Powerpoint Poisoning- Killing Creativity

I read an interesting article* about ‘what kills meetings’ – why meetings became unproductive and boring.   One of the symptoms was ‘lack of engagement’; people either took no part, or became hostile to the process.

It turned out that the main factor was the use of Powerpoint presentations.  This is because they imposed too much structure.  They provided a ‘fait accomplis’, in which people were either not required to participate, or had not been given a chance to contribute.  The people were either indifferent or energised for the wrong reasons.

This is not dissimilar to what can happen when people are supposed to be creative, they don’t want to sound foolish – they are used to coming up with sensible, logical ideas, not ridiculous ones and they dismiss the process and do not engage.

What particularly interested me was that one of the ways for overcoming this was the use of questions.  Questions energise.  People cannot resist reacting to a question (it is the reason why quiz shows have been so popular since the beginning of television).  When somebody asks a question in a meeting, people are being asked to contribute – it engages people and the meeting becomes more interactive.

Think about it, in a presentation, all you are required to do is listen, you want people to think and the best way to make people think is to question.

 But, as the article notes, this can be a source of uncertainty – you never quite know where it will take you.

Powerpoint presentations are great if you want to explain something, but should play no part in complex problem solving.  If you have a problem to solve, then one of the ground rules should be
- no Powerpoint presentations.

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/04/the-1-killer-of-meetings-and-w.html