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parkerpng's review
Bit gimmicky. I thought it might be one of those topics that are way more interesting than they have any right to be but I wasn’t really THAT invested in reading about PowerPoints. I’d took this on a long train journey and usually I’ll eat up whatever book’s in front of me… didn’t happen with this one.
jwsg's review
3.0
In this book, Russell Davies makes an impassioned defence of Powerpoint and how to make the best use of the software to capture your audience's attention and sway them. Davies acknowledges that PowerPoint is not the answer to everything. "Presentations and documents are not interchangeable. Sometimes you need the rigour and clarity of prose. And one of the downsides of PowerPoint's ubiquity is that people default to it. They will bash out some bullet points when they should be sitting, thinking and writing down a solid argument….Bad presentations are normally bad because they should have been documents. And vice versa. It's just that in a time-pressed modern organisation people don't have the space to do both well. So you end up with ugly hybrids….paragraphs of text on the screen, vast spreadsheets pasted into a document at a tiny size."
The most powerful insight from Davies' book for me was his calling out the disdain and contempt that senior leaders - from senior Whitehall mandarins to Jeff Bezos and Edward Tufte - have for PowerPoint as an exercise of power. Davies notes that "in many organisations, the more powerful you get, the less PowerPoint you do. Powerful people tend to receive presentations, not give them. And when they do give presentations, they probably won't do their own slides. Someone else will do that for them. Or, very often, they'll stand up and extemporise. Badly. Because no one can stop them." For senior leaders, they want to consume the content at their own pace, not at the presenter's. And so each time a senior leader instructs their people to just talk things through, they forget or ignore "how easy it is for them to do, and how hard it is for people without power to do the same." Davies argues that the problem isn't about Powerpoint per se, but may be because "the meeting has been designed solely to meet the informational requirements of one person, or one organisational caste."
For Davies, PowerPoint "creates access. If you're already in power and you got there by being confident, fluent and good at public speaking, then PowerPoint seems simultaneously trivial and threatening." The Whitehall example Davies cites would perhaps sound familiar to many bureaucrats:
"Whitehall culture was based on words, language and argument. They wrote papers and memoranda. Their meetings were discussions of papers that everyone was supposed to have read but which almost no one had. Those discussions were captured in notes, which were circulated but not read and eventually archived. Useful, difficult, decisions were never made because every shade of opinion could simply be added to the paper. Memoranda are infinite. You don't need to decide anything. You can just write it all down. The civil service lived in Word, in .doc."
Davies was working in Government Digital Services and he describes his team's culture as the polar opposite. "We, on the other hand, wanted to move quickly and decisively so we decided to work in .ppt. We kept our words very brief and very big. We set vey clear presentation rules. Fonts no smaller than 30pt. No more than six words a line. No acronyms. No clip art."
Davies does offer various pointers on how to become a more effective presenter. Most are fairly well-known but Davies presents them in a pithy and entertaining manner:
#1: Divide your presentation into three sections - the power of three is real e.g. What Won't Change; What Can Change; What Will Change. Or Story of Self; Story of Us; Story of Now. Or Where We've Been; Where We Are Now; Where We're Going.
#2: Make your words short, big and clear. Remove words like "key", "holistic", "evolve". This makes your arguments sharper, more coherent and creates alignment (cos people know what you mean).
#3: Make your pictures relevant, big and clear. Illustrate, don't decorate.
#4: Don't have many colours. Don't have many fonts.
#5: Don't start your working on your presentation with the beginning. Start by looking back from the destination and figuring out how you got there. Get your closing right.
#6: Make clear what you're asking for. Don't just do an update - frame it as an ask to be more effective.
#7: Use oratorical devices to make your presentation more memorable e.g. tricolons (the power of three again!), alliteration, rhythm (short, short, long)
#8: Write headlines for your slides, not headers.
#9: Think of your presentation as a series of posters
I also learned a bunch of new words in the process. Words like tricolon, molossus, and epizeuxis.
The most powerful insight from Davies' book for me was his calling out the disdain and contempt that senior leaders - from senior Whitehall mandarins to Jeff Bezos and Edward Tufte - have for PowerPoint as an exercise of power. Davies notes that "in many organisations, the more powerful you get, the less PowerPoint you do. Powerful people tend to receive presentations, not give them. And when they do give presentations, they probably won't do their own slides. Someone else will do that for them. Or, very often, they'll stand up and extemporise. Badly. Because no one can stop them." For senior leaders, they want to consume the content at their own pace, not at the presenter's. And so each time a senior leader instructs their people to just talk things through, they forget or ignore "how easy it is for them to do, and how hard it is for people without power to do the same." Davies argues that the problem isn't about Powerpoint per se, but may be because "the meeting has been designed solely to meet the informational requirements of one person, or one organisational caste."
For Davies, PowerPoint "creates access. If you're already in power and you got there by being confident, fluent and good at public speaking, then PowerPoint seems simultaneously trivial and threatening." The Whitehall example Davies cites would perhaps sound familiar to many bureaucrats:
"Whitehall culture was based on words, language and argument. They wrote papers and memoranda. Their meetings were discussions of papers that everyone was supposed to have read but which almost no one had. Those discussions were captured in notes, which were circulated but not read and eventually archived. Useful, difficult, decisions were never made because every shade of opinion could simply be added to the paper. Memoranda are infinite. You don't need to decide anything. You can just write it all down. The civil service lived in Word, in .doc."
Davies was working in Government Digital Services and he describes his team's culture as the polar opposite. "We, on the other hand, wanted to move quickly and decisively so we decided to work in .ppt. We kept our words very brief and very big. We set vey clear presentation rules. Fonts no smaller than 30pt. No more than six words a line. No acronyms. No clip art."
Davies does offer various pointers on how to become a more effective presenter. Most are fairly well-known but Davies presents them in a pithy and entertaining manner:
#1: Divide your presentation into three sections - the power of three is real e.g. What Won't Change; What Can Change; What Will Change. Or Story of Self; Story of Us; Story of Now. Or Where We've Been; Where We Are Now; Where We're Going.
#2: Make your words short, big and clear. Remove words like "key", "holistic", "evolve". This makes your arguments sharper, more coherent and creates alignment (cos people know what you mean).
#3: Make your pictures relevant, big and clear. Illustrate, don't decorate.
#4: Don't have many colours. Don't have many fonts.
#5: Don't start your working on your presentation with the beginning. Start by looking back from the destination and figuring out how you got there. Get your closing right.
#6: Make clear what you're asking for. Don't just do an update - frame it as an ask to be more effective.
#7: Use oratorical devices to make your presentation more memorable e.g. tricolons (the power of three again!), alliteration, rhythm (short, short, long)
#8: Write headlines for your slides, not headers.
#9: Think of your presentation as a series of posters
I also learned a bunch of new words in the process. Words like tricolon, molossus, and epizeuxis.
georginabrooke's review
3.0
TL;DR version of the book
Style over substance
Although I think it may make my ppts a bit better
Which may be a reflection on the shallower medium ppt is compared to a book.
I liked some bits about this book. Russell Davies is strong and interesting at telling his personal story on PowerPoint, how he rode the wave from acetate projectors into the actual development of PowerPoint. I knew nothing about Gaskins, the creator of PowerPoint and Russell's hints at the liberal, multi-disciplinary team he created to shape PowerPoint were interesting.
The book falls down as it spends a long time luxuriating in bad PowerPoint (military PowerPoint, conceptual art related to PowerPoint) but there's 0 examples of Russell's own PowerPoints. In fact the only 'good example' he cites is from Ella Fitzsimmons, who seems to have contributed the more interesting insights in the book.
Another problem I have is that RD seems to be debating within himself how much of a problem being a white cis straight man is. On the one hand he talks about Ella's conversation with him about how his techniques only really work for him in his position of prviliidge. But then he still goes on to give you an example opening of a presentation (stolen from someone else) of a 20th cenutry fox intro and then a pause and then a little hello. Sure that works if you can do that faux-modesty bit because your a straight white cis male. It doesn't work if you need to convince people you belong in the room. He seems to play the underdog at times (I'm less privilidged than some of the people who don't like PowerPoint!) but then still give you examples of presenting PowerPoints which only work if you are a straight white cis male.
The other thing I got from this book, which grates me with a lot of ad books, is it feels essentially a bit shallow. His ending is a case in point, he's made this big (and unoriginal) point about lists of threes, and ending early (I also think it's much harder to end early if you're not a rich, established white male, who can get away with it, if you're a young woman, people may just assume you didn't have enough material). So his last list of three is actually a list of two and the third item is haha there's nothing here - always finish early (Ha!). This sums up a broader issue I have with some ad books, it's a lot of style over substance, I think it's intended to come across as self referential, knowing and witty but I actually find it glib, lacking in actual material and entitled. Also not driven by the desire to impart knowledge and accessibility, but by the desire to come across clever.
That having been said, I did really like Ella Fitzsimmons example deck from GDS, in general I think all the GDS work is really strong and I did enjoy the anecdote about the first PPT presentation they delivered at No 10 Downing Street and one case study when I did effectively buy that he wasn't the most privileged person in the room and was helping to deliver real, meaningful change (although it also riled me that he mentioned Sarah Richards just once, who was the brains behind this work, by her maiden name - she now goes by Sarah Winters - and on the next page says "I am an irritating pedant". Maybe on the things that affect him.
I liked the idea of starting a ppt with a story and ending with an ask, I got the point about repeating key phrases throughout. I love the idea of storyboarding slides using small squares of paper and big pens (to stop you writing too much). The presentation ideas could improve my slide design.
Flawed, a little gratingly entitled / unconsciously ironic, but has some points.
Style over substance
Although I think it may make my ppts a bit better
Which may be a reflection on the shallower medium ppt is compared to a book.
I liked some bits about this book. Russell Davies is strong and interesting at telling his personal story on PowerPoint, how he rode the wave from acetate projectors into the actual development of PowerPoint. I knew nothing about Gaskins, the creator of PowerPoint and Russell's hints at the liberal, multi-disciplinary team he created to shape PowerPoint were interesting.
The book falls down as it spends a long time luxuriating in bad PowerPoint (military PowerPoint, conceptual art related to PowerPoint) but there's 0 examples of Russell's own PowerPoints. In fact the only 'good example' he cites is from Ella Fitzsimmons, who seems to have contributed the more interesting insights in the book.
Another problem I have is that RD seems to be debating within himself how much of a problem being a white cis straight man is. On the one hand he talks about Ella's conversation with him about how his techniques only really work for him in his position of prviliidge. But then he still goes on to give you an example opening of a presentation (stolen from someone else) of a 20th cenutry fox intro and then a pause and then a little hello. Sure that works if you can do that faux-modesty bit because your a straight white cis male. It doesn't work if you need to convince people you belong in the room. He seems to play the underdog at times (I'm less privilidged than some of the people who don't like PowerPoint!) but then still give you examples of presenting PowerPoints which only work if you are a straight white cis male.
The other thing I got from this book, which grates me with a lot of ad books, is it feels essentially a bit shallow. His ending is a case in point, he's made this big (and unoriginal) point about lists of threes, and ending early (I also think it's much harder to end early if you're not a rich, established white male, who can get away with it, if you're a young woman, people may just assume you didn't have enough material). So his last list of three is actually a list of two and the third item is haha there's nothing here - always finish early (Ha!). This sums up a broader issue I have with some ad books, it's a lot of style over substance, I think it's intended to come across as self referential, knowing and witty but I actually find it glib, lacking in actual material and entitled. Also not driven by the desire to impart knowledge and accessibility, but by the desire to come across clever.
That having been said, I did really like Ella Fitzsimmons example deck from GDS, in general I think all the GDS work is really strong and I did enjoy the anecdote about the first PPT presentation they delivered at No 10 Downing Street and one case study when I did effectively buy that he wasn't the most privileged person in the room and was helping to deliver real, meaningful change (although it also riled me that he mentioned Sarah Richards just once, who was the brains behind this work, by her maiden name - she now goes by Sarah Winters - and on the next page says "I am an irritating pedant". Maybe on the things that affect him.
I liked the idea of starting a ppt with a story and ending with an ask, I got the point about repeating key phrases throughout. I love the idea of storyboarding slides using small squares of paper and big pens (to stop you writing too much). The presentation ideas could improve my slide design.
Flawed, a little gratingly entitled / unconsciously ironic, but has some points.
d6y's review
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
I loathe PowerPoint (Keynote, and the ilk) yet love the creativity and fun of putting words and pictures together. This book suits me just fine.
It’s a light and engrossing history and philosophy of PowerPoint and the author: how it was used at GDS, how it's not a replacement for a long-form document, how it's good for diversity.
It then switches to a bag of ideas to help to make a great (or bad) presentation — which is useful, although not what I came for. But the first part alone is worth the price for me.
It’s a light and engrossing history and philosophy of PowerPoint and the author: how it was used at GDS, how it's not a replacement for a long-form document, how it's good for diversity.
It then switches to a bag of ideas to help to make a great (or bad) presentation — which is useful, although not what I came for. But the first part alone is worth the price for me.
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