Last week we discussed what steps you could take if you had to deliver a presentation from a really bad PowerPoint deck. A deck that you were not permitted (under penalty of death) to change. You can review those suggestions at the end of this post if you wish.
But what if you are allowed to make some changes but must keep the overall look? This usually means you have to stick fairly close to the corporate template. In this case there are a lot of options.
What to do if you can change a few things in a bad PowerPoint presentation:
- First, consider the ideas for dealing with an unchangeable slide deck at the bottom of this post.
- Add color. Often corporate decks are bland with little color.
- Create a rich, colorful opening slide, maybe a strong full-slide photo.
- Use colorful, appropriate slides for transitions between different sections of your talk.
- Insert colorful slides as a setup or a background for your stories.
- Reduce sentences and paragraphs to keywords
- Add additional slides after complex charts, graphs and data sets that translate and distill the information.
- Add “quote” slides that help break up the progression of template slides — maybe with images of the person you are quoting.
- Use big bold images wherever possible. Fill as much of the slide real estate as you can for that big impact.
- Use people images where appropriate. Your audience will connect with photos of their same species.
From my last post:
If you can’t change anything and are required to deliver a pre-built but weak slide deck.
- Determine what content is critical to your audience and what isn’t.
- Introduce with a discussion of what to watch for and what to ignore.
- Likewise, debrief and discuss the important areas and minimize what wasn’t important.
- Whatever you do, don’t read slides word for word. Paraphrase. Try reading the first few words and let them read the rest. Just don’t read everything to them.
- Use a little humor. Make fun of your terrible PowerPoint deck. (careful here — don’t get fired!)
- Use your remote (or press the “B” key) to black out the screen to pause and interject your comments, have a discussion, switch to other media, etc.
- Use the blackout key to tell a story about your organization and its employees or clients.
- Use collateral pieces, white papers, handouts, etc.
- Be willing to try anything to break up the boredom, lift the energy and help the audience focus on the important material.
Don’t let bad PowerPoint hijack your message. Keep your audience’s best interests in mind and deliver a presentation that goes beyond those lousy slides.
*MacGyver is an American television series about a secret agent, Agnus MacGyver, who could get out of any difficult situation with a paperclip, some hair gel and a few discarded toenail clippings. As bad as some PowerPoint presentations can be, he would certainly be resourceful enough to figure a workaround.
