You might have read the front page story of The New York Times on Tuesday, April 27: We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint. The article details the U.S. military’s obsession with PowerPoint, sometimes to its peril.  When General Stanley McChrystal was shown a PowerPoint slide displaying the American strategy in Afghanistan, he responded, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.”As a result of that article, the Gallo Communications Group has agreed to donate up to 50 copies of the international bestseller, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience to American and NATO military leaders in Afghanistan. |
| The U.S military is fulfilling a vital role in protecting American interests and increasing global security. Commanders must be clear, inspirational and persuasive and they can achieve this not by banning PowerPoint, as some have suggested, but by creating more effective presentations. Confusion is the enemy. Simplicity is the hero. The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs includes tips and techniques that anyone, including the military, can use to create powerful and persuasive presentations. Among them:
-Practice Picture Superiority. The average PowerPoint slide has forty words. Some of the slides used by the military contain more than two hundred words. It’s difficult to find forty words on ten slides in a Steve Jobs presentation. Jobs avoids all bullet points and instead practices “picture superiority,” a way of delivering information in visual form. The brain interprets every letter on a slide as a picture. That means if you have too many words, your brain is literally choking on text. Instead use fewer words and more pictures. But don’t get rid of PowerPoint entirely. Scientists find that people retain information more effectively if the information is delivered as words and pictures, and not words or pictures alone. -Introduce an Antagonist. Every great script has a hero and villain. A presentation should be no different. The military shouldn’t have a problem introducing a villain. They’re used to targeting villains every day. The difference in a presentation is that the villain is a problem. Your solution plays the role of the hero. Presenters should spend up to 20% of the total time of the presentation educating the audience on the problem that requires a resolution. The solution—your idea, product, or initiative—will follow. -Deliver Emotionally Charged Events. Many organizations become so dependent on PowerPoint that they forget persuasion requires reaching both the analytical and emotional parts of the brain. When it comes to persuasion, reaching the emotional side of the brain is even more important than the logical, or left hemisphere. That’s why trainers at the Gallo Communications Groups recommend creating ‘emotionally charged events’ that are often best delivered outside the confines of the PowerPoint slide. These emotional events might include demonstrations, stories, video clips, or activities that are intended to leave a stronger, emotional imprint on the audience. We believe that anyone can learn to create impactful presentations that inform, educate, and inspire. PowerPoint is an excellent tool to compliment the story, but the key word is compliment. Remember, your story comes first. |
