What Went Wrong with The Art of The Presentation?

Presenters should be prepared, doing all they can to help their audience understand the message. This has been true since tribal histories were told around campfires, as battle plans were pitched in draughty halls, and when travelling salespeople arrived in a Cortina to sell their goods.

In addition, new presenters have always feared one thing: forgetting what to say.

Put these two factors together, and you create a temptation for any speaker. A temptation to put your words on a slide as it helps you remember what to say, and it might be rationalised that it helps the audience, too. Old World technology made this laborious and expensive: chalkboards, overhead projectors, and acetates. So, words on them were kept to a minimum.

Then PowerPoint arrived.

Let’s add one more factor: as the rate of business change accelerates, more people must brief more people about more things, more often. PowerPoint makes words on slides cheap and easy. The New World of Work pace transforms presenting from craft into an obligation. The result is PowerPoint Paralysis.