If everyone agrees that PowerPoint isn’t the right tool, why does nothing change?
Whenever I post about endless PowerPoint decks, the reaction is the same.
My most recent post reached 58,000 people in 24 hours. A similar one, just over a year ago, reached 108,000. The comments tell the story.
"This is us."
"I've been on that call."
"Thousands of slides, nothing changes."
There's some disagreement, but mostly people recognise it instantly. I post about plenty of other subjects. Nothing gets people going quite like long PowerPoints which raises an awkward question:
If so many of us agree, why do we keep walking past the problem?
Let me be clear: I have no problem with PowerPoint. Used well, it's a wonderful tool. But PowerPoint isn't communication, and it isn't transformation. This article is about the difference, and about what good communication of change actually looks like.
Start with what we're trying to do
I start every piece of work with one question: what are we trying to do? When it comes to communicating change, the answer is simple. We want a group of people who understand the change, feel energised by it, and can all explain, it in the same way. That last part matters most. A good vision can be summed up in a few bullet point and shared easily in conversation. It helps leaders tell the story of what the future holds, why it's needed and why it will be better than today. When people across the organisation tell that story in roughly the same words, the change has a chance. That's the test for any communication, slides or no slides. Did it spread the story? Covering everything isn't the test.
How the deck goes wrong
I first noticed the problem working with a bank. I'd asked what they were trying to achieve in one part of the business. In reply, I was sent pack after pack on strategy, strategic intent and proposition. Thousands of slides in total.
Each pack was well thought through. Length alone wasn't the problem. The problem was telling them apart. Did the second pack say something new? The same thing again? Was the thinking evolving? By the tenth or fifteenth pack, I genuinely couldn't tell whether we were converging or diverging.
Then a similar thing happened at a different client; five transformation teams sent me five packs, telling five different stories. Some overlaps, some difference, too much thinking work to spot which. The highlight came on a video call. A transformation lead wanted to show me the slide that summed it all up. He couldn't find it. There were too many slides. He didn't notice the irony. My colleague and I did.
I've seen the same pattern since at an insurer and at other big institutions. It usually goes like this:
A deck starts as a clear message.
Someone asks a question, so a slide is added.
Someone raises a concern, so an appendix is added.
A new stakeholder joins, so a section is added for them.
Then the best slides are selected, new ones included and a new version is born. And so it goes on.
In the end the deck is a filing cabinet. It's trying to be the pitch, the reference document, the FAQ and the audit trail all at once. Nobody can tell you what the one message was.
Why we can't stop
If the problem is this obvious, why do we keep doing it? I think it's because the deck does something for us.
It feels like work. Building slides takes effort, so a new pack feels like progress. More slides feel like more work, and better work.
It feels safe. A slide that answers a question feels safer than a conversation that could go anywhere. The deck protects the presenter more than it helps the audience.
It soothes anxiety. Change is uncertain. A finished deck is reassuring evidence that something is happening, even when nothing is.
It's a place to hide. In a big organisation, you can hide behind a slide pack for a very long time.
That's why banning slides doesn't work. Take the deck away and the anxiety it was soothing comes straight back. The answer is to replace it with something that does the job better.
Choose the right form for the job
PowerPoint isn't the problem. Bad PowerPoint is: one deck asked to do every job at once. Good communication starts by splitting the jobs and choosing the right form for each:
| The job | The best form | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| Energise people and share the story | A leader standing up and talking, face to face | People see that you believe it. One clear message they can repeat. |
| Share the detail | Clear, well-written words on a page | Everyone gets the same message at the same time, and can come back to it. |
| Build understanding | Conversation, Q&A, small groups | Questions get answered properly, and you hear what you'd otherwise miss. |
In our principles of successful transformation, we describe good communication as having three qualities:
Planned. Considered from the start, frequent, open and honest. The proliferating deck isn't planned. It grows one appendix at a time, in response to whoever asked last.
Multi-channel. Leaders give the key messages verbally and face to face. Writing makes sure everyone receives the same message at the same time. The deck tries to be both, and does neither well.
Two-way. Listen to the response, and be ready to change your approach. People affected by change often have better ideas about how to achieve it. A deck is one-way by design.
The same discipline applies to reporting and plans. A simple one-page report beats a forty-slide update. A programme on a page communicates more than a 500-line project plan. Our rule of thumb: if a plan is more than 100 lines, it's too long.
What good looks like: toy trucks and two screens
Some of the best change communication I've been part of was years ago, at Scottish Courage. I was in a PwC team implementing SAP across supply chain and distribution. We could have run a series of very dry presentations. Instead, we always tried to be creative.
Two screens, two jobs. Sometimes we ran two PowerPoint packs side by side. One told the story. The other carried the headlines, to give it structure.
A day in the life. We ran a series of workshops, more like public talks, where people role-played how the new world would work.
Playing the parts. In one session, people ‘acted’ the roles of planners, forecasters, warehouse people, and landlords. They experienced the change from each other's side.
Toy trucks. We used the little model trucks that suppliers hand out free at trade shows. We mocked up the distribution network and moved things around the room.
None of it was high-tech. Nowadays we’d call it immersive theatre. All of it was memorable, and interactive so people understood what was changing and why. And the PowerPoints? They were simply a historic record of what we'd talked about. The communication happened in the room.
Weaning yourself off the slides
I'll be honest: standing up without slides is hard. I've been trying to do more of it, and it's humbling. With a deck, the slides carry you. Without one, it's just you, the room, and whatever you've prepared.
You have to prepare far more, keep the messaging simple, and remember the details
You can't cover everything,
you can't go on too long, and
you can't hide behind detail.
That constraint is the gift. It forces you to decide what really matters and let the rest go. That's the discipline most decks let us avoid. The point of standing in front of people isn't to transfer information. It's to deliver a message, face to face, so they can see you believe it and you can inspire and energise. A slide can't do that for you. And the detail you couldn't fit in? Write it down, share it afterwards, and open it up for questions. Each one does a different job.
Communication isn't engagement
Even perfect communication has a limit. It can inform people. On its own, it can't win their hearts. Many people treat communication and engagement as the same thing. They're closely related, but they're not the same. Good communication helps build engagement. Engagement takes more. To truly engage people, leaders need to:
be visibly committed to the change, and see it through
be honest and transparent, including about the difficult bits
be visible, meeting the people affected regularly and in person
listen more than they tell
be willing to reshape plans in response to what they hear
People don't commit to change because they've read the slides. They commit because someone they trust has looked them in the eye, explained why, and listened to what they had to say. Engaged people are more likely to believe in the reasons for change, help shape it, and less likely to resist it.
So when a transformation stalls, don't ask for a better pack. Ask whether the people leading it have really been out there.
The test for your next pack
Next time you double-click the red icon, pause and ask three questions:
What are we trying to do with this deck?
Can everyone tell the story without the slides?
Is this the right form for the job, or would a conversation, a clear page of writing or a leader standing up do it better?
If people can't tell the story without the slides, another deck won't fix it. We all seem to agree on this. The real question is what's stopping us from doing something about it.
If you'd like help building this kind of communication capability in your own leaders and teams, get in touch.