Presentations, PowerPoint, and George Orwell

From a Q&A with Teresa A. Taylor, COO of Qwest, that ran last September in the New York Times:

Q. Is there anything unusual about the way you run meetings?

A. Well, the first is by saying, “Do we all know why we’re here?”

Q. Do you really say that?

A. Yes, because so many people say, “No, I don’t know, I was invited.” . . . I get invited to a lot of meetings where someone wants to brief me, or bring me up to speed on something, which usually means that they want to tell me about their project and then ask me for money. So I open with: “Do we all know why we’re here? Are we making decisions? Are you going to ask me for something at the end?” I try to get that out right away.

It’s amazing, there will be eight people in the room and they all have a different answer of what’s going on there. I’ll also say, once we’re clear about what we’re doing: “Does everyone need to be here? If anyone feels like they want to leave right now, that would be fine.” Every once in a while a couple of people will say, “Yeah, I could use this time back,” and they get up and leave.

Q. But you could chew up 10 minutes just going around the table.

A. Sure, I think it’s a good 10 minutes. I really do.

Q. What about presentations?

A. I use a little saying, which is, “Be brief, be bright and be gone.” It’s also not uncommon for me to say, “Why don’t we put the PowerPoint aside for a minute and why don’t you just talk to me?”

Q. What’s the maximum number of PowerPoint slides you want to see?

A. Six. But I actually prefer no PowerPoint. To be honest, I’d rather just talk. A really great meeting, to me, is someone who is just talking to me and might give me a piece of paper or two to support something, but that’s it.

A couple things strike me about this exchange. One, Ms. Taylor makes a good case for why tools like PowerPoint are best managed by pushy, efficiency-minded people. Like all technological tools, they magnify the qualities of the user. If you’re timid, PowerPoint enables your timidity. If you’re one of the most restless creative minds of your generation, technologies like PowerPoint are more likely to showcase your incredible avidity.

Either way, a limit on its use — six slides per presentation — is good for all parties. Taylor is essentially saying that she forces presenters to edit themselves, and call me biased, but I believe editing tends to clarify one’s thinking.

Two, technologies like PowerPoint make it easy to pass off sloppy thoughts. “Just talk” is less forgiving. There’s no place for half-baked ideas to hide when you’re “just talking.” To borrow from Orwell again, when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.

On Being Offended

Apropos of here and here, here’s one more reason why being “offended” ought to end with 2009. Yes, the “offensive” label is overused; if everyone is driving around offended all the time, it makes it harder to gin up real outrage when real outrage is warranted; and yes, saying x is offensive to me is a weird passive construction and way of distancing yourself while still sounding judgmental and disapproving but without actually committing yourself to an overt explanation of why you’re offended. In a word, it’s prissy.

But slapping a “that’s offensive” label on something just doesn’t accomplish what it’s meant to accomplish. It’s often said with the hope of prompting the offender to reevaluate their statement(s). You say that all women who wear mascara are disease-ridden whores, and I say, “Wow, offensive!” but my real point is probably this: I don’t agree. I wear mascara. I don’t have sex for money. Perhaps you should reconsider what you’ve just said, or risk hurting people’s feelings.

If I were extra sanctimonious, I might even be hoping that by calling you offensive, you’d be embarrassed, possibly even ashamed.

Two BIG PROBLEMS right there: 1) Shame simply isn’t that potent a social phenomenon any more. 2) The subtext of “That’s offensive” is usually that you, the offended, are a kinder, more sensitive, and thoughtful individual than the offender is. This is insulting. And you can insult someone, or attempt to influence them, but you can’t do both at the same time.

In Persuasion Nation, or, Thoughts on a Productive Lunch

If a presentation is too glossy and slick, the message is diluted.

Every intellectually curious person I know is operating at 95% capacity. They barely have an hour to synthesize all of the facts they gather each day.

This means the potential impact of every single act of communication is diluted.

At the same time, competition for our attention is intense. The challenge for anyone who wants attention—for for-profit purposes or not—is overcoming our skepticism and fatigue.

So the question becomes: How to talk to people who may not know us but already don’t trust us? How do you address people who don’t have time to listen?

For-profits and non-profits alike who can figure out how to overcome our ennui will do better than those who fail to realize where their real communications problems lie.

Meaning is made by one’s audience. All you can do is reduce your probability of being misunderstood.

This is easier said than done. I’d recommend professional help.

This is undoubtedly an instance of “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” but I further imagine that this challenge requires blunt, fresh language that paradoxically, imperceptibly, triggers nostalgia. Triggering longing is secondary.

Accomplishing the above requires $10 sentences.