Apr29
PowerPoint Rangers and Ninjas and Generals - Oh My! posted by Rick Howard
Filed in: PowerPoint Ranger
I have been looking back through some of my previous blogs these past few weeks and I just happened to notice that I seemed to be on a minor rant about how security personnel present security information (in this blog and this blog). I told myself that I would pick another topic this week to avoid seeming like a broken record. Then, this story popped up in the New York Times called "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint." It is about how some of the leaders in the US military hate the use of PowerPoint as the default way to convey information up and down the chain of command. This quote sums the article well:"The amount of time expended on PowerPoint, the Microsoft presentation program of computer-generated charts, graphs and bullet points, has made it a running joke in the Pentagon and in Iraq and Afghanistan."
According the article, most junior officers fill their time building slide decks for one meeting or another, with many affectionately referring to them as PowerPoint Rangers. (Full disclosure: When I was in the service, I was a qualified PowerPoint Ranger myself. Since I retired, I have upgraded my skills to PowerPoint Ninja.)
I love the New York Times quotes from the generals (especially the McMaster quote):
"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."-- Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster
"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."-- General Stanley A. McChrystal referring to this slide that tries to convey the complexity of the Afghanistan war (I want to meet the Captain that put that slide together - he must have had a lot of time on his hands).
"PowerPoint makes us stupid."-- Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps.
It seems that these military leaders are of like mind with Doctor Edward Tufte.
From my blog at the end of March:
"You will be interested to know that Dr. Tufte hates PowerPoint; at least the default way that most people use it: Title, 3-5 bullets of text, spinning doughnuts that have nothing at all to do with the presentation. In his seminar, Dr. Tufte does not use it. His famous example-- how NASA's engineers might have failed to prevent the Challenger Space Shuttle catastrophe in 1986 because a badly designed slide deck did not convince NASA leadership to scrub the launch-- is bone chilling."
Alas, PowerPoint is not to blame here. Presentation software, like PowerPoint and other software packages are merely presentation tools. Where the military, NASA, the commercial sector and, of course, the security community fail is how we all use the tool.
For what is PowerPoint good? It is good for conveying ideas to a large group of people - it is actually quite good at that.
For what is it not good? Summarizing very complex ideas - at least in its default use (reams of slides filled with indented bullet lists). Presenters can use the tool for good summaries, but the creator needs to back up the work with a longer narrative. This is similar to what we do at iDefense with our written products that cover the same topic at different lengths: Long Papers, Minis, Executive Summaries and One-Page Bullet Lists.
Where we all have failed is using the tool as the only vehicle to construct an original thought. PowerPoint has no method that I know of to convey subtlety or complexity; indeed, its creators did not intend for it to do so. I have come to believe that most PowerPoint decks should point back to a larger body of work or should accompany a resident expert. In most cases, the deck should not stand alone. How many times have you requested a copy of the slides used for a briefing that you thought was outstanding, but by the time you got around to reading them again, you found that you could not remember why you thought they were so good?
The bottom line is that many people are tempted to use PowerPoint as their only vehicle for organizing their thoughts. As General Mattis says, that "makes us stupid." Here is my recommendation for all the security geeks out there. If you are trying to convey your idea, before you resort to slide decks, write it out. Talk to your friends about it. Draw it on the white board or a handy bar napkin or your passed-out buddy's bald head. When done, write it out again and look for holes in your thinking. When you are done with all of that, you might be ready to pull out the PowerPoint program and work on your Ranger tab.
Actually, the slide that General McChrystal denounced in the New York Times article is the perfect slide that the presenter should have used. With one slide, General McChrystal instantly understood how complex the Afghanistan problem is. If that were the author's intent, then hoorah - the meeting would have been over! Doctor Tufte would be proud.
