Office Offences and Management Misdemeanours: 3 Worst PowerPoint Crimes

Knowing Self-Aware Leadership

Hello KSKOers

I need to share with you my frustration about the world’s worst office offences and management misdemeanours - the PowerPoint crimes. Reports, Scripts and Presenting Backwards. Discover 3 ways to keep yourself from being thrown into professional prison and keep yourself on the right side of presentation law.

Looking forward to having you on my learning journey!

A phenomenon of geography or culture? I’d never seen this until I moved from Wales to England over 6 years ago. It could be totally unrelated to geography and more related to organisational culture of course. But the move and the discovery were peculiarly coincidental.

In Wales, we’d been shifting to a ‘less is more’ approach to PowerPoint. We were taking more of a TED talk approach and using PowerPoint as an aide - to emphasis, excite and exemplify. But 5 and a half years ago all of that changed and I was exposed to a new phenomenon.

What is this phenomenon, I hear you ask?

Well, it’s what I call the Packing-in of PowerPoint

In the last 5 and a half years I’ve worked in 3 very different organisations. I’ve seen countless PowerPoints presented in hundreds of different meetings by people from a myriad of different places. And I can confirm, the phenomenon is alive and well.

Let me tell you about the 3 worst PowerPoint crimes I’ve seen perpetrated during my period of awakening…

Crime 1: Powerpoint Reports

A report is a story of a situation with a beginning, a middle and an end. It often has findings and regularly capitulates with a set of recommendations and a conclusion. A report does not belong on a PowerPoint slide.

But oh, that’s so often where it’s found, isn’t it?