At some stage, around the 38th minute, you were tempted to pinch yourself to
ensure that you were still awake, and if not, that you had not slipped off
into some hell devised solely for corporate man.
“We are DETERMINED . . . that we OPERATE . . . one of the most ACTIVE . . .
and CUSTOMER-ORIENTED . . . delivery systems . . . for HIGH-VALUE
fast-moving consumer goods . . . and that we RETAIN . . . a COMMANDING lead
. . . over our COMPETITORS . . .”
The speaker was one of our most respected industrialists, whom I had better
not name. The year was some time in the early 1990s. The style of delivery
was more suited to a mass rally for a Third World dictator. The event was
the presentation of his organisation’s annual financial results.
The organisation makes . . . again, shall we just say the sort of consumer
goods you and I use every day. We had already LEARNT, as evidenced by an
eye-straining array of coloured graphics, that the MARGINS in the grommets
division had been LEVERAGED by a FULL THREE PERCENTAGE POINTS, while
TURNOVER in bent widgets . . .
Enough. The whole bloody thing took up 55 minutes of my life, as I can
testify, because my watch was easily the most fascinating object in the
room. Every single utterance, every boast, every statistic, was accompanied
on the screen behind him with a written repetition on his PowerPoint (the
curse of business presentations launched by Microsoft in 1988).
After a cursory question and answer session — what more could even the most
dedicated fact junkie possibly want to know? — we filed away, shellshocked,
to be handed a copy of said presentation, in case any tiny aspect, any
inessential detail, any jot and tittle of his organisation’s performance
over the past year, had eluded us.
It was all made possible by what was then the latest technology, the
PowerPoint presentation. It is an unacknowledged rule of emerging technology
that the easier you make it to generate product, the more rubbish gets
generated by said technology.
In the days when faxes were quite hard to set up, with a funny revolving
roller that the paper had to be fixed around, you sent only essential faxes.
Today, faxes are so easy to send that no one uses them any more. This is
because the fax machine is permanently clogged up. And anyway, everyone uses
e-mails and attachments.
Now e-mails are so easy, so omnipresent, that . . . well, you’ll have seen the
results in your e-mail box. And don’t get me started on mobile phones.
It was the sheer ease of filling up his PowerPoint with so many facts and
figures that allowed Sir An . . . our man to go on, at quite such a length,
about the margins in the grommet division etc. Had he been restricted to pen
and paper, or to those flip-over charts beloved of polytechnic lecturers, he
would have been severely curtailed. The sheer effort of filling in each
page, even if carried out in some basement by a team of corporate slaves,
would have required a shorter version. And his presentation would in any
event have been mercifully invisible to at least half his audience.
Instead he, or more likely one of the slaves, entered it all into Microsoft
Windows with full-colour graphics so it could be regurgitated at length on a
huge screen.
Now, research at an Australian university has proved that PowerPoint and the
human animal are not the best of collaborators. Apparently, evolving on the
savannah on a diet of half-rotted ox and at constant risk from sabre-toothed
tigers did not provide us with brains properly wired to read and take in
information that comes at you in a pincer movement, as the spoken word and
as a series of letters, lines and graphs on a screen. It is the end, they
say, for the PowerPoint.
The research, from the University of New South Wales, suggests that we process
information best in verbal or written form, but not in both simultaneously.
As so often, it has taken the best efforts of brainy academics to prove what
most of us instinctively knew. Trying to follow what someone is saying while
watching the same words on a screen is the equivalent of riding a bicycle
along a crowded train. It offers the appearance of making extra progress but
is actually rather impractical.
For our ape-like ancestors, it was either chowing down on the ox or watching
for the sabre-tooth. Multitasking was inadvisable. This may even be why we
evolved in groups, with tasks shared out. That or the sheer boringness of
the average savannah.
One City communications specialist, who was untypically unwilling to be quoted
by name, probably because his clients still insist on PowerPoint
presentations, puts it thus: “It provides a comforter, really. It would be
more sensible just to talk.
“Look at David Cameron, when he first became leader of the Tory Party. He just
got up on stage and spoke beautifully, without any notes whatsoever. But not
everyone can do that. With PowerPoint, people feel they can get away with
practising less, if they have the words in front of them.”
The presentation also encourages screens full of as many words or data as can
be crammed on, without any chance that they can all be appreciated or even
read in time. Advertisers learnt a long time ago that the longer and more
boring their ads, the less they worked. Corporate man, probably because he
evolved in an environment dominated by meaningless management buzz-words and
claptrap, has never quite grasped this.
Perhaps the only legitimate use is in the production of a series of paper
pages as an aide memoire to a proper presentation or for a one-to-one
briefing. This has occasioned an odd linguistic shift. “Now, if you will
just have a look at the next slide.” No, it’s a piece of paper. Been around
for centuries, you know.
Even here, there are pitfalls. I recall many years ago being deeply impressed
at being invited to a private room at an expensive London hotel to meet
another distinguished industrialist. Now, when two people are gathered
together to break bread, there is a tacit assumption that this is an
occasion for social intercourse, the equivalent of our primate ancestors
huddled together picking off one another’s ticks. And we had not previously
met.
As the tricolore salad was cleared away, his barely touched, I realised why he
had been so keen on a private room. “I wonder,” he said, removing from his
briefcase a familiar plastic-fronted folder, “if I could just show you how
we have leveraged the margins at our grommets division . . .”
Professor John Sweller, of the University of New South Wales, says: “The use
of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster. It should be ditched.”
If only.
— Martin Waller
Why speechmaking is still the way to persuade
In the latest issue of The Spectator, the magazine’s political editor
Fraser Nelson describes being invited to a “wonderfully conspiratorial”
dinner at a London hotel by the Home Secretary. Nelson is properly
circumspect, as a lobby correspondent should be, about what went on. But he
does reveal that the evening was blighted by the presence of “the most
unwelcome guest of all” — an overhead projector.
There are few words that have a greater capacity to chill than “I’ll just take
you through this on PowerPoint” and there are few surer guarantees of
daytime slumber than the gentle shuffling of slides as what was once a
compelling argument becomes a computer-aided anaesthetic. PowerPoint
presentations are to persuasion what male posing pouches are to seduction —
the death of the art.
If you do want to win an audience to your point of view, whatever it is you’re
selling, then there is no effective alternative to the traditional art of
speechmaking. Rhetoric, as it used to be known, has acquired a dodgy
reputation over the years. Platform speeches have become equated, thanks to
the efforts of hack politicians like me, with pompous and stilted
cliché-mongering. You know the sort of stuff — references to things being
“beyond peradventure” and initiatives being “rolled out through multi-agency
working”. But it is still the case that a single speech can move, excite,
motivate and change minds in a way that no other form of communication can
accomplish. The current prominence enjoyed by Barack Obama springs from the
inspirational speech he gave to the Democratic Party Convention in 2004.
David Cameron’s path to the party leadership owes a great deal to the
flawless, noteless speeches he gave at the launch of his campaign and during
the 2005 Tory party conference. The positions that JFK and Martin Luther
King enjoy in the pantheon of modern heroes are as much owing to the way
their oratory embodied the hopes of a generation as to any specific change
they introduced. The call to “pay any price, bear any burden” in defence of
freedom, and the hope embodied in the “dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of
their skin but by the content of their character” resonate across the
decades. I’m not sure that there are many PowerPoint presentations that
stand comparison in the collective memory.
Why is it that old-fashioned rhetoric is so much more effective than
21st-century slide-shows? It’s partly because pictures created by words are
so much more memorable and moving than words appearing on a screen designed
for pictures. And it’s also because classical rhetoric has developed, over
generations, to fit arguments to the contours of the human mind. Classical
orators have learnt how to shape their thoughts to rest pleasingly in our
ears. The use of lists of three, the deployment of humour, image and
metaphor, the way in which the tone of voice is varied, are all techniques
every bit as sophisticated as any Microsoft program, and much more
user-friendly.
A single speech, in isolation, whether it’s the Gettysburg Address or a party
conference oration, is one of the most persuasive tools devised by man. But
there is one that is even more finely honed. And that’s the debating speech
— the reply to a conversation in which the claims of your competitors are
examined, and shredded, with logic and humour. For all its faults, that’s a
practice that the House of Commons encourages. And that’s why, when members
of this place get the chance to display their skills abroad, as both Tony
Blair and George Galloway did in very different ways before the US Congress,
it’s possible to see why, when it comes to preparing for the big
communications challenges, debating still has the edge on computing.
— MIchael Gove
Top tips for presentations
1. Talk at the same speed and in the same style as you would in a
relaxed conversation.
2. Ensure silence after each key point or idea to allow listeners to
digest the information.
3. Eye contact is most effective in the silence at the end of each key
point.
4. Structure presentations around a few key messages, each one backed
up by your evidence.
5. Use your hands to emphasise your words.
6. Use stories and anecdotes.
7. Ask rhetorical questions, framed by pauses.
Provided by presentation consultancies Templar Advisors Ltd (www.templaradvisors.com
) and iOpener (www.iopener.co.uk
)
There is a better way...
The current trend
Modern software such as Adobe Flash is more interactive than PowerPoint, which
mainly uses simple bullet points. Flash can use voiceovers, better animation
and integrated video. It can also be used for overseas conferencing on the
internet. Flash presentations have the additional selling-point that, as
with a PVR, they can be watched by people in their own time, so if they are
not sufficiently engaging people can just turn them off and watch later.
Up and coming
Businesses will soon have to try to decrease their carbon footprint.
International travel will become increasingly unpopular so many are expected
to resort to avatars and presentations in parallel internet worlds such as
Second Life. Employees can gather in internet conference rooms cheaply and
quickly and have added bonuses such as online translators, literally testing
out new products in cyberspace and even virtual office “days-out”. It will
also allow for gimmicky, crowd-pleasing aesthetics, like Humphrey Bogart
introducing a new product.
The future
Software packages such as Blender can create three-dimensional images. This is
already used by architects (they may fly a virtual helicopter around
building images the better to view projects) and is increasingly appealing
to business presentations. Three-dimensional programs used to cost £3,000
and above but “open source” software, which allows users to share, modify
and expand programs themselves, has made this cheaper. Technology
developments are expected to lead to even more engaging uses for 3-D images,
including holograms, both for products and people. This will partly surmount
the problem of less human contact presented by other internet presentations.
Source: Jonty Pearce, editor, Presentation Helper
