Five PowerPoint tips to help end the cycle of boring presentations

Each of us has been to a thousand presentations, and we can count on the fingers of a sloth which ones were in the slightest bit interesting. Yet we sat through those mind-numbing presentations, and then, guess what? We subjected our colleagues, customers and conferences to exactly the same excruciating boredom! Why? Maybe to get our own back. I was bored stiff, so you’ll suffer the same. Perhaps not – but why do we do the same thing?

I blame PowerPoint. Dear old Bill Gates was a genius, but come on, Bill, PowerPoint – it’s killing us. It’s a tool we use to test how long we can stay awake after the 42nd slide about the figures from accounts that we didn’t understand 12 slides ago. But Bill would doubtless tell us we’re using it wrong. And he might be right.

We’ve slipped into a rut and we are definitely doing what the quote says: “Most people use PowerPoint like a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination.” It took me a while to get my head around that quote, but when I did I realised the slides aren’t what people came to see – the presenter is. The slides are there to help you to get your message across.

Use these five tips to move from ‘instantly forgettable’ to ‘wonderfully memorable’:

• Don’t use a white background. Use a darker one to add contrast. Most slides are presented with a white background. Try a darker one, and I promise you, you’ll never go back.
• One message per slide. Each slide should convey one message. Ask yourself, what is the key message the audience should take away from this slide? If you can’t articulate that succinctly, there’s too much on the slide.
• Don’t write what you are going to say in the slide. Put it into the notes and use presenter mode on Teams. Then, people aren’t just waiting for you to catch up. Remember, they can read seven times faster than you can speak.
• Spotlight what you want to show. Show the graph and then show the same graph but with everything grey apart from the one bit you want to spotlight, as it’s the only bit in colour. It will add real focus and emphasis to your message.
• Use animation. Just a little. Imagine a slide with five products on, and now make two of the products just wiggle a bit. They’re the ones I am going to talk about, and you’ll remember it more because they just moved a little. Try it, please.