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PowerPoint was created by a startup called “Forethought” in 1987. What is ironic is how little thought goes into most Powerpoint presentations these days. Very soon it met its partners in crime - Excel and Word, and thus was born Microsoft Office.

I have made many slides in my corporate life. More than I care to admit. I do not think anyone in corporations has been left untouched by this slide monster. In 2001, Microsoft estimated that 30 Million powerpoint presentations were created every day. 30 Million! And this was in 2001!!

Somewhere in this corporate culture of meetings, meetings for meetings, slides for meetings for meetings and slides for slides for meetings for meetings, we kind of lost the entire point of PowerPoint.

The point was to make a few Powerful Points. The ones that make an impact. The ones that deliver a meaningful insight. The ones that help create value.

Instead what we got was

- 20 types of font sizes on a slide

- 180 slides presentations

- Titles like “dashboard”

- tables with 30 rows and no title

Then there are pre-reads. I think there are three kinds of people-

- ones who send pre-reads 1-2 days in advance or earlier

- ones who send pre-read 5 minutes in advance

- ones who are asking - what is a pre-read?

Over a period of my career, I have gone through the best and worst of PowerPoints and tried to distill my learnings into some principles. Note, even I cannot always follow these principles as there are often people around you who believe otherwise and man is after all a social animal :)

I will now share my 5 core principles of PowerPoint. Do let me know which ones you agree with and especially which ones you do not.

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Now 10 is my arbitrary small number, it could be something else for you. But stop creating 100 page presentations.

Tell me, when have you ever discussed a 100 page presentation, page by page. When?

You need to be able to synthesize the problem, the analysis, the recommendation and the plan to execute in 10 slides.

If you are not able to, you have not understood it well enough yourselves.

Why you get to 100 slides is because you keep adding points without the story.

Oh that point is interesting, we should also talk about that, what about that.

Well screw that! Think of what your overall message is. Start with that.

Stop writing your title as P&L statement or customer feedback.

Say what you want to say in your title. Whether it is active or passive, that is up to you.

“Customers were unhappy with the change in the colour of packaging” - there you said it. Rest all of the information on the slide is to make the skeptics trust the title.

Try not to use too many superlative adjectives like very, most, biggest etc. Keep it as objective as possible. This is only to prevent pissing off other colleagues. In some organizations with more brutal culture, this might not apply (btw why are you working at such organizations?)

Have you not made slides in the last 1 month - Congratulations. Ping me and share your secret.

Most probably, you need to present every other week. I would urge you to keep a running presentation of not more than 10 slides. Update it every other week.

The idea is to make it as easy on you to present at meetings where you might be called last minute to discuss your project.

Also it helps you to repeat the same message over and over again. Especially important when it comes to strategic priorities.

Block 60 minutes every other week to do this.

You do not need overcomplicated charts and graphs to explain most data.

You are not “The Economist”. Your audience should not spend 10 minutes trying to understand what your graph is representing.

Most of the time a table of 5 by 5 would be more than enough to share most information.

Similarly between a line chart and bar graph, you can represent 90% of your data.

PS: Also limit the number or graphs and tables. This is one of the biggest reasons for a 100+ page presentation. For skeptics, have an excel based discussion.

PowerPoint is a tool for you to communicate key points in a meeting. Practice for such meetings.

The more you practice, the better you can make your PowerPoint talk.

Do not wing it too much. Remember how as kids we used to practice for a debate, a play, a speech. It worked!

I have seen the best falter when they do not practice, and the very average shine when they do.

Well I hope some of the above make sense to you. If not, please enlighten me, I am happy to change my ways as well. Well hope you have a PowerPoint free week.

Till the next slide (I mean week) please!