The Proper Role of Graphics

Think about a time when you were in the audience at a presentation and the graphics didn't work. What was the problem? The most common answers I get when I ask my business clients this question include:

• "The graphics were cluttered."

• "There was too much on the slide."

• "The slide looked like an eye chart."

• "The slide was a Data Dump."

Now flip the lens and take the point of view of an Audience Advocate. What's the effect on you? It's another case of the dreaded MEGO syndrome: the same cause and effect as when a story is unloaded on you as a Data Dump.

The main reason this happens is that presenters fail to distinguish between a document and a presentation. They treat a presentation as a document. Business documents include annual reports , filled with dense text and highly detailed tables, charts , and graphs; strategic plans , filled with dense text and highly detailed tables, charts, and graphs; market analyses , filled with dense text and highly detailed tables, charts, and graphs; and meeting notes , filled with dense text and highly detailed tables, charts, and graphs. All these types of documents are necessary and important in their place, but business documents are not presentations.

So the true problem with presentation graphics is that, all too often, presenters take a flood of data, those dense text and highly detailed tables, charts, and graphs, and simply reproduce them, with little or no modification, for their presentation graphics.

I call this the Presentation-as-Document Syndrome , and it represents one of the most common underlying problems that plague presentations. Presenters have become so accustomed to relying on graphics, especially Microsoft PowerPoint slides, that they often think of the presentation as a mere accompaniment to those aids. In fact, many people act as if the presentation is completely dispensable. "Say, Jerry," they'll say, "I can't attend your presentation next week. But it doesn't matter. Just send me your slides!" Or they sometimes say, "Send me your slides in advance." The PowerPoint slides then are treated as handouts .

What's more, presenters frequently provide the handouts to their audience before the presentation. The audience then reads the handout, sees the slide, and hears the presenter read what is on the slide. This is known as "triple delivery," an assault on the audience's senses that leads to that lethal MEGO.

Using slides as handouts is but one manifestation of the Presentation-as-Document Syndrome. There are three others: one is to use the slides as notes to help the presenter remember what to say; another is to cram a plethora of details on the slides as if to demonstrate legitimacy ; yet another is to fill the slides with enough information so that anyone else in the company using the same slides will maintain the uniformity of the message.

But the name of my business is not Power Handouts, Power Notes, Power Details, or Power Uniformity. It is Power Presentations.

A presentation is a pure play. It must serve only one purpose. Remember the words of Dan Warmenhoven, the CEO of Network Appliance, in the Opening Gambit of his IPO road show, "Do one thing and one thing well." If a presentation tries to serve two or more purposes, it dilutes both purposes. The presentation itself is neither fish nor fowl.

A presentation is a presentation and only a presentation, and never a document. After all, Microsoft provides Word for documents and PowerPoint for presentations. And never the twain shall meet.

If you do need a document of your presentation, Microsoft PowerPoint provides the Notes Page view (Figure 6.1). The top of the Notes Page contains only what your audience sees projected on the screen. The bottom provides the additional material for the handouts.

Figure 6.1. The Notes Page view in Microsoft PowerPoint.

A presentation is a presentation and only a presentation, and never a document.

Be sure to distribute the handouts only after the presentation. If you distribute them before or during the presentation, your audience members will be flipping through them as you speak, and they won't listen to what you have to say.

If you're asked to provide a copy of your presentation for a conference so that the slides can be printed in book form, use the Microsoft PowerPoint Notes Page view. That way, you'll maintain the integrity of your slides as purely presentation material.

If you're asked to provide a copy of the presentation in advance, as so often happens, especially in the venture capital and financial business, politely offer to provide a business plan or executive summary as a document. And create that document with Microsoft Word and not PowerPoint.