Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

Should We Blame the Tools?

We make presentations every day. This is especially true in professional settings, where we present ideas, agreements, and updates to peers, superiors, customers, partners, and stakeholders. We even make presentations at home and in our communities. Yet not all presentations are equal. Sometimes, a presentation leads to decisions, actions, commitments, and change. However, far too often, a presentation fails to produce any effect whatsoever. The audience may have learned something, but their actions don't change. So, the question is, was their time well spent?

If, like us, you've sat wearily through boring presentations, maybe you've thought or heard others say, “That's an hour I'll never get back,” or “Did we make any progress at all in there?”

But should we blame the tools? After all, Microsoft PowerPoint has become ubiquitous in business and government settings. Speakers at major conferences are expected to use PowerPoint to deliver their presentations. Military commanders use PowerPoint to provide status updates to their superior officers, and teachers at all levels, from grade school through graduate school, use PowerPoint to deliver class lectures. It's clear that PowerPoint has been widely embraced as the de facto mechanism for education, information sharing, and idea sharing.

We don't think the fault lies with the tools. For one thing, PowerPoint and other similar presentation packages are relatively new tools. Poor communication has been happening ...