Presentations: How to Avoid 'Death By PowerPoint'

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Thanks for downloading this episode of the Bottom Line podcast. It has extra content in it that we couldn't squeeze into the broadcast version. If you like it, by the way, you might want to check out an episode on meetings, which we recorded back in November.

2023. Now, one of the most important skills in a lot of jobs is that of public speaking, making a presentation to colleagues or customers, and doing so in an engaging and clear way. For both those having to do it and sometimes for those having to listen, the business of business presentations can be a nightmare. And so the do's and don'ts of presenting are our theme today. Now, for decades...

Microsoft's PowerPoint has been the default vehicle for structuring and delivering a talk. Its dominance is such that the phrase death by PowerPoint is itself a talking point, with an endless list of books and articles invoking it. There is a much quoted figure, in fact, that 30 million PowerPoint presentations are given every day. But I'm wondering whether that is the true number or not. If we've reached or even passed.

peak PowerPoint and what is replacing it. So let us chat through the art of the business presentation. I'm joined by three expert practitioners and let's just meet them first. And first is Abi Eniola, a coach and practitioner. from Radha Business. And Abby, I know Radha is the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. What the heck is Radha Business?

Thank you, Evan. Radha Business, for the last 25 years, has been helping leaders in many different industries and globally to perfect their presentation skills, to be able to show up. with greater skill and authenticity and impact, helping people to really craft those messages and to be confident and compelling when they are giving presentations. OK. And it's actors who do the teaching, is it?

a UNAC... actor yourself or absolutely so all the practitioners like myself yes have a background as actors and we help people to take those skills of course that actors do incredibly well to be able to present themselves in an embodied way so that they can really move their audiences to action. Fantastic. All right, my next guest. Welcome back to The Bottom Line. Rory Sutherland, vice chairman of Ogilvy.

UK. And Rory, something of a social media phenomenon, because a lot of your presentations have been sliced up, diced up and put onto TikTok and Instagram. I mean, you're now, you're sort of almost as famous.

for your social media appearances as you are for your bottom line appearances, I think. Yes, it was bizarre. I woke up and found myself accidentally famous. A young and very talented film student during lockdown simply took... parts of what I'd said in presentations that were available on YouTube or in podcasts or something of that kind, and some earlier TED Talks, and effectively TikTok-ized them, which involves basically...

putting subtitles on so kids at school can watch them with the sound down. I think that's part of the purpose. He did it extraordinarily well, and the next thing I knew, I was occasionally getting mobbed on the street. Now, one thing I just wanted to mention before we got into the heavier conversation with you specifically, Rory, is we've discussed meetings on this programme before and we've discussed Amazon, which have this very special ritual around meetings.

which essentially is sitting and reading something before you get into the meeting. Before the meeting truly starts. And you've lived through this. You've seen this in action. Absolutely, yes. And in a way, it's replacing the presentation with people sitting together to read a document. For the first, I think it's about five minutes or so. All of you sit in silence and read a one-page A4 summary of what is to be discussed, the problem to be solved, or the opportunity to be explored.

And everybody sits in silence. And the first time you encounter this, it's slightly unnerving because you think, have I joined a cult here? You know, to be absolutely honest. You then realize it's actually very intelligent. First of all, because everybody's on the same page. But... There's an important point to this which often isn't remarked on. Everybody starts in absolutely the same place. It starts with a free text.

By which I mean not in bullet points, not in summary, a free text, English prose version and description of the problem. After that point, however, the conversation is free to go pretty much anywhere. And so, in a way, it starts very disciplined, but then becomes quite freeform.

But what's the advantage of the document reading a page than someone presenting to the group assembled and setting out what the document would have in it? Well, this sounds a bit... ridiculous, but on two or three occasions, just as there are books which have changed my life, there have been two or three presentations which have changed my life. I remember one about 25 years ago by the designer Richard Seymour.

which was the first time I realized about advertising, this isn't just a business, this is actually philosophically interesting. And what I am critical of is kind of bullet point. formulaic adherence to a hierarchy of bullet points. That's when PowerPoint's done badly. Rory, thank you. And look, let me introduce my third guest here, Simon Gallagher. Now, Simon is chief executive of Euronext, and Simon, just...

remind our audience what Euronext is. Thank you, Evan. Good morning. I'm Chief Executive of Euronext here in the UK. And we're basically a big, big stock exchange. We're Europe's biggest stock exchange, and we're a big piece of market infrastructure where banks can trade all sorts of assets. Right. So even though you're not the London Stock Exchange, they would be actually a rival. Yes, they're a very big rival. And you're the...

the kind of more continental focus. Yes. You have a lot of activity in the city of London. Roughly around a quarter of European equities trading comes through us. Okay. So, yeah. Now... Tell us why you're on this programme about presentation, Simon. I mean, I can tell the audience. Yeah, so when I started, my career was actually in parallel with the rise of PowerPoint, so I have this strange relationship with it.

And I had this horrible nickname, so I was the only English speaker in the firm at that time, so I was working in Paris, and I was weirdly, weirdly good at it. slides and PowerPoint. Instead of calling me Simon Gallagher, they called me Slideman Gallagher. Oh, get Slideman to do it for you. So that was my little calling card early on.

Let's open this conversation up because we've had a lot here. We've had mention of bullet points and PowerPoint. There are a lot of people way down the kind of food chain in companies who are required to make a presentation of some kind. A, why is it so terrifying? And B, what is the kind of way... to broach the task at hand. I'm not thinking about the chief executive talking to the shareholder meeting, but someone who's been asked to kind of walk into a room with maybe 50 colleagues.

don't know them and just has real butterflies. I don't know, Abby, come on. Where do you start on something like that? I think you're absolutely right. And when we're there in that spotlight... We face our greatest fears. We face that fear of being rejected. We feel incredibly exposed and vulnerable. And the key is to help people to be able to show up at their most authentic best, to be able to remember the key message.

In my experience, often what happens is people come with reams of information and think, I have to remember everything. And, of course, people can only remember so much. They overfill. Nearly always. Scripting, that's usually, again, the most... classic thing people are terrified they want to be able to sound more natural and free but they hold on to a script because it helps them feel safer but of course the moment you script often unless you have the skills of a professional actor

It's the first thing that will stop you from being authentic. It often raises the pressure as people get terrified and searching for that script and it becomes very stilted and it becomes very difficult to be spontaneous. and flexible in the moment. I think knowing what you want to say is absolutely... Absolutely. Just be clear. And don't over-clutter it with too many messages. Less is more, as we always say. I really agree with that.

I think the most fundamental thing is knowing your content inside out. So all that preparation, all that sort of background work is there and it almost becomes part of you subconsciously. And then you're right, once you get into the room, and actors are very good at this, managing your breath and the sensorial experience of the stress and learning to use that stress is a skill which really needs to be practised, I think. And also one thing I think...

It's a skill that needs to be learnt. We need to build up this resilience. The first time you're terrified, second time it's a bit... And so we get better and better at it, but it's like a muscle you have to build up in a way. Absolutely. Being able to just breathe and have ease.

is the way to be able to relax and to enjoy it. And also to turn that focus, because we turn the focus, the camera is here. How am I doing? What do they think about me? Am I remembering all of this? And you're absolutely right. It creates too much pressure. So ultimately, it's to have the ease to be able to turn the camera onto your audience and just to be present. Do you get stage fright, Rory? Do you get kind of nervous about presenting? I think if I stopped being nervous...

I'd quit. Now, I'm less nervous than I was.

This isn't just me. I think Alfred Brendel said the same thing about playing the piano. The moment I'm no longer at all nervous is the time to quit. I'm obviously less nervous than I was when I first did it. And I'm also less nervous the more... frequently i do it by the way i thought your point saying that it should be unscripted is the absolutely critical point i should add that some powerpoint slides are there for the benefit of the speaker not the audience

They are the note. They are the note. And so it is much, much easier. I will occasionally have a seemingly gratuitous slide, which is simply there to remind me to talk about something. But no, I still get nervous. I find writing a script is useful. And I won't write it word perfect, but I think writing a script is useful. focusing my mind on what I'm trying to say. And then I don't, I probably will have it in my hand, but I won't necessarily follow the script because I'm now...

Very cognizant of what it is and where I'm going, where I'm starting, where I'm ending. That's similar to the military phrase, which is that... Plans are useless, but planning is essential. Yes, exactly. It is a nice, reassuring thing to have that crutch. And let me make that distinction. When I say don't script, I'm not saying don't have some aid memoir.

But that's very different from being tied to absolute lines and bullet points. OK, now, though, this is where we get to. We agree. Don't over-script. Don't clutter. Probably maybe some slides are going to be helpful to jog your memory, maybe accentuate points to the audience. If you have slides, Simon. they end up being bullet points. That is what slides do. And it's impossible to get away from that structure. Unfortunately.

You know, PowerPoint can be a very, very powerful tool. I remember when this McKinsey guy came into our MBA and he went, right, what I'm about to teach you is witchcraft. This is very, very powerful. And it can be the most incredibly powerful tool of communication in certain business contexts.

It's a very simple rectangle. We write a sentence. It's incredibly hard to write a short to the point sentence, less than 10 words. And then you illustrate it with some evidence, a chart, a table, maybe it's a photograph or something. Then you construct that into some kind of story.

And you don't need hundreds of slides. And my boss always said, Winston Churchill said famously, I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one. And that structure, it imposes that distilling of the complexity of the world into... simple images and language, sometimes you're doing your listeners a big favor by doing a lot of the work for them. And that can be very dangerous, by the way, because you're doing a bit of the...

You're framing the conversation that way. You're framing it for them, so it can be quite dangerous, yeah. But again, we're coming back to this point. You've got to know what you want to say, and you've got to be really clear about it, and that's not cluttering it with the unnecessary verbiage. Absolutely, yeah.

But you use bullet points. I mean, basically, it is bullet points, isn't it? Often, structure can help you just... You don't know where you're going in life or you don't know what the project's going to be. You go, right, beginning, middle, end. Everything comes in a story. There's, right, what am I trying to do?

people tools processes yeah we all have these things hooks that can just get us started and going along to solve a problem but then you've got to leave it behind like you can't distill life into two by two matrices and boxes and life's far more complex than that so there's a time you've got to leave the structure

behind and the big danger that happens now you see especially with young people coming into organizations is that powerpoint does half the work for you so you can click on all the sorts of triangles and arrows and beautiful imagery And they just squeeze their content now into this artificial... So it's just gone all wrong.

That's letting PowerPoint write the presentation. Well, that's obviously going to be an egregious... Which is a very lazy sort of thing to get into. Ultimately, you are the presentation, I think we say to people, as opposed to the PowerPoint. Yeah. Well, that's another point, which is that... The person is the...

the things the audience are actually consuming rather than the content. And I actually do think that is happening a lot more than communicators think, that you're judging this person as a human being, not judging is the argument they're giving, true or false.

Interestingly. But what's your dislike of bullet points then, Rory? You started us on this. They impose a not necessarily healthy structure and relative importance on different bits of information. Now, if you want me to get really extreme on this. Go on. There is, according to some analysts, a literal case of death by PowerPoint, which was the Columbia space shuttle disaster, which, if you can remember, on launch...

The leading edge of the wing was struck by a piece of foam that had come off the main fuel tank, where a particular slide left the germane information about the foam strike on the leading edge of the wing. in a third level bullet point, so that it was, I think it was actually a dash, it didn't even qualify for its own little bullet point. Now, that wasn't necessarily intentional on the part of the person writing the slide.

but effectively it demoted the critical information, well below an enormous kind of 80-size font headline that suggested a conservative assessment of the damage. The germane information, which is what had happened was well outside the normal testing envelope, was relegated down to the bottom. There is this thing which is the hierarchy of text size confers importance on things which they don't necessarily deserve. Right. OK.

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between the bullet points. And, oh, I'll put a flashy image here. Oh, this will look good. And there's a very visual sort of seductive thing. If everything aligned and all the arrows look great, then it's very reassuring subconsciously to the listener. A really well-written memo you cannot hide. There's an interesting problem in advertising in that our decks have to be stylish because that's partly the business we're in.

And we know that all the other people pitching against us will produce stylish and very elegant decks. And I do sometimes worry that it makes us look style over substance, even if there's a lot of substance within the style. Now, if you look at certain groups of people, academics, mathematicians, there's a kind of counter-signaling. The PowerPoint deck. Unbelievably ugly. In that show, we're so confident in our substance that we don't need to dress it up.

There's a kind of counter-signalling thing. It's a bit like bass players in rock bands dressed really scruffily, which is, I'm so sexy through my skill that I don't need to make an effort anywhere else. Here's something Rory does, which is...

A story. Virtually everything you'll see of Rory making a point is a story followed by a kind of generalisation. I do tend to find a story pulls me right in straight away. Absolutely. And I think ultimately it is because the audiences, they feel before they think. And that's really where we're going with this, that the presentation is about changing that dynamic with people.

The words, the content, they will help us to understand the message, but emotion and experience is the thing that's going to move us to action. And I don't think it matters exactly where you place it, but when you start to humanise it, that's where we create a deeper connection with people. And it doesn't have to be long-winded as well. It's great that stories have come back in recent years, and there's pretty different levels.

corporations now need stories for their employees to adhere to the values. And every corporation has its own sort of survival story. We almost went under and now we survived and the heroes and the anti-heroes and all that. So that's quite useful, I think, too. convey values and culture of an organisation. But PowerPoint isn't a story medium, I think. That's where you basically stop and you just talk. And you don't need a script for the story. Because interestingly...

You'll remember the story. If you say I've got three causal points here, you'll go one, two, and then you'll forget the third unless you have PowerPoint to remind you. But the story, you never forget the narrative. Give me an example of a story, Abby. What is a story you put in a presentation? Again, we can keep it really short.

And often, particularly when I work with organisations and they're doing pitching, they give lots and lots of stats. And of course, they will have an audience who will sit there and think, great, so what? What does that mean? So it's turned the information. What's the story?

behind the information. And they might be sharing a challenge that relates to the audience's situation and how did they actually overcome it? So at its simplest, the story is often, you know, what was the obstacle or the challenge? And what was the resolution?

And ultimately, there's a wisdom or a learning behind it. How did that change our actions? But it brings to life the data so that your audience, if it's a pitch, gets a sense of, OK, this is who you are. OK, Rory, tell us about stories, because you are...

consummate storyteller. In fact, you've even told stories in the course of this programme so far without even... More than that, I completely dislike the use of the word anecdotal as a term of disparagement. The way I see it is that, first of all... Stories are kind of the PDF files for the human brain. They're the universal format in which information is shared and stored. We will remember a story years and years after we remember some statistical.

presentation okay sure that's simply inarguable i mean i think the simplest distinction was made in someone saying the king died and then the queen died is not a story The king died and then the queen died of grief. Yes. OK, now has story appeal and it will be memorable and it will stick. And fundamentally, they're mechanisms by which we can change the paradigm in which we're thinking. Stories...

are very, very good at getting people to think about something in a different way, through a different frame. Effectively, they make visible, appreciable, and again, as you said, emotionally telling. Something which...

naturally wouldn't occur to that audience if you weren't able to change them into a different mode of thinking. Completely agree, but there's a time and a place for stories. What you don't want, if you're sitting on a board, is some young manager coming in, presenting some functional upgrade.

in the form of a story you just don't care so there's a point where you know i've seen a few of these presentations sometimes where younger people are using these bells and whistles and these storytelling techniques for something which is You just get to the point. What do you want? How much does it cost? And what's the benefit? So just small caveat that. So, yeah, it's a time and a place for it. Time and place. Time and place. But on a sort of day to day.

basis in the workplace it's very dangerous when you go a bit over the top here and you think you're a little steve jobs and you've got your black polo neck sweater on and think you're selling some big paradigm change to your to your ceo swagger onto the stage there's a time and a place for it but it's very rare and there's probably only 20 people in the world that applies to so i wouldn't advise young managers to go too far down that road

Stories can make a point. Okay, so, Abby, how do you teach someone to tell a story? Because this is the bit where, I mean, you're teaching people and helping. So if they haven't got a story, they haven't got a story. They can't make one up. The reality is I would say everybody has stories, but particularly often in the business world, they're just not necessarily aware of them. So it's helping people to mine their own experience for those stories and to understand.

the craft of storytelling and to be able to distill it and do it in a very impactful, punchy and short way as well. Yeah, it's tricky, but you're right. People probably do have stories. In fact, they probably believe what they're saying because in their head they've got an example that has actually really convinced them rather than the data. The data never convinces anybody. It backs up.

the story that you've used to tell yourself. Do you get resistance from senior people saying, I don't want to be taught this stuff or they think they know it and they're... Absolutely. And I think that resistance is absolutely understandable. Often it's about anxiety. We do need some nerves, but we need to be able to harness it. And understanding just the fundamentals of powerful language and communication, that idea of clarity, the idea of pacing.

The idea of pause and space and allowing people to see that. And when you give people those tools, they're often incredibly surprised at just how much more powerful their own communication and presentations can become instantly. And this idea that a transformational impact, it doesn't need to be huge. Just a few small tweaks and changes.

make such a difference in terms of impact. So you can teach this stuff. Absolutely. It's not entirely innate. No. Because you will look at some and say, like Rory, they're just very good, kind of. But we were saying in the lift and the way up, funnily enough, that Americans tend to be better at this than Brits. So it can't be unless you believe that Americans are somehow possessed of some performative gene. OK, it must be to some extent.

learnt in the environment. I mean, Americans have show and tell at school, for example, patently, you know, maybe there's a sort of greater sort of obsession with the entertainment industry. But generally, random Americans...

can make a pretty good spontaneous account of themselves, where Brits will tend to be diffident, I think. Yeah, I think that's definitely it. Sometimes in sort of corporate cultures, I remember for seven years, we were a combination between the New York Stock Exchange and European Stock Exchange. and the clash of cultures between the very sort of professorial French way of intellectual way or British way as well, and not putting yourself forward. And they just...

some instances just ran over the Europeans because they were like, we're kids at school, we're getting up, telling our story. And that clash of cultures was so powerful in that merger. And he gave the upper hand to the Americans in the end, the way they were interacting with their European colleagues.

It can be a bit of a bulldozer sometimes. It's very, very confident. We have to get over that, I think. Often it's that fear of showing off that we fear. What I do want us to do, though, is I want our audience to have takeaway tips. We've given you a lot of context. Okay, so I want you to think about the thing you really, the egregious error to avoid and the one thing you should do when you present, maybe before, maybe during. What is the egregious error and the...

The one thing to do. Have a pee before you go on. My urologist finally explained why this is. But an enormous number of people before a presentation feel the urge to go to the loo. So know where the loos are. The other one I have, which is appalling advice in a way, is don't rehearse. By which I mean don't rehearse the precise thing. Okay, so absolutely rehearse in your head.

the gist of what you're going to say. The gist. You must have the gist. You must have that gist there. But if you start to get into... Now, it's problematic, obviously, if I'm presenting with a group of other people. I can't really stand up and say, well, I'm not going to tell you what I'm going to say.

but you have to follow me. So, you know, what I'm proposing there is actually slightly bad form, but I will tell people what I'm going to talk about, but I will not, before the actual presentation itself, use the specific language. for the simple reason that on the fifth occasion it becomes a bit stilted and it loses authenticity.

OK, so you don't stand up and do it at speaking pace? No, I mean, it's modular. You know, I know how I'm going to describe something, but I like to leave a little bit to randomness. If you don't know what you're saying... I mean, first sort out what you're saying.

But rehearse and you will see, you'll be clear at the end of the rehearsal as to what you actually meant to say. That's the only thing I would say. Actually, what you say is irrelevant. It's what they take out that matters. Exactly the same as the theatre.

OK, it's how they respond that matters. OK, then, Simon, your tips. I think the biggest mistake, I think, is just we've discussed it before, just reading off a... a piece of paper you've disengaged the audience completely you don't come across as it engaged but i think i think the biggest tip is very similar what i try and do is just prepare the intellectual architecture

of what i want to say there's little branches coming off in my brain oh this theme is this i just write it all down on a big piece of a3 paper it's unscripted then i kind of do the bullet points for the structure But if you have the sort of logical groups of concepts and themes, maybe with a few funny stories or some killer phrases, and then let that mature in your head and then go for a walk in the morning when you're walking the dog and go through it again.

And then just leave it and don't look at it before because it just brings up more nerves. And then you'll come to this, I'm sure. Then I think breathing, I need a refresher course, but breathing is so important because it just calms the physiological system. And you come across as more relaxed. I mean, not hyperventilating, though, because you can pass out if you don't realise that you're breathing and getting so nervous you're doing that. But, I mean, one interesting thing on that is you can...

pause for slightly longer than anybody realises without the audience thinking. People relax when you pause. Yeah, you can look like you're collecting your thoughts or something. Absolutely. Okay, come on then, Abby, last. don'ts and do's, do's and don'ts. Again, I think there needs to be some form of rehearsing, and by that I mean actually verbalising your thoughts before you are in situ.

Because often what happens if we don't, that becomes the rehearsal and people start to stumble over their words. So rehearsing it without absolutely fixing it and scripting it, keeping it flexible. I would say not just focusing on the content, which is usually what people do.

focusing on the content but more importantly focusing on how you're going to deliver that content so making sure that what's happening with your body language what's happening with your voice is congruent that it's actually supporting the words so that there isn't a disconnect

And also, finally, I would say it's remembering, as I said, that words will help us to understand the message, but it's emotion that will move us to action. So getting clear about what is the emotional journey that you want to take your audience on. in order to help them to buy into your presentation. How do you want to affect them, in other words? OK, let us leave it there. So many thoughts about...

Purpose of presentation, the structure and the preparation. Let me thank my guests, Abi Eniola from Radha Business, Rory Sutherland from Ogilvy, UK, and... Spectator and other places, and Simon Gallagher, Chief Executive of Euronext in the UK. Thank you for listening. Do keep in touch with us. Our email address is bottomline at bbc.co.uk and join us next week.

when we'll be discussing care homes, how to staff them, amongst other things. Do join us then. The podcast was produced by Osman Iqbal. It was presented by me, Evan Davis, and as a BBC long form audio production for Radio 4. If your podcast provider allows it, why not give us a rating or a review? Because it really does help others find the show. Hello, I'm Nick Robinson.

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