Fix the Slide

Why this exercise

Most work slides are the speaker's crib sheet: small text, a topic headline, a table with no conclusion. Listeners read the slide faster than the speaker talks and stop listening. Participants work through six typical mistakes — the wall of text, the topic headline, everything at once, small and pale, the slide-document and the list without a conclusion — and draw fixed versions. The key discovery: text that leaves the slide does not disappear, it moves into the speaker's speech.

How to run it

1. Give each table two "bad slide" cards.
2. 10 minutes: work out what is wrong and draw the fixed slide on a sheet of paper, with a conclusion headline.
3. 10 minutes: tables show their "after", the trainer adds to it: one slide — one idea, a conclusion headline, less text, big and high-contrast, nothing extra.
4. 15 minutes individually: draw three or four slides for your own talk.
5. Everyone shows a neighbor one slide and asks: "What idea do you see here?"

Debrief questions

• Where did the text you removed from the slide go?
• Which mistake do you see most often in meetings?
• Did the idea your neighbor saw match your headline?