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.
"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.
I'll admit it. I am a fan boy for Dr. Edward Tufte, professor emeritus
of political science, statistics and computer science at Yale. In my
opinion, he is the world's leading expert on how to display complex data
in a visual form. When I learned
last week that President Obama had appointed him to advise the Recovery
Accountability and Transparency Board, I was elated. The board's
mission is to monitor the way the US Government is spending the $787
billion stimulus package. There is not a better person for the job.
I ran into Dr. Tufte almost a decade ago when I was still in the
service. I was running the Army's Computer Emergency Response Team at
the time and we were struggling with how to convey the complex concepts
of network defense, network offense and network exploitation to Army
leadership; mostly to generals who had spent their entire Army careers
leading infantrymen, tankers and artillerymen into battle. These guys
are smart but they do not spend a lot of time in the land of Ones and
Zeros. I needed help. A friend of mine suggested Dr. Tufte's traveling seminar that just happened
to be in town that week.
I was stunned.
He spent eight hours running the audience through a historical
cornucopia of visual presentations, both bad and good, to illustrate
what works and what does not work. 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. His more
positive example-- how Dr. John Snow was able to determine the cause of
London's Cholera epidemic of 1854 by plotting the deaths on a city map
and learning that a communal water hole was the most likely source-- is
inspiring.
As a former soldier, I am most impressed with Charles Joseph Minard's chart depicting the
folly of invading into Russia. Tufte thinks that this is "[p]robably
the best statistical graphic ever drawn." On one chart, Minard displays
the gross losses of Napoleon's Army as it traveled to Moscow (Tan Line left to right) and
retreated back (Black Line right to left), the time frame it took, the weather and temperature that
accompanied the Army and the devastating personnel loss of doing
multiple river crossings in the dead of winter during a retreat. Germany's generals would have learned a lot from this chart before they tried and
failed to do the same thing in World War II.
For the price of the course, Dr. Tufte gives you all four of his books on the subject:
That night, I ran home to devour the books. Over the course of a few
evenings, I could do nothing but sift through example after example of
charts and displays from China's Railway Table of 1985 to Galileo's
proof that sun spots were not orbiting the sun, but were actually part
of it. I recommend all of the books highly and, of course, if you get
the chance to attend the seminar,
just do it. You will not be disappointed. I have since been back to
attend a second time.
You may be asking yourself just what does all of this have to do with
security. I am glad you asked.
Like most of you, I do a lot of presentations. In fact, I am a
PowerPoint Ninja. I have done so many presentations that I am getting
close to the magic 10,000 hour number that Malcolm Gladwell mentions in
his book, "Outliers: the Story of Success." I am usually educating an
audience on some security matter or trying to convince leadership to
give me something that I want. In both cases, how I present the
information is key to the success.
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. The fact is though that
PowerPoint, and its non-Microsoft equivalents, are tools of the trade
for most businesses and especially for security people. We need to
report status, explain technical issues and beg for money to start and
maintain pet projects. We all use a PowerPoint equivalent to do it. More
importantly, we as security professionals have to build the charts and
diagrams and graphs that we stuff into those slide decks and other
written reports to make our point. Even though Dr. Tufte hates
PowerPoint, his design guidelines will help you build better decks and
reports.
According to Tufte,
"Presentations largely stand or fall on the quality, relevance, and
integrity of the content. If your numbers are boring, then you've got
the wrong numbers. If your words or images are not on point, making them
dance in color won't make them relevant. Audience boredom is usually a
content failure, not a decoration failure."
He is now helping the government explain where it is spending the
stimulus money at recovery.org.
According to Newsweek,
"The result, as anyone who has spent significant amounts of time
scouring government Web sites for information will tell you, is perhaps
the clearest, richest interactive database ever produced by the American
bureaucracy."
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:
"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."
"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war."
"PowerPoint makes us stupid."
