How to Avoid ‘Death by PowerPoint’

Written By Liam Sandford
PowerPoint presentation

You can use slides to make a pitch or presentation more engaging, but there is a tipping point. A point where you become too reliant on the slides, and they become your crutch. Delivering without them would derail the whole thing.

When you have a presentation coming up the first thing you might do is open PowerPoint, quickly followed by creating an ‘agenda’ slide. Then comes adding bullet points to your main slide. Maybe you add images and possibly some slide animation. You may even consider this your presentation preparation done, but you haven’t once thought about what was engaging, or what your audience needed.

This is ‘death by PowerPoint’ in waiting.

Slides are not your prompt

The trouble with most presenters is they use PowerPoint as their prompt. They make the slides for them to remember what to say. And in the worst case, they just read bullet points off a slide. But this is not how slides were supposed to be.

Make your slide for the audience, not for you.

If it doesn’t help your audience, don’t include it in your presentation. This means before you start designing your slides, you should think about:

  • What the audience actually wants from you

  • The key messages you need to get across

  • How you can best connect the information to the audience

  • Actionable items you can give people

You should be able to deliver all of these pieces without slides. And if you can’t, it’s time to start scaling back PowerPoint and rely more on your ability as a speaker.

Structure for attention

Whether you have 10 or 30 minutes to deliver your presentation, you only need one structure.

Usually people jump straight to the 10/10/10 structure but this is highly disengaging. It comprises of:

  • 10 minutes telling the audience what you are going to tell them (an agenda)

  • 10 minutes telling them

  • 10 minutes telling the audience what you just told them (a summary)

You may as well only talk for 10 minutes! It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Instead, use the nano speech:

  • Open with something that captures attention, like a story or analogy

  • Deliver your main points

  • End with a call to action, giving them something to take action on right now

This is the only structure you need. It works for a presentation and a conversation.

If you use an opening slide with an agenda on, you lose 50% of the audience before you even started. Every second counts.

3 Principles to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’

I use three key principles to ensure ‘death by PowerPoint’ never becomes the reality for the audience.

  1. Find the perfect combination between words and visuals.

I have a rule — no more than 9 words on a slide. If you have lots of text on screen, the audience try to read and listen to you at the same time. They end up remembering nothing from the presentation.

2. Only one message per slide.

Don’t cram slides full of messages. It is better to have 10 slides and 10 points to make than 1 busy slide. Changing slides provides a distinction between key points for your audience. It is a clear transition point. At every transition they know they should pay attention as something new is coming up. It can be your key to maintaining attention.

3. Direct the audience focus.

Three things stand out on a slide during a presentation:

  • Contrasting colors

  • Numbers

  • Images and icons

Use a blend of the three to direct your audience attention to the specific point you are making. These are the pieces they visually remember — bolding, colors, positioning all matter. Be intentional about what you want the audience to take away. Design your slides around those key messages.

Actionable takeaways

  • In all types of communication it is not about you, it is about your audience. Start designing your slides for your audience, not for you.

  • If you find yourself reliant on PowerPoint, start scaling it back slide at a time. Begin your transition from ‘death by PowerPoint’ to ‘engaging speaker’.

  • Use the 3 principles to avoid ‘death by PowerPoint’ to start crafting more engaging presentations.

More from me

Liam Sandford
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