41–50 of 126 posts
In my experience the people who give shitty presentations with powerpoint would also be perfectly capable of giving shitty presentations without powerpoint.
There is a time and place for slides with a few talking points per, but in many ways it's contorted most all meetings into PR events even when there's nothing to sell.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
6 pages is a bit too long, though. In a famous Ranked 1st Consumer Goods company (i'll let you guess which one) all team memos to management are only allowed to be of a single page. This is really hard to adapt to it at the beginning but decision making is so much faster.
> This is really hard to adapt to it at the beginning but decision making is so much faster. Yeah. God forbid that anyone making decisions should have to deal with actual details; in the worst case, this would actually make them have to think.
Google and other companies are known for very brief updates (may be called memos in your organization), as short as a single line, sent per week. No need to send multiple pages of details: http://blog.idonethis.com/post/16736314554/silicon-valleys-p...
These memos are different from the author's post, which is really not about memos, but rather an alternative means of presenting all of the information required to get to the key discussion in a meeting. I don't think is anyone is suggesting that 6 pg emails should be the memos, and something is wrong if the 6pg emails are replacing decks that are being sent around via email.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It does not mean it does not have details, but you have to sort out the details that matter for management. That's how they can make decisions instead of drowning them in pages and pages of information.
While it is a valid goal to cut down on irrelevancies (like empty lingo), it's the exact the wrong mentality to consider detail the enemy of good decisions. Good decision making stems from understanding a problem comprehensively, not via often misleading generalities. I would even question whether it's possible to accurately summarize anything more trivial problems in a single page; the sort of menial issue that does…
In the end what really matters CAN and SHOULD be summarized, and if additional details are needed there is always a place for sharing and discussion with management.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This just doubles my question from reading the original post: A full half-hour, for a six-page memo? Are these incredibly dense and full of new information to the readers? People don't really read that slowly. Average adult reading speed is something like 250 wpm. Average memo might be, what, 300 wpp? So, six minutes to read, maybe ten if you're taking your time? Not sure anyone has the answer, but that length of rea…
I worked at AWS for a while. So a lot of times when I've been in such meetings, the 6-page document was actually full of technical details (design docs, product FAQs, post-mortem reports, etc). So taking 20-30 mins to read through the full document, re-read some sections and write down questions/comments is not that unusual.
Oh hey! This is exactly what Edward Tufte taught us at his course the other week. Now I'm curious as to who originated this practice...?
I'm in love with this idea. The information density (in terms of time) of a well written memo is much greater than that of a presentation. Many 30 minute presentations could be read in 5 minutes. The written word is also a great equalizer. A "presenter" can be judged based on their content rather than their public speaking ability.
6 pages is a bit too long, though. In a famous Ranked 1st Consumer Goods company (i'll let you guess which one) all team memos to management are only allowed to be of a single page. This is really hard to adapt to it at the beginning but decision making is so much faster.
It does depend on the structure of those 6 pages. If I had to do these regularly I can easily imagine settling on a (largely) routine format, e.g 1st page is overview, 2nd page is problem detail, 3rd page is solution/implementation, 4th page risks/mitigation blah blah blah.
Note that the article says the first 30 minutes of the meeting is reading the memo. It doesn't take 5mins to read a page so there's ample time for people to formulate an opinion/questions before discussion actually starts (based on enough info in the memo). This is already an order of magnitude better than any powerpoint talk I've been in where people just shoot from the hip.
When I was in high school I tried to ban powerpoint, arguing that it inhibited our ability to grow as public speakers. I wrote Edward Tufte and told him about it and he shipped me 20 copies of "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within" ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_pp ). Some teachers opposed it and I ended up losing. I'm sure Powerpoint was more convenient for them. I use deck.js fo…
(I work there.)
On the viewing side as as well as the presenter side.
I occasionally workshops on various things. Some (not all) of them don't have any slides.
None.
On the grounds that the point of the workshop, as far as I'm concerned, is to pay a lot of attention to what I'm telling you - and do the practical exercises. You learn by doing - not by reading. A slide deck just gets in the way of that. It's a barrier between me and the class.
Every time there's one or two people who really hate that and complain about the lack of the deck. Not the quality of the workshop - that they're fine with - but the fact they don't have a slide deck.
Occasionally it's because they want to take away the deck and run the workshop inside their own company for free (and hey - I don't mind about that. Honest. It actually helps sales ;-).
But more often folk seem to need "a thing" to take away and look at again. Not so much as a learning tool, but as token that they were there.
I'm seriously considering making some physical "things" for folk. Maybe postcards with the key learning points on and a reading list. Just to see if that'll help.