If I had a nickel for every…

…for every presentation I’ve seen/created/slept through — I’d have a lot of nickels to lug the bank!

It’s early Sunday morning, on my way to the airport to pick someone up, no traffic, beautiful, sunny morning, and somehow my mind starts thinking about presentations!

Probably, the last thing I wanted to think about, but then here I am.

The best presentations I’ve seen were those created by the Japanese. Why? Because they use a lot of graphics to convey their message. Why? Maybe because the Japanese language uses Kanji , which are ideographic symbols. Their written script uses graphics to represent ideas or concepts — and I believe they’ve carried this over to presentations.

Presentations are meant to be ideographic. As they say images (the presentation graphics) are worth a thousand words. While the presenter is verbally communicating to the audience, the graphics are visually communicating.

This 1–2 punch (verbal communication + visual communication) is the best method to get your audience to understand what you want to them to understand.

And that’s why you shouldn’t — never, never, never-overload presentations with text. English text is not ideographic and the audience will focus on reading the text rather than listening to you. They likely won’t get your message and your meeting will have been a failure.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-text everywhere, just anti-text for presentations. I’m pro-text for instances where you have something complicated to explain — like a proposal. Word documents, organized like a book, with chapters, work great in such instances. Send your doc out ahead of time and then call a meeting to present it (using ideographics). This will give you the best shot at having your audience comprehend what you want to say.

According to this article, Jeff Bezos likes Word docs, doesn’t like presentations https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/amazon-jeff-bezos-powerpoint-meetings-how-to-think.html.

Some people don’t like to read, so I believe giving them a document to read isn’t enough. Following the document up with a presentation (light on words, heavy on graphics) is like wearing a belt and suspenders — if people don’t understand the Word doc, then you still have the presentation to communicate to them.

Good luck and remember — ideographics!