You’ve likely been taught a good presentation requires a good deck.

That slides organize your thinking. They give people something to look at. They signal preparation.

You open your laptop, pull up the file, and begin. “Can everyone see my screen?”

But have you ever really thought about what the screen does to the audience the moment you turn it on?

One of my clients, Marcus, is a senior director at a construction firm. He was pitching a significant operational shift to his executive team. Three evenings building the deck. 47 slides, clean data, airtight logic. He knew it cold.

Forty minutes later, a VP thanked him for the thorough work and said she’d follow up. She didn’t. The idea sat untouched for six months before a consultant was brought in to recommend essentially the same thing.

The logic was airtight. The data was sound. But the screen was the subject of the meeting. Not Marcus. Not the idea.

His audience looked at the slides. They evaluated the slides. They formed opinions about the slides. And when Marcus spoke, he was narrating a document. Documents rarely inspire belief, and even more rarely lead to action.

The screen did what screens always do: it created a buffer between Marcus and the people he needed to move. It gave everyone in the room somewhere safe to look that wasn’t each other.

That safety is the villain here. And you’ve been inviting it in.

Microsoft Pulled a Fast One

A presentation is an event. A deck is a tool.

For most of modern history, nobody confused them.

Then PowerPoint came along and named its file format “presentation.” Forty years of that and the two words fused in our minds. Now when someone says I have a presentation, everyone assumes there’s a deck involved. The software hijacked the term so completely that we forgot you can walk into a room, build relationships, shift thinking, and move people to act without opening a single file.

You don’t need a deck to host a presentation. You need a deck when a deck genuinely helps. That’s a much shorter list than most leaders think.

The deck is a crutch. A sophisticated, socially acceptable crutch. It holds your structure, your proof points, and if you’re honest, some of your nerve.

But your idea doesn’t need a safe container.

Belief doesn’t form when people read bullet points. Belief forms when someone they trust looks them in the eye and says, with their whole body, this matters. That exchange, unmediated, slightly exposed, fully present, is where conviction lives. And it’s the exchange a screen makes nearly impossible, because the screen is always interrupting it.

When the projector’s on, the room reorganizes itself around a display. The social contract shifts from I am in conversation with you to I am watching your presentation. Presentations are things we evaluate. Conversations are are immersive. You don’t need people to evaluate your idea. You need them to enter it.

Most leaders have never stopped to ask whether the event they’re designing is the right one. They just turn on the screen because that’s what we do.

Question that.

Chip Away at It

Breaking up with decks is hard. For a lot of leaders, the deck isn’t just a tool. It’s an anxiety management system. It may not be in your best interest to dismantle it overnight.

So take it one step at a time.

Start here: in your next high-stakes meeting, don’t turn on the screen for the first five minutes. Just talk. Say the thing you most want people to understand before you show them anything. Look at them while you say it.

You’ll feel exposed. Good. That exposure is connection, for you and for them. You’ll see who’s with you immediately. You’ll feel the room in a way the projector’s glow usually drowns out. And you’ll discover something important: your presence is an argument. Probably a better one than whatever’s on slide thirty-three.

Then turn the screen on if you need it. Use it for what it’s actually good for: visualizing data (cleanly), visuals that support your message, images that invite the audience to imagine possibilities. But by then you’ll have already done the real work. You’ll have shown up as the reason to believe.

Do that enough times and you’ll build shorter decks. Then shorter still. Eventually you’ll cut something and not miss it.

Design Your Presentation, Not Your Deck

Before your next high-stakes meeting:

What is this meeting actually for: information, or belief? Does how I’ve set it up serve that?

What am I using the screen to protect myself from? Is that protection worth what it costs?

If I had no slides at all, what would I say first? Why am I not saying that first?

The screen has been making your choices for you. Every time you turn it on by default, you’re handing the audience to a piece of hardware.

Take them back.

The Book is Coming

“I can see this book having a permanent place on my desk, right next to The Elements of Style.”

That’s what one early reader said about The Campfire Method: Give Presentations the Respect They Deserve. It’s coming soon. I’m looking for three more readers before it launches.

Interested? You know where to find me.

🔥 Hi, I’m Eric, and every week, I share insights, observations and tools so you can ditch decks and light a fire in your high-stakes presentations. If you like what you see here, follow me on LinkedIn.