An alternative title to this column could be, “Everything bad about PowerPoint I learned from the National Security Agency.” Like many Americans I’ve been reading about the top-secret program (PRISM) whereby the NSA and the FBI are tapping directly into Internet service providers to monitor audio and video chats, photographs, emails and other documents. The issue has been brought to our attention courtesy of leaked slides posted on The Washington Post. What caught my attention was this sentence from the technology and social media site, Mashable: “Indeed, the ‘how’ of PRISM is still murky; there’s only so much you can glean from a bad PowerPoint. And it is a pretty appalling example of the form, complete with borrowed clip art.”
I thought, could the slides be that bad? The answer – yes. Let me explain what makes the slides “appalling” followed by my opinion on why they are so bad.
Too many slides. There are 41 slides in the presentation acquired by the Washington Post. Although we don’t know how much time the briefings took up, 41 slides is too much information for one sitting. In a column I wrote earlier this year (Why a 20-minute presentation always beats a 60-minute one), I discussed the concept of “cognitive backlog.” According to researchers, cognitive processing (thinking, speaking, listening) is a physically demanding activity. If you pile on too much information in one session, it becomes harder for the brain to process all of the information being thrown at it.
Too cluttered. The template has a banner across the top with two emblems and logos for each of the Internet providers being targeted (10 logos). It’s visually distracting. The title of each slide is completely lost. It makes it difficult to discern where to focus and what the slide is about.
Too many words. The first two slides have about 70 words on each one. It would be nearly impossible for anyone to read all of the words on each slide while listening to a speaker at the same time. Our brains simply aren’t built to multi-task at that level. The most interesting presentations I’ve ever seen follow what I call the “10-40 rule”: the first 10 slides contain no more than 40 words total. Following this rule forces you to tell the story behind the data which is always more interesting and memorable than simply dumping the information on your audience.
Why are the slides bad? The key word is “incentive.” In in my experience as a communications coach who has worked with government agencies as well as many of the world’s leading corporate executives, when there’s little incentive to improve communication style, the PowerPoint slides are dull, convoluted, and confusing. The person giving the NSA presentation most likely had little, if any, incentive to improve the presentation. It was an internal briefing and he or she was not about to lose their job if they failed to inspire their audience. As Steve Forbes points out in Freedom Manifesto, “In this highly politicized, bureaucratic world, there is frequently little and often no connection between effort and reward.” Where there is a direct connection between effort and reward, you tend to find much better PowerPoint presentations. Yesterday I sat across from a leading executive at one of the top three largest companies in America (and in the top 10 globally). We worked together to refine his ideas into a compelling story. He’s constantly working on his speeches and presentations to make them more persuasive. Why? If he inspires his audience (heads of state) to adopt his company’s products, it means billions in revenue. This particular executive has a billion reasons to make his presentation the best it can be.
Sometimes bad PowerPoint can be outright harmful. Today I received an email from a security expert who helped train Iraqi police officers. Although he has been using many of the techniques he’s learned in these columns to improve his own presentation and communication skills, he’s had to sit through many presentations where the speakers simply didn’t care. Here’s exactly what he wrote in today’s email:
“99% of the PowerPoints I saw in Iraq consisted of speakers writing their script on the slides, then reading the slides to the audience. First, it’s insulting. I can read quickly, so I’m usually done before the speaker is halfway through the slide. So half my time is spent waiting for the speaker to finish, even if they’ve packed over 100 words onto each slide, which is common. Second, it’s excruciatingly boring. The speaker usually has no training in speaking, so he or she reads the slides in a droning, monotone voice guaranteed to solve insomnia problems. There are no photos, no videos, no funny stories, nothing to break the monotony. Third, they seem to go on forever. I have seen these things go four to six hours at a stretch with no break, long after everyone in the room is either asleep or playing games on their cellphones.”
In this case, bad PowerPoint can mean the difference between an effectively trained police presence and a poorly trained one.
I’m sure we will continue to learn a lot more about the NSA’s PRISM program in the days to come. We can argue about the merits of the top-secret program, but the quality of the PowerPoint slides is beyond dispute—they were truly “appalling.”