graphics industry, where the software really is hard. If you want to learn Adobe Photoshop, you know you need help. We used to get 400 and 500 people to attend our seminars on CorelDraw and Ventura Publisher, and I wrote edition after edition of books on those subjects.
But the PowerPoint user is typically someone who either showed proficiency with the other Office products or was found to not be shy in public gatherings. He or she was asked to learn PowerPoint and was able to do it in short order, like 47 minutes, and has gone on to spend the next five years using only the tools and the maneuvers learned during those first 47 minutes...
If you stink at Excel, you do so in the privacy of your own cubicle. But if your PowerPoint skills are bad, entire roomfuls of people see it.
So no wonder!
The good news is that we see a change in this trend. Attendance is up at learning events, many more books are published discussing advanced concepts, and most of us active as presentation consultants are seeing upticks in businesses.
More important, companies are finally starting to get it. Historically, most organizations have invested far more on their printed brand than on their in-person one. They would spend millions of dollars on logo design and advertising, yet for what is usually the first impression – the sales call or proposal in the boardroom – they would send someone out with a 47-minute skill-set.
Now these same companies are beginning to realize the importance of presentation skills development, and this is welcome news.
What are the important skills needed by content creators, slide designers, PowerPoint jockeys, and presenters who have had their consciousness raised? That will be the subject of our next posting…
Make sure you read Rick Altman's next article on the root cause of many bad PowerPoint presentations, Too Much Text!
