Let's just talk about your business...

There is a famous story that Lou Gerstner, former president of IBM, tells in his book Who Says Elephants Can't Dance: Inside IBM's Historic Turn-around (2002) that illustrates one of the many reasons why we are creating SlideStacks:

One of the first meetings I asked for was a briefing on the state of the (mainframe computer) business.  I remember at least two things about that first meeting with Nick Donofrio who was then running the System/390 business....

At that time, the standard format of any important IBM meeting was a presentation using overhead projectors and graphics that IBMers called 'foils' (projected transparencies).  Nick was on his second foil when I stepped to the table and, as politely as I could in front of his team, switched off the projector.  After a long moment of awkward silence, I simply said: "Let's just talk about your business."

I mention this episode because it had an unintended, but terribly powerful ripple effect.  By that afternoon an email about my hitting the Off button on the overhead projector was crisscrossing the world.  Talk about consternation!  It was as if the President of the United States had banned the use of English at White House meetings.

Even though this story is a little dated (mainframes, anyone?), the obvious moral is that many of us have become too reliant on presentation materials rather than conversation to communicate information.  In my view, the bigger problem is that while many of us are aware of this problem, workplace norms still dictate that we gather in a physical or virtual meeting room and become drones to a presentation.  This is not to say that slides and visuals should be stricken from the workplace, to the contrary visuals certainly have their place and can be extremely effective communication tools when used properly, but rather we should be using supporting documents for exactly that, support.  In other words, we should put the conversation first, find out what the most important topics are to the group, and spend our time in those areas (using documents, slides, and visuals to support and enhance the discussion) to get our points across in a useful and memorable way.


~Marc