PowerPoint Culture
Nancy Duarte has some interesting thoughts on the presentation landscape in corporations. In her words:
In every Q & A I get the same question: I”™m in a culture that thinks presentations are fine being hideous and ineffectual, what should I do? Here”™s a quick video I produced for you guys, with an accompanying PDF, that will hopefully help focus your strategy on high-stakes presentations (where there”™s the most pay-off). The Presentation Landscape has examples of which presentations to fight for ”“ and fight hard for ”“ and which ones are distracting skirmishes that you shouldn”™t bother with.
Here is the video. The source post and the pdf file can be found here.
General training and courses for advancement are done entirely by PowerPoint in my workplace. The rationale is to cater to the lowest common denominator, and ensure that all testable material is displayed on the slides. The slides are the only take away material we are provided with for study purposes. As you can imagine, this is quiet frustrating, and gets boring the instant the title slide hits the projector screen. We have coined the term “death by powerpoint”, and I don’t think that’s far from the truth.