What your boss really wants when they limit your slide count

Slide count is always a hot button topic in my workshops and coaching sessions. Time and time again I hear the same refrain:

I only get ten slides.

Whatever the number might be, the constraint is always a challenge for my clients because it creates friction with slide design best practice: to convey a single concept on each slide. To heed that advice means there will be more slides. Sometimes a lot more slides.

The way most people try to meet the slide count limit is by crowding the slides. The oldest “trick” in the book is dividing the slide into quadrants and putting four slides onto it—one per quadrant. 

This trick (and others like it) are only worsened by the common practice of using slides as speaker notes (or because we want them to be useful as a leave-behind), thereby overburdening them with text.  

Having worked with thousands of people—many of them are the very bosses who impose slide count limits—I can attest that there are generally two reasons they do so. With a clear understanding of their underlying reasoning, we’ll better achieve their objective for the presentation… and might just be afforded more slides to do so.

Reason #1: 

They’re worried about time. On the surface, their request appears as though they’re worried about slide count, but the concern underpinning the limit is actually they want to know that you will deliver the presentation in the time allotted to you. By limiting the number of slides, they are attempting to limit your time. 

Yet the time it takes you to speak to the content you cram into four quadrants of the same slide is virtually the identical amount of time it would take to speak to it split out onto four slides. 

Worst of all, by putting all the content on a single slide, you’re asking your stakeholder to process a lot of information at a single time. They might not know where to look. They’re bright people but they’re also busypeople and splitting the content out onto multiple slides lightens the cognitive load and ensures they can focus appropriately on your content. 

What to try: Address their concern head-on by asking your boss if they’d let you try having more slides if you commit to finishing in your allotted time. If they approve, it’s incumbent on you to do exactly that by timing multiple rehearsals and cutting extraneous material.

Reason #2:

They don’t trust that you’ve distilled your idea to its essence. By constraining your slide count, they’re pushing you to find the clearest, most essential message because you’re forced to cut everything that isn’t central.  

This concern is not unfounded. As the person who’s spent the most time with our work, we rightly have a lot to say. The problem, however, is we don’t always do a good job of editing: finding what is most important to ourstakeholder to hear. We must frame our communication in terms of what they need not just what we’d like to share because we’re passionate about the work or this it *might* be useful.

What to try: Before preparing any slides and before you brainstorm any content, write a three-sentence version of your presentation: the old “what / so what / now what” approach lends itself well to this effort. After you’ve got three sentences, try to distill it further into a single sentence. Run that single sentence past your leader to ensure you’re aligned. Once you have their support, ask for the latitude to create a deck that will support that message (and only that message); be ruthless in not expanding your message beyond that core and your slide deck won’t balloon.

Even if your leader doesn’t agree to allow you more slides, doing the work of rehearsing and distilling your idea to its clearest, most essential truth will make your presentation markedly better. You’ll deliver with greater impact and your idea will be more memorable and actionable.