back
22 comments
Let's boil that down a bit:

Meetings should be for discussions, not education.

I think he's correct that PowerPoint encourages the latter and discourages the former.

However, I think he's wrong about having people present about things outside their area. That only encourages them to do research into things they have no business in.

Instead, only call meetings when decisions need to be made, and only let people prepare the facts needed to make those decisions, not presentations.

Right. If your goal is education PowerPoint is fine. And I'd argue that it should be a video. No need for me to go to a room to listen to a presentation when you want me to attend. The modern conference where all presentations are on the web is ideal.

Now if you want discussions, that's a whole different matter. I've used PowerPoint for discussions. Usually one slide to frame the discussion and a second slide I leave up that has the goal of the discussion -- that is, what are we here to answer. You could just as easily do it with a printout or on a whiteboard, but a PowerPoint is often logistically easier. The keypoint though is that a discussion should have a clear goal. If you can't put the goal of the discussion down in a sentence you probably aren't crisp yet as to what you're doing.

PowerPoint is fine if the discussion is so light that there's no need to write things on the board in real time... But anything that requires visual references to draw it all together, PowerPoint just isn't dynamic enough.

And really, if it's that light, couldn't you have just had the discussion via email?

I'm kind of torn on the strategy used to break people out of their silos.

On one hand, it seems like it might be a good idea for the purpose of cross-functional education.

On the other hand, one runs the very real possibility of someone effectively taking a 101 class on a complex subject, scratching the surface and making decisions based on their limited understanding of another group's area of expertise.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing" - Alexander Pope

"Using their input, I designed the flow of the two days and asked each person to prepare a PowerPoint presentation of the strategy for their area."

Barf.

So the author was doing really really bad meetings and realized that they were bad and that he should stop using powerpoint (talk AT people) and start discussing things like real people (talk WITH people).

His solutions still sound pretty bad. Have people lead meetings about their colleagues business? Jeez.

What happened with just talking and getting stuff done? They don't teach that in business school?

TL;DR it's powerpoint.
I thought killing meetings was a good thing.
I had a similar first reaction. But then I realized this was talking about thing(s) that make meetings as useless as they are. My next thought was "well, what you can do about it is not have the meeting" :)
A hard pill to swallow for the author, I imagine, since he appears to make a living organising meetings (offsites and whatnots).
Amen to that. It's like saying: 10 tips to make really boring books bearable.

Just don't read them!

When presenting, and wanting discussion, I have always found that the linear format fails hard. Is there any presentation tools that allow you to present slides in a flow-chart/logic tree format? Linearly, if my assumed best track isn't the result of discussion, the rest of the slides are worthless. I want a functional choose your own adventure presentation.

I think a powerpoint medium can work well in discussion if it is allowed deviations.

His thesis seems to be that powerpoint is a poor tool for fostering discussion.

To be honest, this seems kinda self-evident; powerpoint is a tool for disseminating information- for facilitating a largely one-way transmission from speaker to attendees. It's useful when you need that, but expecting it to help when you want a round-ish table discussion with major input from multiple people seems silly.

I find meetings are only effective if you are there to make a decision together. Even then, I would keep the meeting exactly and arbitrarily 21 minutes! Any longer, then you'd have to bring in alcohol :)

At the meeting, turn up the heat and makes everyone stand up. In front of a group of sweaty and impatient people, let's see how long others can tolerate you should you ever go off topic.

We're having fewer and fewer group meetings with PowerPoint (a good thing) but more and more teleconferences where someone shares their desktop. For some reason that encourages people to share more spreadsheets, code, drawings, etc. but the flipside is that half the audience is surfing or doing their email.
If they're checking their email then please let them. It means the meeting is boring, at least they can do something else.
What is interesting, the method overcomes storytelling. The same set of facts can be worded very differently, and, usually, it is heavily influenced by the presenter's feelings.
The first thing I thought of when I read this was the episode of 30 Rock where Jack talks about "Meetings Magazine." Too funny.
A co-worker wrote this. http://isthismeetingpointless.com/
Every time I read HBR, I'm less impressed. Am I missing something?
Yes. You are missing the question why it is so influential, then. HBR is, every month, read by some of the most powerful people in the world. Why?
These are the blogs, not the business review itself. I understand the quality standards are lower in the former.
Stop meeting altogether.