Lisa Braithwaite has written a post, “Hitting a brick wall with resistant clients,” in which she says, the following:
My fellow presentation experts Olivia Mitchell, Laura Bergells, Dave Paradi, Garr Reynolds, Cliff Atkinson, Jan Schultink, Jon Thomas, Jennifer Kammeyer, Ellen Finkelstein and others have been putting out bucketloads of excellent content about how to make PowerPoint effective for audiences and why.
So please tell me: If all this rich, plentiful, easy-to-understand material is out there, how do we get our clients to adopt the better way?
(Thanks for the mention, Lisa!)
I recently asked a similar question in my LinkedIn group, “Great Communicators! Effective Presenting & PowerPoint.” (You really need to join the group—the discussions there are fantastic!)
The question I asked was: “With so much information about good presentation techniques available, why are there so many Death by PowerPoint presentations given every single day?” (The question has 104 comments and counting!)
There are many answers to this question, not just one. But here are some possible solutions:
- Continue to evangelize for good presentation techniques. Don’t back down.
- Suggest books for people to read, such as Presentationzen and slide:ology. There are many more. Let them see what the experts are saying.
- Show them examples of before and after slides.
- Show them some of the research. I have a handout (registration required) of a talk I give, “How to Use PowerPoint for Best Educational Results,” that lists some of the academic research and I’ve discussed research here and here.
- Tell people that young clients and colleagues will consider them unprofessional. That is, play the generation card.
- Tell them you’ll hold their hand through the change.
- Show them presentations about good presenting. There are many on slideshare.net (mine are here and here), Brainshark (here and here), and even YouTube (here and here).
- Show them Don Macmillan’s funny video, Life after Death by PowerPoint, to get them laughing.
What solutions have worked for you?