A Rant About Powerpoints
As I mentioned early last month, I spoke at the Industry Week Best Plants Conference here in Cleveland. It was a nicely done conference overall. IW does a bang-up job putting on a conference, IMHO.
My co-speaker, Pete Accorti, President of Talan Products, and I got free registration to the entire conference proceedings. That' unusual in the world of "speaking for free at conferences" and I very much appreciated the consideration. (I once spoke at a one-day conference put on by IEEE down in Atlanta that wouldn't even feed me lunch!)
I didn't go on any of the plant tours on Monday but did attend a variety of session on Tuesday and after our own presentation on Wednesday.
As you might imagine, reports on lean implementations were the order of the day. I'll tell you the truth, I don't remember many particulars from the sessions I attended (although a presentation on 5S by my old friend Fletcher Birmingham and a client of his was especially informative) but I do have some general impressions.
Powerpoint has been around since the late '80's, according to Wiki. I remember a boss of mine using it in the early '90's. So, the software is 20 years old...and almost nobody knows how to use it. I saw presentations by folks from big companies that, I'm sure, were put together by folks who ought to know better (as contrasted to, say, some poor lean champion putting a few slides together late at night) that were, in a word, terrible. Rather, it wasn't the presentation that was terrible so much as it was poor Powerpoint development and use.
You can probably brainstorm the litany of Powerpoint abuses yourself:
And, of course, the big enchilada of all PowerPoint boo-boos:
TOO MUCH STUFF ON ONE SLIDE!!!!
Lest I be accused of bashing others without making myself available for similar bashing, I've attached the slide for our presentation to this post. (You'll see that a couple of them get close to being guilty of the same things I complain about above...but just a couple.) Anyway, maybe you'd just like to see our presentation. Here it is:
IW Conference Presentation on Talan Products
OK, I got a bit off topic with that PowerPoint rant. (But, lest you think I'm alone in my ire, check this article out. Even the military is starting to recognize the shortcomings of "death by PowerPoint".)
There was another theme I got from the conference: Lean implementation in big companies is very different from implementations in small companies. I'm going to address that in my next post. And, I promise, it won't appear two months from now!
My co-speaker, Pete Accorti, President of Talan Products, and I got free registration to the entire conference proceedings. That' unusual in the world of "speaking for free at conferences" and I very much appreciated the consideration. (I once spoke at a one-day conference put on by IEEE down in Atlanta that wouldn't even feed me lunch!)
I didn't go on any of the plant tours on Monday but did attend a variety of session on Tuesday and after our own presentation on Wednesday.
As you might imagine, reports on lean implementations were the order of the day. I'll tell you the truth, I don't remember many particulars from the sessions I attended (although a presentation on 5S by my old friend Fletcher Birmingham and a client of his was especially informative) but I do have some general impressions.
Powerpoint has been around since the late '80's, according to Wiki. I remember a boss of mine using it in the early '90's. So, the software is 20 years old...and almost nobody knows how to use it. I saw presentations by folks from big companies that, I'm sure, were put together by folks who ought to know better (as contrasted to, say, some poor lean champion putting a few slides together late at night) that were, in a word, terrible. Rather, it wasn't the presentation that was terrible so much as it was poor Powerpoint development and use.
You can probably brainstorm the litany of Powerpoint abuses yourself:
- Too many slides,
- Slides that don't really say anything or move the "plot" along (Hint to presenters: You only need ONE slide to tell about your company unless what you make or do is so esoteric that you need ONE MORE to explain it.)
- Slides that just plain can't be read, even by folks in the front row,
- Reading from slides (as if I couldn't read the darn thing myself),
- Slides with information that the speaker doesn't address,
And, of course, the big enchilada of all PowerPoint boo-boos:
TOO MUCH STUFF ON ONE SLIDE!!!!
Lest I be accused of bashing others without making myself available for similar bashing, I've attached the slide for our presentation to this post. (You'll see that a couple of them get close to being guilty of the same things I complain about above...but just a couple.) Anyway, maybe you'd just like to see our presentation. Here it is:
IW Conference Presentation on Talan Products
OK, I got a bit off topic with that PowerPoint rant. (But, lest you think I'm alone in my ire, check this article out. Even the military is starting to recognize the shortcomings of "death by PowerPoint".)
There was another theme I got from the conference: Lean implementation in big companies is very different from implementations in small companies. I'm going to address that in my next post. And, I promise, it won't appear two months from now!
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