On Powerpoint

[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.

[Entropy]

I just remembered Tufte and his book on powerpoint. Here's an important excerpt.

[Ken White]

War story. Decision brief to FORSCOM Cdr, three briefers. New high tech (then) computerized projector.. First briefer halfway through, black box breaks. Cdr says to the three COLS at the table, "No problem, you guys just talk me through it." Looks of stark panic. Much fumbling with paper copies of slides. Panic level increases when they realize they have their slides but no one else's while the Boss has all three sets. When the first one started talking, turned to call on his Briefer and El Commandante said "No, I want your thoughts on it." the panic was replaced by three looks of sheer terror. It sort of went downhill from there. Very entertaining for all us horse holders along the wall...

I'm not a T.X. Hammes fan but he's right on the money with that one, particularly on the decision levels broached -- as is Greyhawk with the perils of top level e-mail.

[MikeF]

War story. Decision brief to FORSCOM Cdr, three briefers. New high tech (then) computerized projector.. First briefer halfway through, black box breaks. Cdr says to the three COLS at the table, "No problem, you guys just talk me through it." Looks of stark panic. Much fumbling with paper copies of slides. Panic level increases when they realize they have their slides but no one else's while the Boss has all three sets. When the first one started talking, turned to call on his Briefer and El Commandante said "No, I want your thoughts on it." the panic was replaced by three looks of sheer terror. It sort of went downhill from there. Very entertaining for all us horse holders along the wall...

I'm not a T.X. Hammes fan but he's right on the money with that one, particularly on the decision levels broached -- as is Greyhawk with the perils of top level e-mail.

Word. Talent not rank

v/r

Mike

[Greyhawk]

Greyhawk,

... but the article came across to me as a criticism of how powerpoint is used and not the program itself.

Para two: "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."

Then he goes on to explain its abuse and misuse, which - were it not for that initial polite caveat of a thesis statement - some might mistakenly interpret as an attack on those who are doing so. I suspect his point is as you say it is - his arguments clearly lead me to that conclusion - and that's a point with which we'd all agree (but with which many - or someone? - might be highly offended).

I don't think we need worry about an outright ban. The more likely solution is a PowerPoint in every inbox explaining the right and wrong uses of PowerPoint.

[Greyhawk]

If I knew how to upload this as a text-only powerpoint slide, I would.

I once prepared a briefing consisting only of eight graphs, each on it's own slide. All were needed to present the information I had to (by commander's "request") convey. (I am a HUGE fan of brevity and briefing the commander was a daily job, not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.)

Upon review it was declared "too long", a problem I was told could be easily fixed: present two graphs per slide. Took me 30 seconds to fix, eight slides became four (no, the length of the briefing did not change), and everyone was happy.

I'm glad I didn't start with four slides.

[Spud]

I'm glad I didn't start with four slides.

Ah but then you could have done the now-ubiquitous quad-slide and got away with a one-slide deck (oh hang on you'd need an extra one to give your name and a security classification and then another to ask whether there's any question's because you'd be incapable of doing wither of those things yourself.

The common acceptance of the quad-slide was that specific point in time that anthropologists will be able to say we hit PowerPoint stupidity

[Greyhawk]

Bah - some bright young up-and-comer will soon make a name for himself for conceiving of the Ocho.

Very entertaining for all us horse holders along the wall...

Blood would flow from the bite marks on my inner cheeks that day. Thankfully we eventually discovered a device called an "E4" that sets such things to right in no time flat. Without one of those in your kit, you are doomed.

[Entropy]

Para two: "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."

Then he goes on to explain its abuse and misuse, which - were it not for that initial polite caveat of a thesis statement - some might mistakenly interpret as an attack on those who are doing so. I suspect his point is as you say it is - his arguments clearly lead me to that conclusion - and that's a point with which we'd all agree (but with which many - or someone? - might be highly offended).

I don't think we need worry about an outright ban. The more likely solution is a PowerPoint in every inbox explaining the right and wrong uses of PowerPoint.

Yeah, I noticed that and just saw it as a rhetorical vehicle to make his point and maybe grab a few more readers with the opening paragraphs.


Schmelap,

Forgive the link to my own site, but I could not resist.

A PowerPoint Briefing About Why PowerPoint is Bad for Briefing

That's excellent, but what I really wanted is a decision brief on whether future decision briefs will continue to use Powerpoint XP or 2007. Also, I didn't like the color scheme or fonts - in the future please use a hot pink background with yellow lettering in comic sans to aid readability.

[Tom Odom]

Don't forget multiple builds for dramatic effect leading to a decision!

I once had a young author tell me --after I had taken his PPT show and turned it into a coherent article--that "power point" was "his canvas" and that he could not "work" in mere Word.

Personally I believe CPOF and Google Earth have had similar effects on planning, assessments, and situational understanding but hey, I am a dinosaur. I still think one should be able to read a map and use a compass.

Tom

[Entropy]

Don't forget multiple builds for dramatic effect leading to a decision!

I once had a young author tell me --after I had taken his PPT show and turned it into a coherent article--that "power point" was "his canvas" and that he could not "work" in mere Word.

Personally I believe CPOF and Google Earth have had similar effects on planning, assessments, and situational understanding but hey, I am a dinosaur. I still think one should be able to read a map and use a compass.

Tom

That reminds me of the GPS Nav system our family bought about six months ago. I've noticed it made me lazy and dumb about how to get to different places since I didn't have to think about it, just follow along like a lemming (kind of like how my cell phone has made me lazy about remembering phone numbers). Now I only use the GPS on road trips to estimate time-of-arrival and to find specific stores/restaurants in unfamiliar terrain.

[Jason Port]

In the spirit of not repeating what has all been said, the one hammer statement is on point. However, I am seeing the other Office tools be used in similar fashion. Access Databases and Excel files are being created because we have failed to keep systems up with the enemies pace. Excel is being used for funding because we don't know how to make work compute formulas. Microsoft designed each tool for a purpose, and the DoD has taken each and whored it to the maximum extent possible.

The most important thing we could do is demonstrate to commanders how Office could work effectively, and then enforce it. Imagine - read aheads in Word, briefings in PowerPoint, and computations in Excel - Incredible.

[Schmedlap]

That's excellent, but what I really wanted is a decision brief on whether future decision briefs will continue to use Powerpoint XP or 2007.

That has been pushed to next quarter. You didn't get the slides showing the changes to the long-range calendar?

[IntelTrooper]

I hate to add to the war stories, but since we're sharing...

Every week I had to update a set of PP slides which included, among other things, color-coding our relationship with our supported command (?!). I don't know, sir, but I think we're "Green" on pointless.