Sometimes you have to wonder what world people live in. Last week, a colleague related a story to me about a killer PowerPoint at his place of business. Because it took so long, he counted the number of slides the presenter used. Grab a seat. You might fall over when you hear this.
There were 72 slides in the deck. Seventy-two. It’s hard to believe ANYONE stayed awake in that session, no matter how scintillating the information was.
The point in relating this story is to remember your audience and time constraints when you write a PowerPoint. No one wants to sit through 40 slides. Thirty is getting past the normal person’s attention span. Twenty is probably as far as you should go. Ten gets you in and out with time for questions and people might even pay attention.
Did anyone get the message from the 72-page PowerPoint? Of course not. All people were thinking was, “What’s for lunch?” Or, “When is he going to finish this !@#$%^&*()_+_)(*&^%$#@! presentation?” It would have been funny if the 72-page presenter held a quiz afterwards to see what his audience had absorbed. Frankly, that’s probably a good idea because it would give immediate feedback that he needed to jettison 42-pages in his presentation and concentrate on three core takeaways.
Next time you get assigned a PowerPoint, keep in mind what you want the audience to walk away with. Do you want them to take an action? Should they be well-informed on three critical initiatives? Should they have a better sense of how their job fits into the direction of the business?
We can’t learn everything in a day. Sadly, some speakers think that’s what they should do when they speak in front of you, droning on with data, statistics and useless diagrams. Limit the message and engage the audience. That’s the way to go.
There were 72 slides in the deck. Seventy-two. It’s hard to believe ANYONE stayed awake in that session, no matter how scintillating the information was.
The point in relating this story is to remember your audience and time constraints when you write a PowerPoint. No one wants to sit through 40 slides. Thirty is getting past the normal person’s attention span. Twenty is probably as far as you should go. Ten gets you in and out with time for questions and people might even pay attention.
Did anyone get the message from the 72-page PowerPoint? Of course not. All people were thinking was, “What’s for lunch?” Or, “When is he going to finish this !@#$%^&*()_+_)(*&^%$#@! presentation?” It would have been funny if the 72-page presenter held a quiz afterwards to see what his audience had absorbed. Frankly, that’s probably a good idea because it would give immediate feedback that he needed to jettison 42-pages in his presentation and concentrate on three core takeaways.
Next time you get assigned a PowerPoint, keep in mind what you want the audience to walk away with. Do you want them to take an action? Should they be well-informed on three critical initiatives? Should they have a better sense of how their job fits into the direction of the business?
We can’t learn everything in a day. Sadly, some speakers think that’s what they should do when they speak in front of you, droning on with data, statistics and useless diagrams. Limit the message and engage the audience. That’s the way to go.