Page 114 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

THE POWERPOINT PARADOX 105

rent economic fundamentals do not support sustainable growth, and
that a recession could arrive before the end of the year.”
Now let’s look at which pictures actually go on the screen.
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On average, you probably want to use no more than seven or eight
slides—not including the logo/name “bookend” slides we talked
about a minute ago for top and bottom.
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I’m talking here about the cream in the Oreo.
If you happen to be a CEO, you might even want to forget about
slides altogether, because the higher you go in an organization, the
less value you derive from visual aids (providing, as I say, that you
know the rules of the game). With rare exceptions, leaders should
never rely on slide shows. They should leave the PowerPoint to sub-
ordinates and rely exclusively on the stand-alone horsepower of the
POWER formula, unembellished with visual assists of any kind.
But others in the C-suite, such as the chief investment offi cer, chief
fi nancial officer, chief technology officer, and chief operating offi cer,

could probably benefit from PowerPoint—providing only that it is

applied sparingly, thoughtfully, and in keeping with the guidance
in this chapter.
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The more you rely on slides, the less likely you will come
across as a leader.
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If you plan to use visual aids, your objective should be clear: each
slide must make a signifi cant business point to support the theme
(projection, change, trend, solution). Any slide that provides any
kind of extraneous information or data, such as columns of numbers