beyond bullets

The War of Two Mindsets

The great battle for clarity and simplicity in our time is not between PowerPoint and paper, but between two mindsets.

In one corner is the orthodox worldview that gives shape to everything you see in PowerPoint today, called "information presentation."  In the other corner is an unconventional worldview that has the power to change the way PowerPoint will be seen tomorrow, called "cognitive guidance."

Here's how the most prolific researcher in the field of educational psychology described the epic struggle in an interview:

"It is worthwhile to distinguish between two possible goals in making a PowerPoint presentation — information presentation, in which the goal is to present information to the audience, and cognitive guidance, in which the goal is to guide the audience in their processing of the presented information.

"When your goal is information presentation, PowerPoint slides can be full of information that may be extremely hard to process by the audience. However, since your goal is simply information presentation, you are not concerned with whether or not the audience can process the presented information.

"When your goal is cognitive guidance, you want to make sure that the audience members build appropriate knowledge in their memories. Your job is to communicate in a way that will have the desired impact on the audience, so you need to design your slides so they are consistent with how people learn."

It turns out that no matter how much research there is done on the matter, or how many articles, postings and books are written, nothing will change our PowerPoint practices as long as we believe in "information presentation."  But if we change our minds, and accept that our goal is "cognitive guidance", our world will look dramatically different.

Are you prepared to change your view, if it means more clarity and understanding for your audience?

Tip:  Take a look through your presentations. What do they indicate about your world view?  If you're ready to shift from information presentation to cognitive guidance, read the rest of what Rich has to say about PowerPoint here. Review the free download of the PDF titled "Five Ways to Reduce PowerPoint Overload" here. And if you're ready to take the plunge and try a completely new approach grounded in cognitive guidance, try out the book and I'll post 'before and after' presentations in the reader showcase. The more of us who demonstrate the effectiveness of cognitive guidance, the faster we collectively win the battle for clarity and simplicity.

Send your Notes Pages, not your Slides

If you're still "sending your slides", you haven't yet stretched your PowerPoint thinking as far as it can go.  Because when you stretch yourself into the new world of a unified design approach, things only make sense when you start "sending your notes pages" instead.

For example, Anol is a Beyond Bullets reader and a project manager for GetIT Multimedia, a training company located in Singapore. Anol recently redesigned the company's PowerPoint presentation using a unified design approach that allows you to create simple and elegant slides on-screen, at the same time as you create effective handouts.

What does it look like when you do that? Anol was nice enough to share the elegant results with us in this PDF of some of the notes pages from the presentation here: Download GetITIntro.pdf

The top half of each page in this PDF is actually the slide area, that will appear on screen when Anol gives this presentation.  The text area below does not appear on screen, but represents the ideas that are being explained verbally when the slide area is presented. Importantly, this explanation is written in complete sentences rather than bullet points, so that the ideas are clearly and fully-described with no ambiguity. For an organization, this ensures that you document your intellectual assets in a narrative and searchable form.

When you look at Anol's slides in the top half of the page, they don't make sense if they stood alone, which is why it is important to always send them in Notes Page format, to ensure that their context is preserved.

Because of this unified design approach, this single PowerPoint document does double-duty as both interesting slides and a printed handout.  After all, if you're doing all the hard work of preparing a presentation, why not effortlessly produce multiple media at the same time?

Tip: The next time you prepare a presentation, try this unified design approach. (My new book includes a detailed description of how to do it, including formatting of the slide and notes masters.)  Then deliver your presentation, and afterward offer to "send your notes pages" rather than your slides.  Your audience is sure to be very impressed by the delicious fruit of your elegant labor.

Politics in a PowerPoint Package

Agree or disagree with the politics of Republicans, you have to give them credit for tapping into the power of PowerPoint as a sophisticated media tool for packaging and spreading a message. According to a recent article, 

"GOP leaders are encouraging rank-and-file members to hold town-hall meetings in their home states and districts during this week's congressional recess, and are arming them with briefing books, PowerPoint presentations and a video of Bush making the case for major changes in Social Security."

Whether you're on the right, left, middle, or in your own place, how well are you doing at packaging your own message in a user-friendly medium that other people can use to spread your ideas?  If you're not doing it at all, you should be.  Here are three reasons why:

1. PowerPoint gathers people together. It provides a social context where people meet in person. Where people say that TV makes us isolated and fragmented, PowerPoint can be a tool that brings us together.
2. It facilitates conversation. Used evocatively, PowerPoint can help you engage your audience, open up conversation, and foster collaboration.
3. It provides a versatile media platform. PowerPoint can serve as the visual script for an integrated multimedia experience, providing the platform for video clips, visuals and paper handouts.

Using PowerPoint as a tool to facilitate discourse is far more than a trend; it is a sign of things to come. Whether politics is your passion or you have other cultural interests, the sooner you can package your ideas in a way that other people can talk about them, the faster those ideas will spread.

Tip: Have a favorite idea, cause or passion you would like to make available to others? Consider producing a PowerPoint presentation that other people could use. Keep the screen free of bullet points, and instead create an integrated media document that also serves as a handout people can take home. When you're done, post the PowerPoint file on your website so other people can download it, and write about it in your weblog or by email.  Post a comment here to share your thoughts on how things went.

Why Board Members Should Ban Bullets

The boards of directors of every organization should immediately ban the use of bullet points on PowerPoint screens, if they accept these research findings:

Adding text to a screen in a multimedia presentation that is identical to the narration harms the ability of the audience to understand the information. Removing the text increases retention, or the ability to remember the information, by 28%. Even more significantly, removing the text increases transfer, or the ability to apply the information, by 79%.

This is according to research by the most prolific researcher in the field of educational psychology, Dr. Richard E. Mayer, in his book Multimedia Learning. If you're interested in the research behind the data, I highly recommend you buy a copy of his book.

If this research finding is not front-cover material for business magazines and newspaper sections, it should be. Few technologies affect so many people's lives so profoundly as PowerPoint, yet its impact is ignored by mainstream business publications.  This massive organizational problem is staring us all in the face on presentation screens everywhere, yet no one is saying a word about it.

This is what every business journalist should be asking about the situation:

1. If bullet points on PowerPoint screens harm the ability of employees to remember information, what is the total impact on organizational productivity?
2. If the bullet point approach harms the ability of customers to apply information, what is the impact on organizational profitability?
3. If the impact on productivity and profitability is significant, what are the boards of directors of organizations doing about it?

Until now, we've been accepting a host of reasons for not questioning the bullet point approach: It's easy for me. It helps me remember what I want to say. Everybody else does it. Because that's the way the template is set up.

In the face of research, and in the harsh light of business analysis, these reasons no longer align with the strategy of organizations who hold productivity and profitability important.

Tip: If you're running into resistance as you move your own presentations beyond bullet points, share the research findings described above with your co-workers. Try some of the techniques described in this weblog, and present a 'before and after' comparison of the old bullet-point approach and a new way. It's most likely that people will not be willing to change until they see an alternative, and if you're the first to present one in your organization, you can lead the way to quantifiably clearer communications.

The Filmic Lens

If we didn't see a PowerPoint slide as a piece of paper projected onto a wall, how much would our perspective change?

Most analysis of PowerPoint applies principles of print design as the criteria for failure or success. That's fine as long as you are willing to accept that the model for media for live presentations is paper.  But paper is not the only lens through which you can see PowerPoint.

Filmmakers, like people who use PowerPoint, blend both projected image and spoken word to communicate. If you were to look at PowerPoint through a filmic lens you just may see a whole new vision of the medium. When you see your next film, ask yourself:

1. How are filmmakers able to complex communicate information without using text on screen?
2. What tools and techniques do good filmmakers use to engage audiences, and keep them interested?
3. Does a film have to "tell them what you're going to tell them" in order for an audience to understand what is happening?

When we answer questions like these and then refocus our underlying attention on PowerPoint, we might just find that there's more to this medium than just a piece of paper.

Tip: The next time you see a film, watch it with the questions above in mind. Then visit here again and post the answers that you find.

99% Perspiration, 1% Visualization

Hollywood has learned from a century of experience that you have to have a script before you pick up a camera. It's the story, after all, that determines the mood, the structure, the substance and the style of the communication experience.

When it comes to PowerPoint, we do the opposite. With our standardized corporate templates, we lock in the mood, structure, substance and style of a communication experience before we even consider the story, if we consider it at all.

Why?

Probably because writing a story is hard. A friend of mine is a VP for the company that produced The Aviator, a film that recently earned 11 Academy Award nominations. I asked him why there weren't more good films coming out of Hollywood, and he said, "Because we don't see that many good stories."  When the livelihood of an entire industry depends on good stories and they're just not appearing, you know that writing a story has got to be very hard, indeed.

The inventor of the motion picture camera is quoted as saying, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." When it comes to our current PowerPoint approach, we need to set aside the fonts, colors and templates and learn from Hollywood that a good film is 99% perspiration and 1% visualization. The 99%, of course, is figuring out the story.

When we take it upon ourselves to do the hard work it takes to craft a persuasive story, we'll produce more blockbuster communications than Hollywood could ever imagine.

Tip: Instead of opening PowerPoint and diving right into the graphics, spend time working on your story. What is the setting, who is the main character, what conflict has happened to bring your audience there, and what do you propose they do about it? The more time you spend thinking about your story, the more interesting and engaging your visuals will be when you get around to bringing your own script to life.

Download Chapter 1 of my new book, "Beyond Bullet Points"

In the competition for most efficient online retailer, BN.com gets my vote because they're the first to ship my book.  Not only that, but Barnes & Noble editor Bill Camarda wrote a very nice review there as well.

Amazon.com, on the other hand, comes in a distant second, since they haven't posted the book cover image yet, let alone start shipping. 

I still like Amazon, though, and will post a note when they start shipping, so let's call today the "soft" launch of the book. It will still be a couple of weeks before copies of the book find their way through the book distribution network to your local offline Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore.

In any case, if can't wait to start moving Beyond Bullet Points, you can download a PDF of Chapter 1 here, along with the Table of Contents and Introduction. Hopefully the downloads will whet your appetite for more tasty morsels of bullet-free communication.

Pump up the volume

If you want people to take notice of what you say, you simply need to pump up the volume. Max Atkinson (no relation) has advised politicians on both sides of the aisle and on both sides of the Atlantic about how to present information more effectively, and he has this to say about the difference between a conversation and a presentation:

"...It is through variations in tone, stress, pauses, pace, etc. that we convey enthusiasm, passion and emotion. The trouble is that many speakers deliver with much the same intonation as they use in conversation, not realizing that conversation is a short distance mode of communication. Across a meter or two, co-conversationalists can pick up slight inflections, emphases, etc. But across the longer distance between speakers and audiences in presentations, the slight inflections flatten out and come across as a monotone. Effective speakers therefore have to learn to exaggerate the intonational patterns they use in everyday conversation, if they want their enthusiasm and passion to travel across the longer distance to the ears of their audience."

I've noticed exactly the same thing at my local speaking club, especially when it comes to yours truly. I'm normally a pretty even-mannered guy, but when I speak publicly, my words tend to come across as a monotone. I notice the same thing with the majority of other presenters. My own resistance to greater inflection is that I don't want to come across as being fake or cheesy. But Max's perspective above makes sense - a presentation is different from everyday conversation; it's a specific and special type of communication that demands greater intonation than normal. That's not to say that you can't use informal language as opposed to formal language - the point here is the way you use the words you naturally speak.

Tip: The next time you give a presentation, try doubling the amount of enthusiasm you think you need to have, exaggerating your tone, stress and pauses. Afterward, have a conversation with some members of your audience to see if your presentation communicated the enthusiasm you intended it to.

How do you feel about bullet points?

What do you do if you're watching a bullet-point presentation and you just can't take it anymore?  An anonymous writer describes the pain we've all felt in that situation in an eloquent and witty article in Managing Information Strategies magazine, saying:

"I've been tearing my hairs out - both of them - trying to work out how to communicate my frustration and boredom to the usually oblivious presenter.   But being in an audience is like being in a restaurant: it's against the rules to wave, stand or call out - you can only communicate by eye contact and, in extreme circumstances, by closing them. No one ever asks for feedback, so I do what everyone does: stay quiet and just never buy from that person again."

It would be too easy to blame the presenter, because we have all been that presenter. My theory remains that we collectively have simply not seen a better way to do things yet, so we quietly endure the unendurable.  But that aside, it does strike me in postings like these that there is a strong undercurrent of emotion when it comes to such presentations, as indicated by terms such as "frustration" and even "evil."

It would be interesting to take the PowerPoint temperature and see where we are today when it comes to the typical bullet point presentation. As an audience member, do you think things are getting better, or do you detect a simmering sentiment of frustration? Leave a comment with your take on today's temperature....

How to Structure a Story: Act I (Microcast)

Everyone says you should tell a story, but exactly how do you do that?  Aristotle was pretty clear about it 2,400 years ago when he wrote Poetics, and Hollywood screenwriters more recently have adapted his ideas to the idea of a visual story as they apply to 2-hour films.

But when you craft a story for your PowerPoint presentations, you are entering a new media domain beyond the familiar, where classical ideas of rhetoric blend with multimedia in an age of interactivity.

To find your own clarity and focus, try out the 3-act story template I describe in my new book. If you'd like to see a 10-minute Flash demonstration showing how you can use the story template to structure the first five slides of Act I of a presentation, click here.  Fair warning: critical thinking and screenwriting are not easy tasks, but with the right tools you just might find the narrative you're looking for.

P.S. There's a known bug related to viewing the Flash file using a Mac or Firefox - hopefully I'll have a fix for the problem this week.