On Powerpoint

[Entropy]

This is the best thing I've read all week:

Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make.

Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.

[Schmedlap]

Nice. I've never been a fan of his 4GW theory, but this PowerPoint rebuke is great. Can we get this in slide format?

Finally, what we all instinctively knew to be true has been broken down by the numbers and explained in a methodical, detailed rebuke by someone who once wore rank on his collars that many of us associated with an inability to think rationally or use common sense. I wonder if anyone will listen.

I have long held that we should make bootlegged copies of PowerPoint available to al-Qaeda and give them free computers and projectors to use it, so that their internal processes can be crippled as much as ours have.

However, I also agree with Hammes narrow points about how PowerPoint can also be useful. That is generally the only means that I have ever employed slides for (unless ordered to do otherwise). I've always used slides in the same way that one would use an instructional video or supplemented an oral brief with charts and tables in the same way that one would supplement a research paper with charts and tables. Making the slides the focus of the presentation generally occurs when the speaker has nothing worthwhile to say - unfortunately, slides usually are the focus.

[jmm99]

More verbosely,

Is the tool (PowerPoint) the problem; or is the process (one hammer wielder striking all the nails on his floor - and all the nails on the floors below) the problem ?

(from TXH)
The last point, how we make decisions, is the most obvious. Before PowerPoint, staffs prepared succinct two- or three-page summaries of key issues. The decision-maker would read a paper, have time to think it over and then convene a meeting with either the full staff or just the experts involved to discuss the key points of the paper. Of course, the staff involved in the discussion would also have read the paper and had time to prepare to discuss the issues. In contrast, today, a decision-maker sits through a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation followed by five minutes of discussion and then is expected to make a decision. Compounding the problem, often his staff will have received only a five-minute briefing from the action officer on the way to the presentation and thus will not be well-prepared to discuss the issues. This entire process clearly has a toxic effect on staff work and decision-making.
....
PowerPoint has clearly decreased the quality of the information provided to the decision-maker, but the damage doesn’t end there. It has also changed the culture of decision-making. In my experience, pre-PowerPoint staffs prepared two to four decision papers a day because that’s as many as most bosses would accept. These would be prepared and sent home with the decision-maker and each staff member that would participate in the subsequent discussion. Because of the tempo, most decision-makers did not take on more than three or four a day simply because of the requirement to read, absorb, think about and then be prepared to discuss the issue the following day. As an added benefit for most important decisions, they “slept on it.”

PowerPoint has changed that. Key decision-makers’ days are now broken down into one-hour and even 30-minute segments that are allocated for briefs. Of particular concern, many of these briefs are decision briefs. Thus senior decision-makers are making more decisions with less preparation and less time for thought. Why we press for quick decisions when those decisions will take weeks or even months to simply work their way through the bureaucracy at the top puzzles me. One of the critical skills in decision making is making the decision cycle and method appropriate to the requirements. If a decision takes weeks or months to implement and will be in effect for years, then a more thoughtful process is clearly appropriate.

This brings me to the third major concern with PowerPoint’s impact on our decision process: Who makes the decisions? Because the PowerPoint culture allows decision-makers to schedule more briefs per day, many type-A personalities seek to do so. Most organizations don’t need more decisions made at higher levels. But to find more decisions to make, a type-A leader has to reach down to lower levels to find those decisions. The result is the wrong person is making decisions at the wrong level.

Is the last sentence the crux of the problem ?

Where (if at all) do the people who have to execute the decision fit into the process which TXH describes ?

[Greyhawk]

Is the last sentence the crux of the problem ?

Where (if at all) do the people who have to execute the decision fit into the process which TXH describes ?

PowerPoint might facilitate the micro-manager's task, but doesn't create micro-managers where they didn't exist before. I was a bit perplexed at that point. The fault may be mine.

I wonder if the author really does hold PowerPoint accountable for the wrongs of its users, or is merely being more circumspect (another trait of the military professional) than others would (me, f'rinstance) given the opportunity.

[Greyhawk]

Here's one he missed: within two weeks of a "problem" being identified (particularly if in the major media) you could bet every man woman and child in service will have viewed a PowerPoint presentation on the topic, as group or individually via email (talk about bandwidth abuse...). Problem solved!

But I come neither to praise or condemn the brief, rather to acknowledge its necessary evil...

Hammes is on target, but also cursing a hammer for people using it as a screwdriver. That's his choice of approach, a cautious one that avoids (beyond implying) placing blame where due. Much of what he describes (too many slides, too much data crammed onto one slide, etc.) is a mark of a bad briefer. From my experience, you could get away with that once. (The initial fault would lie with your boss, if he were between the briefer and the guy at the head of the table in the chain of command - and normally that's the case. But I digress...) And if 100% of the information shared is included in the briefing slides (vice "read aheads" or other more comprehensive documents) then again we have a problem for which PowerPoint is not to blame. Certainly if the problem persists (other than in the case of the occasional "rookie" briefer sent to learn a lesson 'the hard way') beyond a given commander's first few weeks in office (also when template, fonts, and background color are established) we must consider the staff itself at fault.

My career began in the days of paper flip charts and overhead projectors - we don't want to go back. The woes of the PowerPoint ranger are real, but they precede the advent of the tool that (used properly - and it often is) reduces the burden.

If you really want to talk about a time-saving technological advancement that has quadrupled our workload and made ten things more difficult for every one simplified, let's discuss email. It's much easier now to make 10,000 people jump through hoops; the hoops themselves are unchanged.

Come to think of it, I served through the advent of the computer era, and can assure you while we're better off with them we have yet to figure out a way to use them to reduce workload. The opposite has occurred, certainly to the dismay of we then-young and naive fools who saw a brighter future ('89: / '99: / '09:) Perhaps there are other great technological advancements for which this is equally (or as cruelly) true. But the technology is not to blame.

[Greyhawk]

There were earlier programs, but for simplification this is how they were greeted "in the office":

Right: "Gosh, this Word program sure is a huge step up from the typewriter!"

Right: "Gosh, this PowerPoint program sure is a huge step up from overhead slides and erasable markers!"

Wrong: "Gosh,this PowerPoint program sure is a step up from a typewriter!"

Item three is wrong, but that does not make PowerPoint wrong. However, too many people accept item three as Gospel. Sadly, it isn't completely wrong, and that by itself would justify its continued misuse. Consider also that if a person who saw it as "right" or "good enough" was of sufficient rank, then it was indeed Gospel and couldn't possibly be wrong and certainly not from the POV of someone below. It was hardly an issue worth falling on one's sword - I mean that sincerely. Those young parish priests are now Bishops and Cardinals, and the Dogma is entrenched. (Incorporated in the larger scripture of staffwork as the pain that must periodically be quietly endured. Thou shalt sit in thy corner and color thy slides.)

The new Parish Priests are "digital natives", their unfamiliarity with the typewriter or the overhead slide gives me no hope they'll necessarily set things to right. (Though I'm not entirely without hope, they may indeed "discover" something that makes sense.)

Another layer of irony is that now one can fairly easily incorporate images in Word documents - and color printers (if hardcopy required) are the rule rather than the exception (excluding some tactical environments), but PowerPoint is still often used as substitute for a typewriter. Hammes is (correctly but IMHO circuitously) pointing all this out.

A last depressing thought - for a few years there were places where things were done right, but standardization and networked systems are quickly making them a thing of the past. (I'm probably well beyond the discussion of PowerPoint here...)

[Spud]

If you really want to talk about a time-saving technological advancement that has quadrupled our workload and made ten things more difficult for every one simplified, let's discuss email. It's much easier now to make 10,000 people jump through hoops; the hoops themselves are unchanged.

I'd also argue that it prevents our generals from practicing "generalship." Before e-mail our bosses relied on briefs to gather their situational awareness and CONOPs/decision briefs on how to progress. It meant the staff were staff and doing the required work to ensure their boss was on the ball. Now my boss gets into work before light and goes home well after dark (often to log in remotely) and spends his days slaving over Outlook because everyone inside and outside is AOR sends him everything they think he should be clued into. It results in him making decisions and doing the staff work via outlook rather than through an informed staff process.

Some would argue that this is a good thing ... no staff to get in the road. I would counter that it means that the staff is continually playing catch-up or (even worse) finding other things to do to occupy its time.

If I was king for the day I'd disable every GO's e-mail account and let them get back to doing what they are getting paid for ... considering informed recommendations and making decisions.

[Greyhawk]

Now my boss gets into work before light and goes home well after dark

...and should he awake in the middle of the 4-hour night, BLACKBERRY!!!

Consider too: how many man-hours (I know, sexist) are wasted while X# people wait a half hour for the boss to finish a couple more hot emails (from his boss!!) before joining the group? I actually did have a private sit-down discussion with my boss on that topic once. Times five days a week X eternity it really adds up.

[Entropy]

Greyhawk,

I agree with a lot of your points, but the article came across to me as a criticism of how powerpoint is used and not the program itself. As an intel guys who began with viewgraphs, MTF message traffic and thought "Harvard Graphics" was high-tech, I understand where you're coming from. Using the tool properly is key and I agree with pretty much everything the author says about its misuse.

[AdamG]

Warning : clear all liquids from your work station before proceeding and for Heaven's sake, don't have a mouthful of anything. That is all.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/0...7c999aee45ba,1

For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general’s thought processes as abruptly as a computer system’s blue screen of death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmjHT5GpAYQ

[stanleywinthrop]

Next month, IJC will attempt a giant leap for mankind. In a first-of-its-kind effort, IJC will embed a new stovepipe into an already existing stovepipe. The rationale for this bold move resides in the fact that an officer, who is currently without one, needs a staff of 35 people to create a big splash before his promotion board

.

[J Wolfsberger]

That is one of the more unorthodox letters of resignation I've seen.

[AdamG]

That is one of the more unorthodox letters of resignation I've seen.

It makes me wonder if the good Colonel broke the teacup too -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRPDO63rI1E

He'd better hope his plane home doesn't do a left turn into Gitmo.
"Your new name in Number Six...."

[jmm99]

took a right turn ... to Helsinki.

That is where one of his op-ed outlets (Ilta-Sanomat) has had much the same content as his UPI columns - source: our Man in Helsinki , charlylsp, Finnish language blog by Col. Sellin.

His 64 columns for UPI, start 13 Mar 2004 (1st Astan column, 28 Sep 2004). His columns from the month before and the month of the sack (his 2d Astan tour) seem rational enough.

Afghanistan status check
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 8 (UPI) -- I have been in-country about one week, enough time for some initial impressions.

Cynical thoughts about Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 15 (UPI) -- Will the epitaph of the war in Afghanistan be motion without progress and knowledge without wisdom?

Afghanistan's tribal trouble
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 22 (UPI) -- Former CIA Director Richard Helms counseled that when dealing with societies in and around the Middle East, pay attention to the things that are hundreds of years old -- the religious sects, the clans, the tribes.

Battle of Barg-e-Matal
KABUL, Afghanistan, July 29 (UPI) -- If the battle of Barg-e-Matal ever goes down in history, I am not sure if it will be treated as a victory or a defeat or a tragedy or a comedy.

Is Pakistan the enemy in Afghanistan?
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Each day between 25 and 50 Afghan civilians, Afghan, coalition and American soldiers are wounded or killed by the Taliban.

North, the new front in the Afghan war
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- A recently released U.N. report states that 1,271 Afghans died and 1,997 were injured in the first six months of this year. Three-quarters of these casualties were caused by Taliban forces, mostly from roadside bombings.

Afghanistan’s last, best hope
KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 19 (UPI) -- The real enemy in Afghanistan is reactionary leadership represented by corrupt politicians, ruthless warlords and the twisted religious extremism of the Taliban.

Colonel (Eversti) Sellin would not get along well with the detained folks at Gitmo (from the "Battle-of-Barg-e-Matal" piece):

The immediate task is to destroy the Taliban's capability to wage an insurgency. That means, first and foremost, to defeat them decisively in the field.

Simultaneously we must isolate them nationalistically, culturally and religiously from the Afghan people. The Taliban are invaders and murderers, who are religious extremists, who don't respect Afghan tribal traditions and who possess foreign pan-Islamic ambitions not in tune with the needs and desires of the Afghan people.

(and from the "North, the new front in the Afghan war" piece):

KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 12 (UPI) -- A recently released U.N. report states that 1,271 Afghans died and 1,997 were injured in the first six months of this year. Three-quarters of these casualties were caused by Taliban forces, mostly from roadside bombings.

The Taliban has also continued its practice of carrying out brutal atrocities against civilians. They claimed responsibility for killing members of a civilian medical team in the remote, northeastern province of Badakhshan, which has, until recently, been a relatively peaceful area.

At about the same time, in the northwestern province of Badghis, the Taliban killed a 47-year-old pregnant widow accused of adultery. She was flogged 200 times and then shot in the head. The man responsible for impregnating her was apparently not punished. ... (much more in article)

Regards

Mike