The Greatest PowerPoint Presentation Nobody Ever Saw

STORY

The conversation at Smácht Mór in Harvey’s Point last week turned to the best presentations people had ever heard.

Anne Tobin has qualified for every MDRT (Million Dollar Round Table) international conference for the past twenty-five years. During that time, she has listened to some of the finest speakers in the world. Yet she reckons Pádraig Ó Céidigh’s ‘PowerPoint’ presentation at the Acorn Life Sales Conference in the Clayton Hotel in Galway in 2010 was the best she has ever experienced.

‘Do you remember it, Reilly?’ asks Anne.

‘Do I remember it? Will I ever forget it?’ replies Reilly wistfully. ‘I nearly lost one of my most valuable customers over it.’

Keith Butler, now CEO of Acorn Life, had asked Reilly to recommend a motivational speaker for the company’s annual sales conference. Reilly had no hesitation in nominating Ó Céidigh.

Before winning the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2002, Pádraig had turbocharged Aer Arann from annual revenues of €200,000 to €120 million in just three years. By any measure, it was a phenomenal business achievement. Reilly knew the Acorn Life financial planners would soak up every word.

He also knew first-hand that Pádraig was a gifted teacher, with a sublime ability to communicate complex ideas in memorable ways.

Pádraig was booked to speak, and everything was going swimmingly until Keith rang Reilly a week before the conference demanding Pádraig’s PowerPoint slides.

As an actuary, Keith is meticulous about detail. He wanted to analyse every slide in advance.

Reilly feared the worst. In all the presentations he had ever heard Ó Céidigh deliver, he could not remember him ever using a single PowerPoint slide.

Between the jigs and the reels, no slide deck arrived. Keith was apoplectic with Reilly.

Winking roguishly at Reilly, Pádraig proceeded to throw him under the bus the moment he took the stage.

He made a dramatic point of switching off the projector that was beaming a white light onto the empty screen. He apologised to the 500 people in the audience telling them that Reilly had misplaced the PowerPoint presentation in his inbox so he would have to deliver the presentation without PowerPoint slides.

Then the magic happened.

Pointing to the wall immediately to his right, Pádraig asked the audience to imagine an enormous blank PowerPoint slide in their mind’s eye.

He asked them to give the slide a title:

VALUES

‘What you place value upon in business and life’, he explained, ‘becomes the foundation of your success or failure. Clarity about your core values is the first step towards greatness.’

He then asked everyone in the theatre to write down their core values and fix them in their mind’s eye. People shared their answers, and the room began to buzz.

Pádraig repeated the exercise with another dozen imaginary slides, moving all the way around the room.

Among the slides Anne can still recall are:

Reality. Purpose. Vision. Priorities. Goals. Team. Sales. Attitude. Continuous Learning.

Pádraig received a standing ovation that day without using a single PowerPoint slide. The slides never existed on a computer.

Yet Anne, and hundreds of others in that room, can still see slides sixteen years later.

INSIGHTS

• The lesson is not to abandon PowerPoint. It is to stop confusing the slides with the presentation.
• A slide can display an idea. A great speaker makes the audience construct it for themselves.
• Participation creates memory. People remember what they help to create.
• Imagination may be the most powerful visual aid ever invented.
• Technology can support a message, but it cannot supply one.
• Preparation runs deeper than props. When the equipment disappears, a strong message still stands.
• The true measure of a presentation is not what appears on the screen. It is what remains in people’s minds long after the screen goes dark.

QUOTE

‘The best presentation is rarely the one people can see on a PowerPoint slide. It is the one they can still see in their mind’s eye sixteen years later.’                                                                                                                                                                           — Reilly

QUESTION

If the projector failed during your next presentation, would your message still land?

POSTSCRIPT

Finn turned three yesterday. As Reilly was putting him to bed last night, he had one final birthday request:

‘Tell me a story out of your head, Reilly.’

Reilly instinctively reverted to business mode. His first thought was to ask ChatGPT or Claude for a story and then check one of his multiple PowerPoint decks for an idea.

And then he told himself to cop himself on. Imagine trying to get away with a PowerPoint presentation with a three-year-old at bedtime! It would never wash.

Perhaps it should not wash with a room full of adults either.

As Reilly’s mother was wont to say: ‘Out of the mouths of babes.’

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