I really despise slide decks. I recently dug into this thought more and learned something about myself that makes PowerPoint much less painful.
By asking myself why, I learned I don’t like decks because I don’t like creating slides (shout out to the pretty slide building crew…I had a boss once who made it look like magic). I also don’t like decks because I don’t like presenter mode in meetings. If a presenter is giving a talk to an audience, it’s fine but for a 3 to 8 person meeting presenter mode creates a boring one way conversation whether I’m leading or participating. This is partly why the Amazon memo has an appeal: to create two way conversations on a business topic.
I am a writer at heart and enjoy writing over decks but the reality is I need to use decks at times.
Becoming aware of these two reasons has given me some freedom when I need to make decks. I avoid striving for perfection and just try to get my points across in slide format. I do some tweaking to titles but avoid perfecting the aesthetic of them. I haven’t played around with any AI tools for decks building yet.
I also never user presenter mode. I believe this creates the two way conversation a memo does since we can jump around to slides from the deck that fit discussion points.
If you have tips for creating and using decks effectively for pizza team size meetings, I’d love to hear them.