“What is management for?” asked the front page of L’Express on November 10, 1969, when “the word and the thing that arrived from America after the war” were in their infancy in French companies. Fifty-five years later, management, its teaching and practice are everywhere. In open spaces, sport, administration, business schools, bookstores and sometimes even in places where you don’t expect it, like these training courses which offer “working on foot with a horse to strengthen cohesion teamwork and rapid decision-making. Coaching galorepopular HR gadget tools, personal development books… Never have executives been so inundated with speeches and pseudo-techniques supposed to make their jobs easier.
Like all human and social sciences, management does not necessarily lend itself to hard sciences. But the numerous research studies published over the past half-century – and too often ignored by companies – shed light on which methods have proven themselves and which have not. L’Express reviews some of them. In this seventh and final episode, it’s time for PowerPoint presentations.
EPISODE 1. From Teams to WhatsApp… The damage notifications have on our concentration at work
EPISODE 2. MBTI, Disc, enneagram: the great scam of personality tests in management
EPISODE 3. Active listening, a technique that has its limits
EPISODE 4. Is all feedback good to give or receive?
EPISODE 5. Meetings: when brainstorming sessions produce zero ideas
EPISODE 6. Annual appraisal interview: why this exercise generates “a lot of disappointment”
The slideshow. Its hazardous texts, its blurry images, its ridiculous animations. PowerPoint software, which has just celebrated its 37th anniversary, is omnipresent in business: 30 million presentations are created every day, according to Microsoft. But it never stops dividing. Some people swear by it. Others, like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, hate it. This was also the case for Steve Jobs, the former boss of Apple. American General Jim Mattis, former Secretary of Defense under Donald Trump, believes that PowerPoint kills thinking. The tool is “dangerous” and creates “a false impression of control”, he said in 2010 at New York Times. Even NASA, the American space agency, has given its opinion. Its proliferation would have, she maintains in a report, contributed to the disintegration of one of their space shuttles in the 2000s.
A good slideshow consists of very little text
Its reputation has continued to haunt its founder, Dennis Austin, who died last September. Wrongly: “We have also said that about telephones, television, radio. It’s a sensationalist simplification”, retorts Franck Amadieu, researcher at the University of Toulouse and specialist in cognitive ergonomics, it’s that is, how the presentation of information affects its reception. With or without a slideshow, the results are generally the same, concludes a meta-analysis published in 2018 in Computers & Education, a census of studies on the question, almost all carried out at school or university. “It all depends on the uses. Some slow down creativity, exchanges, listening, and others help to understand and remember,” continues Franck Amadieu. As proof of the confidence placed in the format, his students design such presentations for Airbus maintenance operations. They are testing them on volunteers: “We can go so far as to track eye movement,” he explains.
The instructions for a successful PowerPoint? “Respect cognitive functioning,” adds Eric Jamet, psychology researcher at Rennes II University. A good slideshow consists of very little text. Just titles, to structure the thought. Some images, simple, sober. Above all, diagrams. No sound. No repetition. No effects. “If someone speaks, we cannot read, we switch from one to the other. On the other hand, we can assimilate text and images at the same time. They are not the same brain channels” , popularizes Eric Jamet. Associating two senses also helps with memory.
Ultimately, the problem is not the slideshows, but what we do with them. “Most of them are poorly designed and totally disrupt understanding,” continues Eric Jamet. Not to mention the times when the PowerPoint is used in the wrong context: “Making it long in a discussion meeting is the best way to make people passive,” assures Ludovic Girodon, former manager, now consultant. Conversely, creating a live slideshow, interactively, can facilitate discussions. Next slide?
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