Too often, PowerPoint serves as a crutch or poor substitute for speaker’s notes. We’ve all been through the painful hour of a dry speaker that reads each bullet point from his or her slide verbatim. Before double-clicking the PowerPoint icon, ask yourself a couple of questions:

• If all you are doing is sending out a list of bullets and information around some topic, do you really need a full-scale meeting and presentation? Is a summary document followed by a group discussion enough?
• PowerPoint and a speaker are a situation where 1 + 1 should equal three or more. Ask yourself what additional value PowerPoint will bring to the table in this particular situation. Are there compelling visuals or complex diagrams that can only be conveyed on the “big screen,” or are you just using PowerPoint “because everyone else does?” If you plus PowerPoint equals an even more tedious and boring presentation, leave the slides at home.

Presenting without PowerPoint is actually quite liberating, and will interest your audience immediately due to the simple fact it is so rare in a corporate environment. If you must use PowerPoint, make sure the slides augment and build interest in your talk. I like to use humor or a fun theme that keeps people interested. For example I’ve abandoned boring corporate templates and used clipart from the movie “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” to present around cost-benefit analysis, complete with cheeky movie sound effects. At the end of the day, unless PowerPoint adds to your presentation, follow Nancy Reagan’s advice and “just say no.”

I was recently asked about some of my favorite examples of “office BS:” those impressive-sounding but ultimately meaningless words and phrases causally dropped in boardrooms and corporate hallways around the globe.

Some of my “favorites” include:

• “Managing Expectations” roughly translated to: “tell people why what we’re going to give them will suck, but convince them it’s what they really wanted in the first place.”
• Adding the prefix “re” when not appropriate. I’ve frequently heard that something needs to be “replaned,” but nearly fell over when someone suggested “rereplanning” a project.
• Then there’s the whole syndrome of turning people into machines, from suggesting a conversation be taken “Offline” (I wasn’t aware a meeting or conversation was an “online” experience) to asking someone to “ping you” (how will sending a network test packet accomplish anything) and incessantly asking about “bandwidth.” While many people I’ve worked with occasionally act like androids, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and not use machine-related terms when dealing with them.

I think the reason this kind of stuff is accepted in the corporate world is that there’s almost a “thieves code” in operation: I’ll use words that sound important but make no actual sense, and give you the same privilege if you don’t call me on it. While I would not suggest calling someone out every time they use “office BS,” it is easy to stand out among the crowd by speaking clearly, concisely and not throwing around the equivalent of a verbal truckload of manure when talking with colleagues. People appreciate concise and honest speech, and you will make a far more positive impression than being the first person in the office to suggest “A 360 degree paradigm shifting blue ocean strategy that will add right-sized value to our corporate DNA.”