I know a lot of people who have made their way up the corporate ladder through the power of PowerPoint slides. It ain’t difficult to throw in big numbers, powerful & promising visions sprinkled with colorful fadeaways. Sadly, most of these presentations remain as PowerPoint slides and if ever they become a reality they almost always fall short of the PowerPoint slides earlier presented.
I once heard a client executive who couldn’t contain himself and tell everyone in the crowd that the PowerPoint presentation was amazing but it was the same presentation given to him a year ago (dates updated & a little brush up here and there) were none of it materialized. He went on saying that until he see a software demo, everything presented to him were all “vaporware”.
I couldn’t agree more. Executives and companies are taking notice, as such, Demo & Finovate, tech conferences, have banned boring presentations and have opted for fast-paced product demos. YEAH. Finovate CEO Eric Mattson has this to say: “It’s not about bullet points or the company, but what have they built? If you show your product to us, and we go, Wow, we can grasp that in seven minutes, and we want that, then the customers will want it too.”
While I do not expect to see executives dishing PowerPoint slides, because for most of them, its the only skill they have, I want to see them spending 10% of the time on slides and the remaining 90% on what have they actually produced.
Executives can go on yapping on the thousands of hours of training conducted, the ton loads of certifications they have, but in the end “what have they built?” as a result of these trainings and certifications? An html page? An html product page? Or a patent worthy software application that could benefit people leaps and bounds? Where is the product? Show us the product! Enough with the slides.
The PowerPoint "Vaporware" Crap
