I believe it was Socrates who said “Even a fool can give a good PowerPoint presentation but it is only a truly wise person who can lead a group of people to think creatively and make decisions effectively and efficiently.” At the risk of being deliberatively provocative, I maintain that this accounts for the prevalence of PowerPoint based meetings.
From childhood, though we may fear standing up in front of people, we are trained to present our ideas. We do it in school with the essays and papers we write, the science projects we – with that little bit of help from our parents – assemble and the tests we take. With that desire in all of us to produce beautiful things, by the time we enter the workforce we’re primed for the task of creating PowerPoint presentations.
How many of us, however, were taught how to bring a group of people together for a purpose, structure a meeting agenda, start with a discussion to draw out the best and most innovative ideas from the group, keep people focused and lead them to efficiently develop and prioritize those ideas, build consensus around the best ones and end with a decision or implementation plan?
