PowerPoint Training Week imageBruce Gabrielle is author of Speaking PowerPoint: the new language of business, which shows a 12-step process for creating clearer and more convincing PowerPoint presentations for the boardroom.

It's 2011, and we've seen an explosion in PowerPoint use over the past decade. Not only for large-audience presentations, but increasingly as business documents used to collaborate with teammates and drive company strategy.

But the capabilities of PowerPoint keep rushing ahead of the available training. Although more and more people are using PowerPoint, few of them use it well, or as well as they need to.

As an example, I once worked at a company where a director-level employee was responsible for coordinating his marketing plan across several teams. His plan, documented in PowerPoint, was so incoherently written I had no idea what he was doing, or what I was supposed to do to align with him. So I did what thousands of people across the world do every day -- I quietly deleted his email and did something else.

Poor PowerPoint communication skills are serious business. Poor skills make it hard to communicate your plans internally, collaborate with teammates, and sell your ideas to peers and customers.

That's why I propose, for 2011, that businesses make a wise investment by planning a company-wide PowerPoint Training Week.

During PowerPoint Training Week, businesses can do the following:

  1. Send an email encouraging every employee to visit the Office.com website and spend some time learning the basics of the software:
  2. Purchase or borrow a book on the proper use of PowerPoint for internal business communication. For business managers, I recommend any of the following:
  3. Poll your employees and ask them how many hours per week they spend creating PowerPoint slides. Now divide that number in half. Training helps people cut in half the amount of time they need to complete PowerPoint decks, based on my experience as a workshop leader.
  4. Meet with your training department and, with your wasted hours estimates in hand, decide where on the priority list it goes to solve this communication problem.
  5. Conduct a pilot. Hire a trainer and train just one group in your company. Then observe how their communication improves and their time usage changes. All of the authors of the books mentioned in step 2 above also offer training workshops for business audiences. If your business is located in the Seattle area, I even offer a free one-hour workshop.

CEOs should not accept poor PowerPoint communication skills as the norm, just as they don't tolerate poor customer service, crackling phone lines, or slipshod sales staff. If you think "death by PowerPoint" is just a nuisance, think again. It's a slow erosion of profit, morale, and competitive position.

So, plan for PowerPoint Training Week in 2011.

Bruce Gabrielle

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