All consultants are power point puppets - What was life like before Bill Gates and his mates decided to create this programme that no consultant can avoid using! Personally I want to boycott it! Who agrees?

what are you actually hoping to achieve here?

Im trying to say - are you not fed up with using it, because I am. What alternatves are there? I want to know what consultants would do without it? There must be someone who feels the same as me? Maybe bring back OHP's! ps im 27 yrs old not 40 before someone makes a wise crack!

Really.....what is the point of this thread. If you are a consultant you will use .ppt as a medium to support your messages not to detract from the messages themslevesThere are alternatives to everything, may be try your next presentation without any slides/OHP's/media and structure it so you can engage people just with what you say. Look around for something called the "kipper". (its not a joke by the way, it really is an approach to structuring public speaking.)

Hello, all you friendly little junior analysts out there. Don't be dismayed by powerpoint, it does suck but the main thing is making sure you work a reasonable week (45 hours max). Maybe it's not so much powerpoint that bothers you, but the lack of appreciation for all your hard work in your current firm?ppt person - Pls tell us more about the kipper, it sounds interesting.

OK, it's the name that does I think, head to tail so to speak. It's a little something that I picked up back in my CG days and emphasises not using ppt.The basic idea is you structure your presentation as head(introduction), bones (key points), and tail (finishing message) giving people an end to story which finishes up with a strong and memorable message. I don't pretend to be an expert only proficient and can testify to the usefulness of this technique.If you want to get the "real deal" contact The Rhetorical Company on www.rhetoric.co.ukGood fishing!

Thanks ppt person.Does anyone know any (decent) trainers for the Pyramid Principle (Barbara Minto's take on effective communications). Not sure if the technique/name is patented as Googling hasn't brought up anything, but perhaps someone knows of trainers who cover Pyramid Principle under another name?

cheers guys, it was like senoir VP says -"sometimes a lack of appreciation" It just seems that every day is spent on the programme! See we learn't something - Smoke me a kipper I will be back for........thats my new finishing line for my next presentation. ps. As far as i can see the minto's pyramid is simple - start with the key message and work backwards with the supporting structure and detail. You don't need a book or a teacher to tell yoy this!

"If you are a consultant you will use .ppt as a medium to support your messages not to detract from the messages themsleves"Unfortunately, a lot of consultants don't actually apply this principle to their work. PowerPoint gets used inappropriately a lot (most?) of the time. For example, when writing a report, your detailed research usually can be conveyed better through Word and PowerPoint should only be used for the summary.I have seen PowerPoint used (badly) for everything from process mapping, through project planning and monitoring, to writing webpages and creating print publications. PowerPoint is a excellent presentations tool. However, there are better tools for all the aforementioned tasks and more.We've all experienced or heard the apocryphal tales of consultants who write letters in Excel and change their recommendations until they fit neatly into the standard PowerPoint template at a certain font size. The relationship between consultants and PowerPoint is a running joke (in the sense of ridicule, not humour). What we need to do is be more prepared to learn new ways of working and push back when we know there are better, more efficient tools available.Rather than battling with PowerPoint (or any other tool), invest in learning how to use the tool properly, or find a tool to do the job properly and learn to use that. The time and cost investment will be well worth it.The lack of appreciation at work is a completely separate issue to the insistance on everything being done in PowerPoint due to the offender's own IT illiteracy preventing them understanding or accepting there are better ways to communicate than slapping yet another piece of fileware into an email.