Nothing says "collaboration" like bullet points shared in a slide show during a meeting. ⁉️ Of course, that is all wrong: PowerPoint does not equal "meeting". PowerPoint. Is. Not. A. Meeting. Yet, too often, the deck becomes the sole focus of the meeting. PowerPoint is a tool. It can support your message, help visualize complex ideas, give structure to information. When done right, it is an incredibly powerful tool. But the tool is not the strategy. 🚫 The deck is not the dialogue. 🚫 Meetings exist for multiple reasons. Examples: to help drive decisions; to solve problems that require collective input. This list could go on… In change work, meetings serve a critical purpose: they create space for people to make sense of what's changing: ✅ To ask questions. ✅ To voice concerns. ✅ To co-create responses together rather than just receiving what's handed to them. This is dialogue. Two-way exchange. An opportunity for sense-making that happens collectively. Not performance delivered from the front of the room. But what happens all too often? Hours spent building the perfect presentation. Choosing fonts. Refining graphics. Making sure every slide looks polished and professional. The energy goes into looking good and usefulness suffers. What's the objective? What needs to be accomplished? How are we using everyone's time well? Focus too much on style, and those questions get lost in the deck building. Sure, there are AI tools that can help speed the process up. Even beautiful slides. Professional layouts. Compelling graphics. There are some brilliant templates available as well that obviously can help. But without clarity of purpose, faster workslop is still workslop. I've observed brilliant people spend more energy on their deck than on the meeting's purpose. Great decks. And absolutely no meaningful dialogue. If you're spending more time perfecting your presentation than clarifying your objectives, you've already lost the plot. Great slides can amplify dialogue and bring stories to life. But they cannot create it. What's your take? Where does your energy go when you're planning meetings? Found this useful? Please repost. ♻️
Such an important reminder, John. Too often, we confuse preparation with purpose, and end up polishing slides instead of preparing minds for dialogue. True collaboration begins when we shift from presenting to co-creating. The real transformation happens in the exchange, not in the deck.
Daniel Lock
7mo
Sharp take, John. A polished deck with no dialogue is just performance with slides. Clarity dies the moment the tool becomes the focus.
💯 creating connection and making meaning through words on a page or slide alone, is like moving a boulder up a hill. Connection (building relationships) and engagement (getting people involved) is ideal.
Great meetings don’t start with slides John, they start with purpose. When we shift from “presenting” to connecting, ideas come alive and people do too. Real change begins in dialogue, not design.