"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
image by ChatGPT
"Can we just skip to the recommendation?" the COO asked, four minutes into my deck.
I was on slide six of thirty-four, walking her leadership team through why three remote offices were being proposed rather than a full return to work. I'd spent three days building that deck. I even had an animation where three org charts folded into one, timed to land exactly when I said "consolidation. I knew that deck cold.
I skipped ahead to slide thirty-one, the recommendation. The room went quiet. Not the good kind.
I could walk anyone through the deck. I had never once said the argument out loud. And now, stripped of the twenty-five slides to get me there, I couldn't find my own thread.
Your Deck is a Prop
We tend to think of props as things a speaker holds up on stage. But a slide deck is a prop too. We've just become so used to it that we often mistake it for the presentation itself.
A prop's job is to support a point the presenter is making — it shouldn’t have to make the point for you.
I had failed that day because I'd spent three days perfecting the deck and zero minutes rehearsing the case without it.
My deck could survive without me. I couldn't survive without it. That's backward!
Build the argument before you build the deck. Know what you want people to understand, believe or do. Say it in your own words. Then ask what a slide can add that your voice can't.
Watch It In Action
David JP Phillips, a Swedish presentation researcher, makes the same point beautifully in his TEDx talk on presentation design: "I am, I always have been, and I always will be the presentation. That is my visual aid."
Try This Week
Make the argument without slides Before your next important presentation, close the deck and explain your argument out loud in three minutes. No slides. No notes. Notice where you get lost, hesitate, or feel the urge to reopen PowerPoint. That's probably where the argument still needs work. Fix that before you fix the slide.
Rehearse the full talk once with the deck turned off after slide one Keep talking as if the screen died. Notice exactly where you reach for a slide instead of a sentence. That's where your argument is thin.
Ask yourself if the deck would work without you in the room If the slides alone could make your case to someone who's never heard your reasoning, you've built a report, not a talk. Strip it back until the deck needs you to make sense.
From Elsewhere
In Norway, friluftsliv — "open-air life" — describes a national conviction that time outdoors is not leisure but a way of living well. Norwegians will hike, ski, or simply sit in the woods through any weather, on the belief that presence in nature restores something indoor life can't. More on friluftsliv here »