Steve Jobs didn’t like watching PowerPoint presentations at all. And it wasn’t because he hated the Microsoft tool, which he may have had, but he hated any kind of presentation. From some of its talks, it appears that it also includes Apple’s own presentation application, Keynote. He had reasons for this and the truth is that other great leaders have shown identical sentiments regarding these representations.
Some of these figures are, like Jobs, from other eras. They grew up in the working world, at a time when there weren’t even such quick and easy methods for creating digital presentations, although the reason wasn’t so much from being a CARC. He really had a common-sense explanation, even if it wasn’t applicable to all cases.
“People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”
This sentence was taken from the same authorized biography of Steve Jobs written by Walter Isaacson. This is basically the reason which supports the to hate Jobs created PowerPoint and all types of presentations in general. In the full context of the phrase, Jobs also states that “hate the way people use presentations instead of thinking”.
For one of Apple’s founders, the use of a digital presentation was not so much to support an idea to be explained, but rather to hide when the subject being discussed was not entirely clear. Jobs liked people to “engage and come alive around the table instead of showing a bunch of slides.”
In a way, he was right. Many of us have experienced hellish presentations at work, at university or in institutes. Maybe even ourselves, because in the end it’s a good method of support and even more so when we have certain uncertainties about expressing ourselves in public. However, in a high-level business setting like Apple meetings, finding people with these insecurities wasn’t so ideal. At least for those who had to be convinced, like Jobs.
An example of what Steve Jobs thought was a good use of presentations: showing little text or images, but enough to emphasize a fact or idea.
It is also practical to differentiate certain presentations. It is convenient to add certain product images, graphics or provide document attachments to participants. in many cases, when this support is strictly necessary. The idea of Jobs and other CEOs was not to end these presentations completely, but to prevent these meetings from turning into real meetings with a person who calls the shots and spends his time reading a text which he wrote on a paper. slide. .
“It’s more complicated to make a presentation with four slides than with twenty”
And we’re talking about something common to other top managers because the former CEO of Apple is not the only one to be unhappy with this type of presentation. One of the best explained is Jeff Bezos. As INC reports, the former Amazon CEO shows how The key is knowing how to summarize ideas, for which he specifies that “it is more complicated to make a PowerPoint with four slides than one with twenty”. Condensing information and making it clear and entertaining is something that should always be strived for.
The one who was CEO of Twitter before Elon Musk arrived thinks the same thing, Jack Dorsey. He advocates ingenuity and creativity when you have a truly new idea, recommending “getting out of Keynote and PowerPoint” and “starting building it and showing it to people.”
Precisely on the PowerPoint side, that of Microsoft, there was Steve Ballmer, former CEO of the multinational. Ballmer once said that You prefer to have the materials sent to you in advance in order to attend the meeting with full knowledge of the facts and whoever has to present the idea to you does so out loud without having to continually resort to a slide show.
So even though we are talking about higher levels of management, the truth is that these thoughts They can perfectly be applied to other areas. The idea promoted by Jobs and the company of streamlining the process is the best thing that can be done, because it is positive for all parties. On the one hand, it helps the presenter to convey his ideas better, leaving the feeling that he really knows what he is talking about. On the other hand, and perhaps more importantly, you get your ideas across to your listeners and keep them from being bored out of their minds.
Cover image | Freepik, Wired and Wikipedia
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