PowerPointification of military briefings

As a follow-up to the post below, I would like to point you to an interview between host Leonard Lopate of New York Public Radio and the author of Fiasco, Thomas Ricks.

At the very end of the interview (go to the 30:00 min mark), Ricks talks about the problem of communicating with bulleted briefing slides. As he says, the typical PPT slide-as-document used in briefings is something that is confusing because, as a document, "...it [slide] tends to lack verbs and connecting thought." Says Ricks:

"One of the things I admired most about Col. H.R. McMaster  — [one of the] smaller things, but it pleased me as a writer —  he banned PowerPoint in his command. If you wanted to talk [about] something, if you wanted to make a briefing, you were to write it out in plain, understandable English that had verbs and connective tissue inside it."

Imagine: a document with clear, well-written, understandable English with verbs, and a cohesive logical flow. Anything is possible...

Download the MP3 here, or go to the site here for more listening options.

Watch the Jon Stewart interview with Thomas Ricks (3 parts) on the Comedy Central site.

Unrelated to PPT and military briefings per se — but related to visual communication and presentations in general — many of you will find the interview with computer scientist, Jaron Lanier, on "Why Videocommunication Didn't Catch On" quite interesting. Scroll down this page to see the links to this interview on the same Leonard Lopate show.

Comments

[Ellis]

"He band".
He banned, surely?

[Dick Rowan]

In my mind, Tufte had the final word on ppt.

Bashing the medium is diversionary. At the root of it, many of us have nothing new or meaningful to add to the dialog. We have yet to learn how to think critically.

Whether we use bullet points, sentences, or even mime...it does not matter.

[hotsauce]

Most people I have seen putting together terrible PowerPoint presentations, or even worse, distributing them as documents, were not any worse educated than businesspersons or engineers of old.

I think the problem is that PowerPoint became "professional". This means that it is acceptable, even desired, to use PowerPoint in a business setting. Very few distinguish between proper presentational use and use as a detailed document.

Given the equally "professional" options of using PowerPoint with its soundbite-ease generation, or a wordprocessor document that would require significant writing (and probably research), the choice to many busy workers became clear: spend 15 minutes dropping in bullet points, and be done with it (tragically, on to the next PowerPoint document).

PowerPoint has made shoddy, shallow communication professional.

Even worse, the presenter no longer knows the material either. I've seen many middle managers have different people write different slides, pull them into one pointless document, and present simply by reading directly from the screen. Audiences have learnt not to ask questions because it is painfully clear the presenter does not know the material beyond what is on the screen.

Hence, "Can't make the presentation, send me the slides". Ugh.

[Dr Rahul Tandon]

Interesting