Do you suffer from Presentation Burnout?

WASHINGTON DC: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is so passé; welcome to the corporate technology disease of the 21st century — Presentation Burnout.

A Nasdaq-listed business intelligence solutions company Business Objects has released the results of survey that suggests that most business executives suffer from presentation fatigue, a direct result of the vast amounts of time they spend preparing for and giving presentations each month.

The survey, conducted online among 382 mid- and top-level executives, found that more than 50 per cent of the executives have to give one or more presentations a month. And no, it is no longer just about data (which is easily accessible online or on company Intranets) — all the executives polled said they needed “solutions that can help them quickly and easily present that information in a visually appealing format.”

If that is intriguing, here’s a disturbing sign: More than 36 per cent of the executive said presenting data to the board of directors or senior management was “tedious” and a further 24 per cent said they “dread each time it (the presentation) comes around.”

Then, 45 per cent of the participants admitted that it took them hours to convert data in Excel spreadsheets into a format that was found to be visually attractive for a meeting or a presentation.

Not only that, an additional 34 per cent of the executives said they have pulled an all-nighter to prepare for a big presentation.

Although there are hundreds of presentation software, most are done on the popular PowerPoint tool which comes bundled in Microsoft’s Office Suite. In fact, in one of his most famous essays, popular design consultant Edward Tufte had suggested to NASA chief administrator Sean O’Keefe to stop PowerPoint presentations as bullet points reduce intelligence levels among the creators and the audience.