PPT makes a good box to tick off and gets abused in that way. It facilitates getting away with little thought. But it can be a powerful tool, weaving all supporting media into a solid spine.
Firn (who almost sounds now like bulleting his way through)
Back to my presentation
The problem is a focus on briefings instead of discussion and direction
Many on this forum have correctly identified that it is lazy thinking, not PowerPoint, that is the problem. PowerPoint is the symptom. The underlying problem is the way we train commanders to sit back and listen to watered down, consensus staff input then adjudicate between two relatively equal options (with a third, throw-away option included to be an easy kill). This gets great reviews at Staff College and our Training Centers, but does not comport with what works in the field, as we have seen for now almost 9 years.
What works there is commanders, who are out seeing the battlefield, who, frankly, know more about the enemy and friendly situation than most of the the staff in the TOC and are the most experienced Soldiers in their unit, developing the plans ICW the staff -- the staff can work through the details to make the plan work, but the successful Commanders have their fingerprints on the plan from the beginning. Not in a dictatorial way that stifles good ideas, but in a positive, focused way that puts the onus on the commander to lead.
Somehow we have come to a process that rewards commanders who sit back waiting to be "fed." Let the staff churn, burn long hours, then hang it out there for the commander to chop off when the commander should have had an idea of what he was looking for before the staff began.
We teach a process tailor-made for PowerPoint and all the attendant problems. The more time the staff puts into fancy builds, transition effects and extraneous sounds, the more some recipients like it -- despite the debilitating effect of those non-value-added features have on the other things that the staff should be doing -- which includes sleeping.
Scapegoating PowerPoint misses the real problem. The problems are our planning and thinking processes that stifle discussion and thought.
Not scapegoats, but the guilty!Originally Posted by Charles Martel
I'll admit to this making me extremely angry. How does this twaddle get any amount of serious consideration. Please just read the explanation. It this is what "Systems thinking" gets you, it's more worthless than I realised, when applied to warfare.
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Hey Wilf,
Personally, the only major problem I've ever had with systems theory is its serious limitations. When the two are combined in a ppt, however, there are some problems. Did you notice that Moynihan stated:
That's an interesting assumption, that the default mode of thought is linear, and I don't believe it is borne out by the data. It may be the situationally appropriate default mode (by training), but it isn't the default for the species, and this has some implications for the use, comprehension and value of systems thinking.Unlike linear thinking, the default mode of the human brain, system dynamics thinks about repercussions and occasionally unintended consequences of actions.
For one thing, systems theory operates in a minimum of 4 dimensions (go back to von Bertalenffy), but powerpoint rarely is able to present more than 3. When we are dealing with interacting human systems, each node (person) is also input and output capable and, just to make things interesting, is totally able to construct almost any picture of their operating environment that they wish. We can probabilistically "predict" patterns, and make interpretations based on those predictions, but they aren't a "vision of the future". Unfortunately, powerpoint presentations have a biasing effect that influences how what is presented is interpreted (from a probabilistic to a predictive).
To my mind, systems theory is OK, as far as it goes, but it has some serious limitations that are exacerbated by powerpoint. Just my $.02
Cheers,
Marc
ps. Wilf, love the FB rant against the overuse of "complexity"!
Sic Bisquitus Disintegrat...
Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.
Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies,
Senior Research Fellow,
The Canadian Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, NPSIA
Carleton University
http://marctyrrell.com/
Systems Theory may be OK, but it seems to fall down in Warfare. The real issue with the slide is that it presented no insight and added no value. What it really said (as with people saying Complex) is that those looking at the problem do not understand it.To my mind, systems theory is OK, as far as it goes, but it has some serious limitations that are exacerbated by powerpoint. Just my $.02
Ignorance or unfamiliarity, does not make something "complex" or anything like that which the slide attempted to portray.
Seems to upset some people, but I guess it's complicated....ps. Wilf, love the FB rant against the overuse of "complexity"!
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
Is that a problem with Systems Theory specifically, or a more general issue with transitions between theory and practice?
Excellent question!!! There IMO, a huge disparity between what people theorise about warfare and what people do in practice.
As concerns system theory, having read "Pursuit of Excellence," and read about it else where, it seems to add nothing and in fact makes things more complicated than could ever be useful. IMO, it does not aid understanding
Infinity Journal "I don't care if this works in practice. I want to see it work in theory!"
- The job of the British Army out here is to kill or capture Communist Terrorists in Malaya.
- If we can double the ratio of kills per contact, we will soon put an end to the shooting in Malaya.
Sir Gerald Templer, foreword to the "Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya," 1958 Edition
24 Aug 10: Outside View: PowerPoints 'R' Us
27 Aug 10: Colonel Kicked Out of Afghanistan for Anti-PowerPoint RantI have been assigned as a staff officer to a headquarters in Afghanistan for about two months. During that time, I have not done anything productive. Fortunately little of substance is really done here, but that is a task we do well.
We are part of the operational arm of the International Security Assistance Force commanded by U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus. It is composed of military representatives from all the NATO countries, several of which I cannot pronounce.
Officially, IJC was founded in late 2009 to coordinate operations among all the regional commands in Afghanistan. More likely it was founded to provide some general a three-star command. Starting with a small group of dedicated and intelligent officers, IJC has successfully grown into a stove-piped and bloated organization, top-heavy in rank. Around here you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a colonel.
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.....
Consider it a new version of death by PowerPoint. The NATO command in Afghanistan has fired a staff officer who publicly criticized its interminable briefings, its over-reliance on Microsoft’s slide-show program, and what he considered its crushing bureaucracy.
Army Col. Lawrence Sellin, a 61-year old reservist from New Jersey who served in Afghanistan and Iraq prior to this deployment, got the sack Thursday from his job as a staff officer at the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command in Kabul. The hammer fell barely 48 hours after United Press International ran a passionate op-ed he wrote to lament that “little of substance is really done here.” He tells Danger Room, “I feel quite rather alone here at the moment.”.....
COL Sellin is my hero for the day. And he is a clever writer too.
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again." Gen. Nathanael Greene
Roger that!
Note the solution to the actual problems he cites won't get fixed and that he gets fired and a wrist slap for doing what's right.
Sad...
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