Everything I know about life I learned from Russell Davies.

I appreciate I am late to the party on this one as Russell Davies’ wonderful book on PowerPoint came out in November 2021.

You have probably all read it by now. 

Good. 

If you haven’t, and you are even remotely connected to the world of advertising, brands and strategy then you should. 

Now. 

I’m not kidding. You don’t need to read the rest of this blog post, just click here instead.

I started reading his book yesterday and then just kept going all day. It accompanied me from the kitchen table, on the tube, via a train journey and then the tube again at which point I finished it. It’s The Thursday Murder Club for strategy geeks.

Why should you have read it? Let me count the ways.

This is a beautiful object. A book so well designed and written it just makes you happy that such things exist. But of course the beauty and clarity of the book is a meta commentary on the contents. Because as he notes in the book, we owe it to good ideas to present them well. There is such a coup de theatre towards the end of the book (pp 240-241 for those who have a copy to hand) that it makes you smile at complete strangers on public transport.

It reminds you that every slide should be an idea. Good presentations are simply a sequence of little original thoughts arranged in whatever order pleases you. PowerPoint is a tool to help you play with ideas, no more, no less. It’s not a deadening tool for corporate mediocrity unless you are. As I was taught early in my career, “you’re the presentation, not the slides”. Russell agrees.

One of the most interesting new ideas in the book (it hadn’t occurred to me, at least) is that the main critics of PowerPoint are entitled, powerful people who already have the stage and the power to make their point. Those who wish we could just have a conversation or circulate written papers consider PowerPoint to be something that the little people do. The kind of people who still bring the IT guy with them to meetings because they don’t know how plugs work. PowerPoint gives the rest of us the chance to rise up and seize the means of production. We have nothing to lose but our trains (of thought)!

The book isn’t about PowerPoint. Of course it isn’t. It’s about insecurity. Ideas. Communication. Meetings. Power. Design. Strategy. Books. Technology. Colour. Poetry. Diagrams. Fonts. Lists. If I didn’t have you at insecurity, then I can’t help you any further.

Russell reminds us to reduce. If you’re anything like me, you write more when you’re nervous or ill prepared. Somewhere at the back of your mind you’re thinking “well, I’m not sure these ideas are any good, but if I put loads of charts in they probably won’t ask for their money back”.  Stop it. You need to say less, better. There’s no other option. Every minute you speak should have taken you an hour to prepare. 

It makes you want to write better presentations. It makes you think that doing this might be fun. This will make you better at your job. More importantly it will make being better at your job feel like playing a game.

These pages contain multitudes. There are enough fascinating suggestions for further reading, people to meet, tools to steal and use, to keep you busy for a whole career. On one level this book is a joy to read, but it’s also very very useful. Take that Richard Osman.

Of course I haven’t even scratched the surface here.

You should just buy this book and read it immediately.

Next slide please.