I often receive the comment when I train corporate or organizational groups that they are required to use the company PowerPoint template and styles. Some are even forced to deliver a canned PowerPoint deck as is. Invariably, these are dreadful creations — dumbed-down and loaded with slide after slide of endless bullets and text, built on the blandest of templates.

Sound familiar? If you are presented with this scenario, there is still much you can do. How would MacGyver* fix a bad PowerPoint presentation? A caution: please measure the usefulness of these ideas against the possibility of angering your higher-ups or the entrenched “we always do it this way” folks in your organization.

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.

A bad PowerPoint deck is a challenge to you to step up your game and become a better presenter. Strive to keep your audience’s best interests in the forefront. If you can pull it off you will be their PowerPoint superhero.

*MacGyver is an American television series about a secret agent, Agnus MacGyver, who could get out of any difficult situation with a paperclip, some bubble gum and the lint from inside his sock. As bad as some PowerPoint presentations can be, he would certainly be resourceful enough to figure a workaround.

Next week: What to do if you can change a few things in a bad PowerPoint presentation.

I often receive the comment when I train corporate or organizational groups that they are required to use the company PowerPoint template and styles. Some are even forced to deliver a canned PowerPoint deck as is. Invariably, these are dreadful creations — dumbed-down and loaded with slide after slide of endless bullets and text, built on the blandest of templates.

Sound familiar? If you are presented with this scenario, there is still much you can do. How would MacGyver* fix a bad PowerPoint presentation? A caution: please measure the usefulness of these ideas against the possibility of angering your higher-ups or the entrenched “we always do it this way” folks in your organization.

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.

A bad PowerPoint deck is a challenge to you to step up your game and become a better presenter. Strive to keep your audience’s best interests in the forefront. If you can pull it off you will be their PowerPoint superhero.

*MacGyver is an American television series about a secret agent, Agnus MacGyver, who could get out of any difficult situation with a paperclip, some bubble gum and the lint from inside his sock. As bad as some PowerPoint presentations can be, he would certainly be resourceful enough to figure a workaround.

Next week: What to do if you can change a few things in a bad PowerPoint presentation.

In today’s ultra-competitive business environment which is riskier: doing what everyone else does with bullet-filled, read-from-the-screen presentations or stepping up, being brave and creating a presentation that engages and connects? I would certainly argue the latter.

Communication is a critical skill in business success and we all know that little communication happens in the normal PowerPoint presentation. If you and your organization are to stand out from the tedious masses then get the bulk of your text off the screen, show your audience the meaning behind the numbers instead of displaying bloated tables and use powerful, clear images to tell your unique story.

You will be the one in a hundred or maybe even a million who connects and inspires.

It doesn’t matter whether we use PowerPoint or not, we all have an unprecedented opportunity to stand out in a very noisy world — through presentations. Being able to step up and speak confidently and meaningfully to others is a defining characteristic of top-tier leaders.

Today, there is an ever increasing emphasis on technologically advanced but disconnected modes of communications. This creates an opportunity for live face-to-face communications — either one-to-one or one-to-many — that will create powerful human connection. That is the Presentation Revolution.

The individual, executive or expert who will extend themselves into the world of public speaking will have a quantum advantage over those who will not.

Your opportunity is waiting.

Imagine the typical slide deck with 20 or 50 or 70 text-filled slides. Some of them bullets, some just chock-full of text, maybe a few PowerPoint generated charts and graphs — all displayed on the same bland, mind-numbing template. Where do you begin the process of rebuilding? How do you start opening the presentation up, making it more engaging, viewer-friendly and less boring?

One way to reboot this snooze-fest is to add some interest with transition slides. Transition slides signal you are moving from one subject area to the next. Adding these slides won’t immediately require you to rework your content (you may want to do that later as you upgrade your entire presentation) but you can add an interesting generic image, some color and possibly a visual change of pace to the long progression of text slides. This could be especially helpful if you are locked into a template that makes each slide visually identical except for different text.

Now with some dramatically different transition slides in place every 5, 10 or 15 minutes, you have begun to break up the long dreadful march of almost identical visuals. Your audience will thank you for it.