Why You Should Always Make a PowerPoint, Even If You Don't Want To

Finding the insight is only half the battle. You have to communicate that insight. A lot.

I’m talking to my younger self, not you, about doing this damn PowerPoint. (You’re doing great.) There I was, sitting in a conference room at NBA headquarters in Manhattan. This was early in my career at my first big corporate job. I was overwhelmed, having come fresh from a magazine job where I got to interview star athletes and write about it. That was pretty much it. No corporate bureaucracy.

I had never made a PowerPoint presentation. I’ve since made hundreds, which would have blown my mind then. But I was doing my job, figuring out a way to cross-promote online tickets with a big NBA marketing partner.

AI generated in ChatGPT

A company director said to me, “Sounds like a good plan. Can you make a PowerPoint?”

I said — and I’m still cringing and maybe shouldn’t be revealing this to you — “I don’t do PowerPoint.”

Now, that wasn’t a good answer for at least three reasons:

1. PowerPoint is the way businesses communicate.*

2. PowerPoint is not that hard.

3. PowerPoint is part of the job.

Oh, and also, it sounded like there was something wrong with me. “Can you make a PowerPoint?” was really a rhetorical question / assigned task. It wasn’t a “yes or no” situation.

But I had come up with a plan. I thought that was the end. That’s actually only half the job. I needed to communicate that plan to everybody who needed to be involved. And a PowerPoint deck was the way to do that.

As embarrassing as it is now to look back on that meeting, I never said “no” to a PowerPoint request again. In fact, I leaned into it. I still love magazines, and I look at PowerPoint as that same type of storytelling. You need bold headlines, engaging visuals and a comprehensive storyline that persuades an audience to do something.

After some time back in the magazine world, my next corporate job was at SeaWorld headquarters in Orlando. I dove very deep into the data — A/B tests, ecommerce performance, monthly financials. I was able to figure out insights and suggest plans. This time, I was experienced enough to realize that if a tree falls in the forest and there isn’t a PowerPoint about it, did it make a sound?

So I volunteered to make PowerPoints whenever I could. That’s also when I got very deep into data visualization and dashboards. I finally realized that communicating the insights was just as important as finding the insights. And a great way to communicate was through PowerPoint — a blank widescreen canvas that I could build a story on.

I’ve never looked back. Well, except to relive this story. If you hear somebody on your data team say they don’t do PowerPoint, please be patient and quietly forward this post. Or do that person a favor and calmly but firmly say, “Just do the damn PowerPoint.”

*I know that Amazon famously uses written memos and not PowerPoint. It clearly works for them — though I personally prefer pictures and charts.