Is a post-PowerPoint world possible? – Marketplace

It’s 2024, but an almost 40-year-old software program still dominates corporate culture: PowerPoint. We suspect that you’ve sat in a meeting that very easily could have been an email instead of that 20-slide presentation. But despite the public disdain for decks, they still reign supreme.

Even billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos long ago grew tired of the practice. Matt Alston, himself a hater of useless meetings, recently documented PowerPoint’s grizzled corporate dominance for Business Insider.

Alston joined “Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal for a conversation about why PowerPoints remain so prominent at meetings yet so loathed by their attendees. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: I’ve been to too many PowerPoint presentations. How did it come to pass that we are now living in the tyranny of PowerPoint?

Matt Alston: It is a software that, for I think almost 30 years, has come with every personal, home and business computer. It’s become the standard mode of person-made presentation. Any single person has a software that makes it very easy for them to create a six-, eight-, or sometimes 40- or 50-slide presentation. It was designed to get rid of presentation jitters, and instead it’s just sort of made bloated presenters of us all.

Ryssdal: I get the jitters thing because it kind of does make sense, but look, one hates to give Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and bajillionaires too much credit for anything right now, but it does seem that they’re on to something in trying to get rid of PowerPoint as a, as a kind of a crutch, right?

Alston: They’re not wrong. The difference between them and the rest of us is that when they get annoyed with something, they have more power to make it go away. You and I have both sat in those presentations and been like, “I just wish my boss would say, shouldn’t this be an email, or shouldn’t this be, you know, something else?” Well, in 2004, Jeff Bezos had that response and turned to people he worked with and said, “Is there some way to make this go away?” And they said, “Yes, there is.”

Ryssdal: I don’t even know what to say, but here’s the actual next question. So why? Obviously, it’s useful, but it has now been abused. Why do you suppose that we’re all still stuck? Is it middle managers not having the courage to say cut it out or don’t do that anymore?

Alston: I think that because it’s easy to use, because it turns conversation into presentation and because it’s low-density, you don’t have to put all of the information. I think that PowerPoints and presentation tools often appeal to two specific types of vices: either the very, very, very overprepared or the badly underprepared. But being in the room for either type of presentation stinks. If you’re a bad presenter, it can help you. If you’re a good presenter, it’s not a crutch you need.

Ryssdal: Right there is why we’re having this conversation, right? And that’s why we’ve all been in those PowerPoint presentations. Is there a substitute? I mean, PowerPoint’s not going away anytime soon.

Alston: PowerPoint isn’t going away. Bezos, at Amazon, and many of his sort of NFL coaching tree of VPs and now CEOs who’ve worked under him swear by the Amazon six-pager. It’s a memo, and there’s no specific format. You sit down, you write what the business problem is, and everyone has to read it before. Some companies even have silent reading time at the beginning of meetings where you digest everything, and then you address the question or the single order of business. Lots of CEOs like that.

Ryssdal: Where are you on the spectrum? Are you one of those users who kind of slaps a sentence on seven different things and wings it? Or do you overstuff?

Alston: I like pictures. I like the TED Talk. A writer who likes pictures. The right question to ask is, not what is the correct PowerPoint use for this presentation, but should PowerPoint be used at all? And if I’m being forced to use it, I’m going to embrace the low-density quality. Each slide can only contain one thing. Well, then it might contain a “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip or a one-liner or a quote because, like you said, when the person is reading what’s on the page that you’re looking at, you know you’re headed for the edge of the waterfall.