Guns don’t kill; bullets do

You know those films where it takes three or four bullets to put the bad guy on the floor? Well, it doesn’t just happen on the big screen; it’s happening every day all over the world in board rooms, offices and meeting rooms – wherever there’s a PowerPoint presentation going on.

Try telling a story in PowerPoint with bullets. If your story is good, it will take as many as three or four bullets to kill it. Lame stories go down even faster.

World expert in bullets
The US Army, an expert in bullets if ever there was one, recently issued a report on the misuse of bulleted lists in PowerPoint presentations. The report’s findings can be summarized as: bullet lists appear precise, definitive and accurate even when they are vague, off-topic and simply wrong.

When the leader of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, was shown a PPT slide of the American military strategy that looked like a bowl of spaghetti, he said, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” Another American general, General McMaster, concurs: “PowerPoint’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.” So why are bullets so popular?

If the core material of your presentation is weak, fill your PPT slides with bullets. Make each list more than five bullets long. That way no-one will remember a single point; you’ll be covered – and you’ll have the original slide as proof. And if someone tries to interrupt you, use your clicker like a gun, and bring up a new screen of bullets.

Bullets and brains
Bullets are pretty good at turning the human brain to mush. As General James Mattis of the Marine Corps says, “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” We don’t think in bullet points; we think in narratives. Looking for sequences of events and tying them together with cause and effect is second nature to us. And often it’s the tying together that engages us as listeners and makes stories so easy to remember.

Stories appeal to both sides of the human brain: reason and emotion. Bullets shoot emotion down. Stories are open-ended patterns, rich in association. Bullets can cut through thick skulls; but after a few bangs, there’s nothing left but a gaping hole.

Radical answer to bullets
The US Army report drew the startling conclusion that bullet point abuse was sabotaging corporate communications. Their advice? Use PowerPoint slides to convey ideas, not lists. Make one memorable point per slide – and talk about it openly and passionately.

Let’s face it: PowerPoint is a valuable tool that’s not going away anytime soon. It can be a great way to communicate information visually, and three or four carefully chosen bullet points can help summarize your ideas. Luckily for you, if your story is strong enough, you probably don’t need either.