Toyoda Exec: Use PowerPoint Appropriately
From the consistently useful Presentation Zen, a story from Japan:
Note the Watanabe is not banning PowerPoint; he is rather encouraging employees to be intelligent and intentional about how they use their tools. PowerPoint is an appropriate tool for managing projected images to accompany a presentation. For clearly and concisely recording thoughts, however, it does a poor job relative to a one-page summary written in full sentences.
Garr sums up the issue:
The problem is that in Japan—like other places in the world—there is often no distinction made between documents (slideuments made in PowerPoint) and presentation slides prepared for projection. They are often interchangeable. Sounds efficient, right? And it would be funny if it was not so inefficient, wasteful, and unproductive. The slideuments produced in Japan make understanding and precision harder when printed.
