Ban Slides, Unlock Impact

The Way We Think Slides Work (And the Way They Actually Do)

The brain processes and encodes information best by doing. Not by hearing (and hopefully listening).

The physical act of working with an idea — writing it down, debating it, applying it to a real situation — activates the motor cortex alongside the memory centers. Cognitive scientists call it the generation effect: we retain what we generate far better than what we receive. Stephanie specifically remembers taking furious notes during lectures in college (even though the professor provided the slides for future reference), and then never referring back to them… because she didn’t need to. The act of writing is what helped encode the information in her brain.

Most slide-led sessions are built around the expectation that people should receive information instead of work with an idea. Someone stands at the front of the room, content goes on the screen, and the group watches (and hopefully listens). The audience isn’t really engaged. For most people in the room, very little will be remembered.

If you’ve had an important presentation where attendees showed up, made eye contact with you, nodded along, and then remembered nothing you said the following week, you know what this feels like. You could be the greatest presenter in the world, but at the end of the day, presenting is just not the greatest way to communicate.

The Meeting Problem: Death By Presentation

The deeper problem is what meetings are actually for. A meeting should drive decisions, surface real disagreement, and generate genuine input from the people in the room. That's work that requires everyone to be present together… and in conversation.

A meeting that’s anchored to a slide deck orients everyone in the same direction: toward the screen. The conversation stops being toward each other and becomes toward the wall. Real collaboration requires people to think together, push back on each other's ideas, and build on each other's thinking in real time. None of that happens when everyone's reading the same bullet point.

And worse, when you present what could have been captured in an email, you functionally waste the single most powerful resource a meeting offers: the presence of everyone at the table, together.

When the deck becomes the anchor to the conversation, it crowds out the conversation. The deck becomes the asset. The people become the audience. The meeting ends with a lot of bullet points and very little forward motion.

What Happens When You Do It Differently

Clarissa had a fifteen-minute slot in front of her company's board of directors. The obvious move was a polished deck and well-practiced talk track. Instead (upon Stephanie’s prodding), she transformed the session into a round-robin activity. Board members (executives accustomed to being presented at) were asked to participate. They moved through a series of flip chart stations, capturing ideas and building on each other's thinking in real time.



The feedback was immediate. Her session was called "a breath of fresh air" and "the most engaging" of the day. More importantly, she walked away with something most presenters never get from a board: real, actionable insights. Instead of soundbite platitudes she had the board's actual thinking, captured in their own words, ready to act on.

AND she was invited back for the following board session. For someone at her level, that was a career-defining win!

It happened because she gave the board something to do.

The Question to Ask Before Your Next Meeting

Before any meeting you're preparing for, try this: write down the single most important thing you need the people in that room to do as a result of being there together. Not know. Not understand. Do.

If the answer is "make a decision," "align on a direction," or "provide input," then a slide deck is probably not the right tool.



If the answer is "receive information," consider whether you need a meeting at all.