Pip: Welcome to Boghoss’ Blog, where today’s question is: what if the most dangerous thing in your boardroom is a really good slide deck?

Mara: The post we’re covering today digs into managerial communication — specifically the gap between polished presentations and the unprepared speakers standing behind them. Let’s start with that paradox.

Why managers should prepare their words, not just their slides

Pip: The tension here is sharp: organizations pour enormous effort into visual materials and almost none into preparing the person who actually has to speak. The slides get consultants; the speech gets improvised.

Mara: Laurent Boghossian sets this up directly, and the line that anchors the whole piece is: “A well-designed PowerPoint may support a message, but it cannot create one.”

Pip: That’s the stakes in one sentence. The slide deck is infrastructure, not content. And when the speaker hasn’t prepared the words, the infrastructure is holding up nothing.

Mara: To demonstrate this, Boghossian describes a bit from his show Le Manager est un humoriste comme les autres. He asks an audience for three random professional terms, then improvises a speech around them — and within seconds it sounds structured and credible.

Pip: Which is either reassuring or alarming, depending on how many leadership meetings you’ve sat through.

Mara: His point is that corporate vocabulary — digital transformation, collective intelligence, KPIs, change management — can generate the impression of expertise without delivering any actual meaning. And the audience, he argues, notices. Maybe not consciously, but they sense that something is missing.

Pip: That something, he says, is intention.

Mara: Theatre is where Boghossian draws the contrast most clearly. An actor knows the script, understands every sentence, and knows why each line is being delivered. He asks directly: “So why should we accept in business what would never be tolerated on stage?”

Pip: The answer, practically speaking, is preparation — treating the speech with the same rigor as the slides. Simple words over complicated concepts, a clear intention, and respect for the audience’s intelligence.

Mara: He closes on something worth sitting with: “The best speakers are not necessarily those who speak the longest. They are the ones whose words continue to resonate long after the room has fallen silent.”

Pip: Clarity over complexity. That principle travels well beyond the conference room.

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Mara: The real throughline is that communication is an act of management — every speech signals how much a leader respects the people listening.

Pip: Prepare the words, not just the deck. More on what that looks like in practice — next time.

This episode has been generated with A.I (Source : When a Perfect PowerPoint Hides an Unprepared Speaker)