PowerPoint’s ‘The Deck’ – the world’s deadliest assassin

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Is ‘The Deck’ killing your presentations? Everyone’s heard of ‘Death By Powerpoint’, but ‘The Deck’ is its insidious, secret, lurking in the shadows younger sister. Rosa Kleb’s and Villanelle’s more lethal daughter.

The global killer?

And ‘The Deck’ has been making an appearance a lot recently in all sizes of organisations. Although I’d say the bigger the company, the greater the danger. So how does it appear?

It’s an understandable but fatal problem. You are asked, requested, even ordered, to produce a printed copy of a presentation – the Deck – to be handed out at the start of the presentation thus destroying everything else that you do in person and on the screen.

Why so fatal?

The problem is deceptively simple. It’s easy to think of presentations as one homogeneous mass. They’re not. They’re made up of three very different channels of communication: 

  • you, the presenter; 
  • your slides; and 
  • the handouts. 

Each of these channels performs very different jobs.First, you as the presenter are there to:

  • build trust, 
  • establish and/or deepen the human relationships, 
  • excite, inspire, entertain your audience (so… no pressure);

Your slides are there as your lovely assistant:

  • supporting your performance, 
  • reminding you of the main points, 
  • gently keeping you on track, 
  • providing audio visual delights for your audience, 
  • mixing things up a bit.  

The Deck is there:

  • as a reminder of just how good a time your audience had with you
  • to reassure your audience that they were not just bewitched by you, but that the spell your cast was based on powerful magic, finely-honed logic and exhaustive research
  • to get them over the line to choose you and your organisation. 
  • possibly for your audience to hand on to other people unlucky enough to have missed your presentation, but who’d like to add their pennyworth to the decision making.  

So, if your presentation is dictated to and dominated by the assassin Deck, you’re making your other two channels’ purposes practically impossible.

How can you cheat Death?

Think USD

First, be aware. Find a way to remember that your presentation needs to have three different parts. One way is to use acronyms. Who doesn’t love a TLA (three letter acronym)? So let’s try USD. Not an abbreviation for the US $, but standing for U (You)—Slides—Deck. Along with your USP (Unique Selling Point), dividing your approach into USD will help you remember the three different channel approach. (Just for the records, my inner pedant REALLY hates my cheating with the You:U trick. But my inner marketing guru, who’s called Joxanna [the x is silent] won the argument).

Order order

Second, have a clear idea of the order in which you create your presentation. We all work differently. However, in my experience, during planning is the one time I would recommend starting with the deck. Get all your arguments and supporting evidence in the most compelling order.

Then create the slides from the deck always remembering they’re there to support you. The usual advice applies such as:

  • having no more than three points, 
  • simple graphics
  • only one chart
  • a striking, surprising image
  • use builds on your slides so your audience focus on you and your current point rather than reading ahead

Finally, work out what you’re going to say on the day. The Presenter Notes in Software like Apple Keynote or Microsoft PowerPoint can be used both for bullet points you can refer to if needed while you present. You can also print them on card if you feel more comfortable using hard copies while you talk.

One more thing

Follow these steps and you should find your presentations are much more successful, memorable and actually more enjoyable to deliver. One thing I’ve not mentioned is something that we find Infinite Space clients mention a lot as being valuable when we go back to train them It’s the ‘Who What What’ – the job of asking yourself three simple questions that help you get any communication, including presentations, really clear. They are:

  • ‘Who are we talking to?’;
  • ‘What do they currently think and feel?’
  • ‘What do we WANT them to think and feel?’

Using the ‘Who What What’ can help you be ruthlessly effective with each of your USD channels.