Subscribe[Army Lt. General David] McKiernan had another, smaller but nagging issue: He couldn't get Franks to issue clear orders that stated explicitly what he wanted done, how he wanted to do it, and why. Rather, Franks passed along PowerPoint briefing slides that he had shown to Rumsfeld: "It's quite frustrating the way this works, but the way we do things nowadays is combatant commanders brief their products in PowerPoint up in Washington to OSD and Secretary of Defense…In lieu of an order, or a frag [fragmentary order], or plan, you get a bunch of PowerPoint slides…[T]hat is frustrating, because nobody wants to plan [img] against PowerPoint slides."(Here's briefing standards *.ppt, clipart, and some earlier governmental [pdf] uses of PowerPoint [Cryptome], FAS, along with one from ABCNEWS making the case against Iran.) Also, here are previously related MeFi PowerPoint threads on the Downing Street Memos and the Columbia disaster.
Near the end of his presentation, an Army lieutenant colonel who was giving a briefing showed a slide describing the Pentagon's plans for rebuilding Iraq after the war, known in the planners' parlance as Phase 4-C. He was uncomfortable with his material - and for good reason.
The slide said: "To Be Provided."
There are two basic forms of wall reading. The first form is primarily asynchronous and public. It includes billboards, road signs, posters, airport arrival and departure signs, building exit maps, you-are-here maps, storefront signs and the like. The second group is vocally glossed wall reading. It includes teachers pointing at blackboards, coaches explaining play diagrams, generals barking orders over military maps, museum tour guides pointing to painting signs, art directors caressing new advertising campaign boards on flip charts. Powerpoint is not only a member of this second group, but it has virtually colonized it. While it is often assumed that Powerpoint slides simply help the readers/listeners follow the speaker's argument, this and other types of vocally glossed wall reading actually serve a very different function. The slides externalize the truth—here it is, here's the truth—and allow the audience to analyze it separately but simultaneously, incorporating what the speaker is saying about that same truth. The slide is not simply an opinion; it is a written artifact on a wall owned in common by all in the room—even if, as is usually the case, it is the speaker who originally wrote the words.(This is from a talk I heard him give at Seybold Boston in '99. It's no longer directly available, so this is the Google Cache version. It's a really fascinating read. )
It is for this reason that it is considered a faux pas for the speaker to simply read the slides. The strategy of reading the slides attempts to make private what is now perceived to be public. It is also for this reason—and I'm sure you're all aware of this by this point—that for the speaker to simply read directly from notes without extemporizing while the slides click by is also considered a faux pas. Reading from notes conveys the message that the speaker is not commenting on the commonly held written artifact but is rather reporting on some previous private musings. Actually, this is a mistake which I have made.
Like all rituals, Powerpoint presentations arose from precursor rituals—shifting them, enlarging them, engulfing them. What was once minor, off to the side, primitive, not critical, has become central, expansive, elaborate, sophisticated, and core. Such shifts can occur for social, political, economic, and technical reasons. The technical shift in this case was the personal computer. The driving social need leading to the rise of Powerpoint was, of course, corporate communications. Those of you who create product know how mindbending it is, how many thousands of people and how many scores of companies it takes to put a single white button on your shirt. To achieve this remarkable feat requires more than just communication—though it certainly requires that. It actually requires common purpose and direction, not just to get the white button to your shirt, but also to make a profit on it.
As a result, corporate workers swim in a thick soup of communications, ranging from voice mail to e-mail, from brochures to video conferences, from annual reports to Web pages, from memos to meetings to hallway gossip. Each form takes a different amount of non-trivial time to construct and consume. What Powerpoint accomplishes is not time efficiency. Powerpoint slides are actually quite time consuming and difficult to produce; and the information contained in a 45-minute Powerpoint presentation can usually be contained in a short memo. What Powerpoint dramatically contributes is a unifying sense of community and direction, much as a war dance intensifies the fighting power of a tribe about to go to war. If everyone is focused in the same direction, it's far more likely that the white button will get onto your shirt.
It is just plain stupid to use projected slides (i.e., visuals) used in a live presentation as a document to be read later by people who did not see the talk. Surely the military knows the difference between on-screen visuals used in a live presentation and important documents and reports to be read and referenced in the field.... which is one of my pet peeves w.r.t. PowerPoint. I have written from scratch and given relatively few PPT presentations. I've given a lot of presentations; relatively few in PPT. When I have given them, and when they were to be available post facto as handouts, I've made a point of pasting detailed notes into the Notes section. Otherwise, they're pretty much useless as post facto documents.
Don't be mad just because I get to speak my mind to my boss. Try manning up and telling yours when his ideas are dumb; you might find yourself actually being productive and appreciated.I did, and then I had to fire myself. I can't have myself speaking to me that way. As the boss, maybe I'll order myself to do a lengthy presentation in PowerPoint as punishment.
...just like I refuse to use Comic Sans.Bravo! I routinely uninstall that godforsaken font from every computer I use. I hate that font with the heat of a thousand suns.
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My CO would work up her quarterly training brief, then we'd sit around, fingers poised over the mouse, because sometimes the battalion commander would decide that fade transitions were preferable to wipe transitions five minutes before the briefing was scheduled, and everyone in the battalion had to change lest they get a dressing down.
Hateful.
There was a brief ray of hope in the late '90s when Hugh Shelton declared war on the PowerPoint Rangers, but I guess it didn't stick.
posted by mph at 11:39 AM on August 17, 2006