Posted on 04/29/2010 6:19:38 AM PDT by SLB
IF TORQUEMADA HAD A LAPTOP. The Defense Department has declared war on PowerPoint. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who heads U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, told the New York Times, “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”
To prove his point, McChrystal’s been displaying an indecipherable slide of the United States’ military strategy. “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war,” he’s said.
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, Joint Forces commander, put it more succinctly: “PowerPoint makes us stupid.”
Kudos to military leaders for fighting the good fight, but is this a winnable war? It’s not as if the coma-inducing effects of slideshows haven’t been known for years. Back in January 2000, Peter Norvig created his classic send-up of PowerPoint, putting the Gettysburg Address into a stultifying set of bullet points. A 2003 New Yorker cartoon depicts the devil conferring with one of his minions: “I need someone well-versed in the art of torture — do you know PowerPoint?” A few years ago, a military forum posted “The Ballad of the PowerPoint Ranger,” a tribute to the downtrodden grunts who spend their time making slides for the brass. Graphic design guru Edward Tufte, now working for the Obama administration, has railed against PowerPoint for years.
And yet slideshows soldier on, as persistent as zombies in a horror movie. A Google search for “PowerPoint torture,” for example, produces plenty of discussion on the pain of sitting through slideshows — and no shortage of torturous PowerPoint presentations on the very subject of torture.
Is there any escape? Or is there still no better way to make your point at a meeting or conference?
Admittedly, PowerPoint has become snappier over the years, adding moving images and interactive capabilities. But it’s still the business equivalent of somebody’s vacation pictures. And military leaders make a valid point about the dangers of oversimplification. Our guess is that, for now, we’re pretty much stuck with it.
Meanwhile, for the sake of posterity, we’d like to create a sort of rogue’s gallery of bad presentations, a museum of slideshow atrocities. If you have a “good” one, include the link in the comments section below. Future generations will thank you.
That is great.
Did you write it?
The Power Point Creed
This is my PowerPoint. There are many like it but mine is 4.0.
My PowerPoint is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life.
My PowerPoint without me is useless. Without my PowerPoint, I am useless.
I must format my slides true. I must brief them better than the other staff section who are trying to out-brief me.
I must brief the impact on the Commander before he asks me. I will.
My PowerPoint and myself know that what counts in this war is not the number of slides, the colors of the highlights, nor the format of the bullets. We know that it is the new information that counts. We will brief only new information.
My PowerPoint is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its fonts, its accessories, its formats, and its colors.
I will keep my PowerPoint slides current and ready to brief. We will become part of each other. We will…
Before God I swear this creed. My PowerPoint and myself are defenders of my country. We are the masters of our subject. We are the saviors of my career.
So be it, until victory is America’s and there is no enemy, but peace (and the next exercise)!
Author Unknown
Here is the background:
History of the song.
It was written on July 4, 1996 in Taszar Hungary at about 3 am in the office of the ODCSENG USAREUR (FWD) during Operation Joint Endeavor/Guard. LTC Jorge Guiterriez was setting at a desk trying to get a slide brief done on his computer and had about 250 slides he was trying to reduce. It was just too much information for one brief of about 15 minutes. So he had to chop them down to the bare minimum. So the song was dedicated to him. I know because I was the one who wrote the song. Since that time it has been all over the world, and I take great pride in the song. I was the night Engineer TOC Operations Officer for COL Johnson. He was from the 130th Engineers in Germany. Our staff came from the 412th Engineer Command in Vicksburg, MS. I was just an E-6 at the time. We gave LTC Guiterriez his retirement party yesterday in Vicksburg, MS and I dedicated a part II to the song just for him at his retirement, along with the remaining staff from that operation. There are only two in the unit now from then, the rest that were there with us are gone to play in the sand.
MSG Steven W. Rowland
412th Engineer Command
10 March 2003
(Power Point Ranger)
Note that it was a consulting group that put that monstrosity together.
Years ago when I had to brief senior officers there were no PowerPoint slides so you had to build transparency sets. You learned the reason and meaning of the term “brief” in briefing. Also, most senior officers would cut you off at the knees and send you packing if you became long-winded and detailed when you were not asked to be.
In the college classes I teach when I use PowerPoints they are there to place the main points in front of them as I’m lecturing and the lectures should be no longer than 15-20 minutes. I never got much out of long lectures and students today don’t either. Unfortunately, many students don’t take notes anymore anyway and will stare like they’re watching TV regardless of any slides or not.
ping...
Bad presenter's use PPT to list out all their information using text primarily and then they stand there and read it to you.
I see bad presenter's probably 65% of the time.
Wow ... is this diagram available in a higher res version?
(the better to amuse my coworkers with)
That PPT that was presented to GEN McCrystal should never have made it that far.
That ppt, is an aggregate SOSA tool (system of systems analysis) that takes into account all of the PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Social, information and Infrastructure) model interactions and data flows.
Those aggregate models shold NEVER be presented to GO’s/FO’s like that.
Holy crap! no wonder he made that commentary.
bump for later
McChrystal’s probably one of those Apple zealots who just knee-jerk hate everything Microsoft. ;-)
Exactly. PPT is a tool, and those who use it incorrectly blame the tool itself.
PPT is a visual tool, and only slightly interactive. Human speech is a combination of auditory text, some visual gestures and speech inflection for illumination & clarification, and the highest levels of interactivity available.
Here’s a hint: if you type either a lot of text or just brief bullet points into a slide, and then proceed to regurgitate the text, your audience will walk away wishing to kill you.
Next time, create a half-hour of great discussion materials with just 2-3 slides by creating a handful of higly detailed diagrams & illustrations, animating then so that each starts with a very simple structure and builds up over time into a more complete picture of complexity, and when you present get up off your butt, use your voice and your hands and your facial gestures and a separate flip-board to communicate in any way your audience can understand.
Assuming a decent level of accuracy, there’s nothing wrong with that chart.
It’s usefulness is in showing complexity.
You’d brief it by saying something like:
I don’t expect or want you to actually read this chart. It’s up here to show the complexity of (whatever the subject matter is). We’ll go into detail as necessary in later charts.
And then you’d go on to the next chart.
“Those aggregate models shold NEVER be presented to GO’s/FO’s like that.”
Ah. The wrong info in the wrong format to the wrong audience.
Yes, clearly Powerpoint’s fault.
“And military leaders make a valid point about the dangers of oversimplification.”
And leaders also may be the ones who force you to oversimplify:
-— The briefing will last no longer than (whatever the time limit is)
-— The number of charts is limited to (whatever). (Doesn’t matter if you’d spend 30 seconds or two minutes on each chart. It’s the number that matters.)
-— The font will be such and such, the size will be such and such, you will have so much white space, and it doesn’t matter if all that prevents you from putting coherent blocks of info on one chart.
“Ah. The wrong info in the wrong format to the wrong audience.
Yes, clearly Powerpoint’s fault.”
No doubt. Perhaps even Bush’s fault as well........
LOL
I do IT training for a large company, 100,000+ employees. I am a certified professional trainer and have taught presentation skills for a number of years.
What I have seen is that FAR, FAR too many people use PowerPoint for everything and I think it’s because they have an almost Pavlovian response to being asked to speak at a meeting. They think speaking = PowerPoint. That they cannot get their point across without some sort of presentation. They think that way because bad habits have been drummed. What they need to understand is that the speaker or presenter is the focus of any speech or presentation. Not the tools. Not the flipchart. Not the overhead and certainly not the PowerPoint.
Unfortunately, most of these speakers use PowerPoint incorrectly. It’s meant as a visual aide. They use it in lieu of speaking themselves - so much so that many (at least at first) just read what the slide says aloud followed by “any questions”?
Breaking that habit only takes a few days. They need to see how PowerPoint is used correctly. They also need to see PowerPoint NOT used in situations where they’d naturally use it.
It goes back to the old saying - when you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Sometimes people need to be broken free from that shackle. When I teach about PowerPoint, that’s what I teach.
I'm not just reading the screen. My lecture isn't much different whether I'm writing it on the projector or narrating a PowerPoint. The difference is how the students react.
When students have to listen to me, process the words, and write them down, it leaves at least a bit of an imprint. I'm convinced that when they sit and watch a PowerPoint, the content disappears into a black hole.
“I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by doing Power Point for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard do Power Point for his country.”
-George S Patton
:-)
“When students have to listen to me, process the words, and write them down, it leaves at least a bit of an imprint.”
Agree totally. I have always felt that one-third the value of taking notes is being able to review them later, and two-thirds the value is in the actual taking of them.
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