Watanabe vs. Gates in the PowerPoint Arena

I just wanted to give Garr Reynolds from Presentation Zen credit for this one. He tracked down an article (in Japanese) by Mr. Watanabe, CEO of Toyota that cites him berating the use of PowerPoint. Apparently the old A3 has turned into pages and pages of A4.

“Watanabe said that (in the good old days?) they used to use one piece of paper to make a clear point or proposal, or to summarize an issue, but now everything is in PowerPoint, he says, which uses many sheets of paper and expensive colors...but it's a waste.”

Finally, somebody at the top has noticed these wasteful presentations that are getting shoved down our throats. I wish my CEO would make a similar comment. I can’t even count how many meetings I’ve been in where the use of an A3 would have cut the meeting time in half or eliminated the need for it at all.

Reynolds goes on to clarify Watanabe’s statements:

“The CEO is not saying that PowerPoint is necessarily harmful (he does not mention its use for actual presentations), but he is saying printed "documents" made with the presentation tool tend to have less content, less clarity, and yet use more paper/ink and take more time.”

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. But I think the bigger issue is that PowerPoint has destroyed the critical thinking skill of synthesizing information to make it accurate and concise. This is one of the more powerful components of the A3 process. With PowerPoint you can throw every piece of information attained into the slide deck and if that gets crowded just build a section called “Backup” and throw it in there.

Rant over for now.

Comments

[Peter Risager]

Interestingly, just this morning I read an article that focused on Jeffrey Liker's visit to Denmark recently. The Danish company Radiometer, a subsidiary of Danaher, had booked 50 seats at a presentation he gave. In relations to Radiometer the artcile said that they had banned presentations outright in the company. So maybe it isn't just mr. Watanabe.

[Tony]

If you're interested in presenting information, check out Edward Tufte's books ( http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/ ). I've read the first three; I don't agree with everything, but they are definitely worth reading and reflecting on.

[Mark Graban]

Did Liker use PPT when he addressed the Danish company, I wonder?

[Dave Howell]

Our research team has been experimenting with using pecha-kucha format (see http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/magazine/15-09/st_pechakucha) for Powerpoint presentations. It works really well, and for much the same reason as A3 does: when you only get restricted slides, only 3 sentences or so per slide, no scope for slippage, and your audience doesn't have much time to read your slides, it forces you to think seriously about what you need to (as opposed to want to) say and how you can visually reinforce that.

Not a substitute for A3 in information density though, nor in ability to force the reader to think not just listen. But there are some situations where it's not practical to require the audience to do the upfront work that absorbing an A3 requires - presentations have their place in these situations.