BizClarity

It happens alot.  I’m working with a new client, seeing their presentation for the first time.  And it’s terrible.  I see one ridiculously crammed slide after another, small fonts, tiny images.  When I point out the problem and launch into my spiel about the advantages of putting less on each slide, the entrepreneur exclaims, “But how else can I get everything on 10 slides!  You know, the ten-slide rule!”

The ten-slide rule strikes again!

The ten-slide rule causes more agony, pain, and awful presentations then almost any other single idea.  To be fair, this little simple-minded rule is a part of a bigger wrong idea:  that the number of slides has anything to do with the quality or cogency of a presentation.

The ten-slide rule is an old idea, originating in the ’80’s and more recently perpetuated by Guy Kawasaki in his best-selling book for entrepreneurs, The Art of the Start (which I recommend, mostly).  I don’t disagree with Guy’s motivation–he’s fed up with long, cluttered, boring presentations.  He laid down the law to coax CEO’s of start-up companies to cut their presentations down to size.

The problem is, any rule that limits the number of slides assumes that all slides are equally dense with content.  It made sense ten years ago when all presentations were text slides in the title/bullet/sub-bullet format.  When investors count slides what they’re really saying is:  “Don’t show us more than ten slides dense with impossible to read, confusing crap so we can cut your presentation short and get on with the meeting.”

Here’s the truth:  the number of slides in a presentation is irrelevant! It doesn’t matter one dit if you have 10, 20, 50 or 100 slides in your presentation.  What does matter is how well the slides support your narrative.  And the pace of your ideas.  How long you speak and the level of detail.

And above all, your ability to engage the audience and lead them through your story.  Which is what good visual support does when done right.

Counting slides is a hallmark of what I call the “old school” style of presentation.  The new style, championed by people like Steve Jobs and young Keynote-using entrepreneuers, is sometimes referred to as the Presentation Zen style?  The name comes from the book by Garr Reynolds.  Presentation Zen is the future.  It emphasizes the use of high-res photos, large-scale text, and good design with lots and lots of white space.  With each slide focused on a single thought or image, each slide is displayed only ten or fifteen seconds on average.

While we’re at it, let’s forget the one-slide-per-minute rule.  It’s equally pointless.

Counting slides is really a silly idea, if you think about it.  When in the audience, we don’t count the frames in a movie, or the number of edits in a TV commercial, or the number of paragraphs in a magazine article.  Counting slides is on the same level–a technical metric that, by itself, has nothing to do with the effect on the audience.

Where did this idea of counting slides come from?  In the old days, PowerPoint was almost all text.  Slides were a novelty and audiences were impressed.  Then speakers discovered how easy it was to put their entire script up on the screen and used slides as a teleprompter crutch–audience be damned.  Then slides are forced into double-duty as stand-alone documents, formatted to be printed out and sent as email attachments.  Although it was obvious that text slides were frustrating and boring audiences, nobody questioned it because everybody did it.

But now, in 2009, people are beginning to revolt against boring presentations.  There’s no excuse not to use lots of high-res photos on lots of slides or wield total design control over text.  Thanks to the Internet and fast computers, it’s easy to pick just the right image from millions of high-quality stock photos and work them into the slides.  With high bandwidth and cheap storage, the size of the .ppt or .key file is a non issue.

The number of slides in a presentation is irrelevant. The ten slide rule, along with it’s cousin the one-slide-per-minute rule, should be erased from every book, presentation guideline, and memory.

Do your part.  From now on, don’t count slides.  Don’t create slides to print out.  Explain patiently to other people who still do why they should change their ways.  From this day on you are liberated: you are free to do anything you want with the images and text you use to make your words and ideas memorable.

You will be a better presenter.

Your audiences will thank you.