Serious question, has anyone else been told their presentation slides are a 'data dump'?

My boss in Chicago flat out said 'I can't follow this' about a 40-slide deck last quarter, so I cut it to 10 and now only show one core number per slide.

3 comments

3 Comments

evanpalmer6d ago

My old boss in Denver called my 80 slide deck a "war crime." Now I treat each slide like a billboard on the highway. If you need more than three seconds to get the point, you've already crashed. Cutting down to one number per slide is the only way some people can process information.

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seanfisher6d ago

How many slides did it take before you realized @evanpalmer was right? I once had a chart so bad it made people's eyes glaze over.

betty_shah6d ago

Hold up, that one number per slide rule is crazy limiting though. People aren't that dumb, they can handle a chart with two lines on it. If you cut everything down to just one stat, you lose all the context and the actual story. Sometimes you need to show the relationship between things, not just shout single numbers. Evan's boss probably hated 80 slides because they were poorly made, not because slides are bad. Treating adults like they have the attention span of a goldfish just makes the whole meeting feel pointless.