Remember the numbers 30, 15, and 252.
At first glance you may think they have nothing to do with you.
The simple truth is that you are in those statistics. You are either on the receiving end or you are perpetrating the sins of PowerPoint. Either way, you and your company would be more productive and more profitable if those numbers could be reduced.
30 million PowerPoints are given every day. 15 million people hours per day are spent viewing PowerPoints.
252 million person hours a day in productivity are invested or wasted in PowerPoints. If you have been in the audience for a PowerPoint or given a PowerPoint, or contributed to a PowerPoint, then you are embedded in one of the above statistics.
One of the sins of speaking is to utter the words, “I know you can’t read this but” These words are uttered every day. If you know audience can’t read a slide, why would you present it?
Another sin is to cram too many slides into a PowerPoint. Any presentation is a mathematical challenge at its core. The only way to fit 70 slides into 15 minutes is to spend less than 20 seconds per slide. What can you say of value in 20?
A rule of speaking is to begin with a WOW and another rule is to end with a thought provoking note. These rules tend to go out the window in a PowerPoint. People seem to start with the PP instead of starting with a WOW and then going to the slides.
Often the speaker is so engaged with the presentation that they forget to engage the audience. One of the basic rules of communication is to connect to the audience, not connect to the screen or the laptop.
Another rule is to connect the dots. Speakers often think that flashy graphics will do the connecting for them. They won’t. You the speaker has to connect the dots for the audience. THE AUDIENCE NEEDS TO NEED YOU.
252 million hours are spent a day on PowerPoints. Do the right thing, do your part to make those hours more productive.
