http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?no_interstitial
I have to admit – that chart is actually easy to comprehend compared to the example printed over 20 years ago in the book the Experts Speak. That was a Military View-Graph that consisted on acronym-filled boxes connected by a spaghetti of lines. If anything, this one – with actual words, not to mention color-coding, is a breath of clarity by comparison.
This is my favorite part of that article:
Heh.
Professionals create presentations and wow their audience. Amateurs use Powerpoint and bow wow their audience.
Even if slides wow, they don’t usually convey much information. That medium does not lend itself well to subtlety. It also promotes the use of sentence fragments and make it easy to not provide key information. The example given in the article is classic:
I recall a study about a decade ago that demonstrated that pre-made powerpoint slides did not fair well against an overhead projector. Speakers who used the projector to write down key points during a lecture were able to convey more information which was retained better than the speakers using slides.
I think the key to why Powerpoint is so popular is laziness. My supervisors often wanted bullet points on slides they could pass on directly to upper management. It makes sense that upper management does not have the time to process all the detail of everything that is going on, but middle and especially lower management should have a deeper understanding, if for no other reason that they should be more aware of what business priorities are than the techs who do the nitty gritty configuration and support. All too often all they want is the three bullet summary.
The problem with that quote from the article is that it assumes the author had no idea who he was briefing. I could easily use that bullet in briefing a JTF commander, and there would be no doubt as to who would need to take that for action. In that context, it would not be vague.
The problem with the article is that it bashes ppt, but doesn’t offer a viable solution or alternative. Do we get rid of it, and go back to overheads? White boards? Long, windy point papers with abstracts?
Powerpoint does dumb things down, but the good part is that, if done properly, it’s concise and transferable, with little risk of concepts getting lost or twisted afterwards. And if a superior up the chain wants more meat, he can always grab the author and get the details. Do we use it too much? Probably. Is there a better way to do business? Not that I’ve seen.
I loved that article.
And I hate Powerpoint.
According to another article (the essay Dumb-Dumb Bullets), what they used to do is write a two page summary of the subject which the other guys could read at their leisure and had time to think about, before they went to the meeting to discuss it and make a decision.
Lucky you. I write 40 page Powerpoints supported by several whitepapers for my management to make them happy. Then I distill that down into 12 page Powerpoints for their bosses. Those distill down into four pages for their bosses. We tend to be guilty of overanalyzing.
Powerpoint has its uses - its far too overused for things that should really be written in complete sentences.
(Sounds like someone discovered Tufte).
That’s complete bullshit. Consider the evidence:
*Can be subtle
*No sentence fragments
*Talk about key information
*Next slide
I think “No sentence fragments.” should be a mandatory part of all collections of Fumblerules.
PowerPoint is a tool; nothing more. If folks don’t know how to use it, they come across like a tool - but that’s not PowerPoint’s fault. Yes it is, as they say, a fairly unforgiving medium. But don’t hate the tool, hate the writer.
Clarity in communications is frustratingly low in all forms of, in my case, business communications (vs. military, etc.). Email, memos, PPT, whatever - I spend a lot of my time coaching my direct reports and others in proper, structured communication across many media.
An interesting question would be: how much training have the PPT’ers you all rail against had in Structured Communication? Management Consulting may have a whole lot going against it, but the training one receives in Boot Camp and over the first 5 years of your career in Structured Communication, Structured Problem Solving and Project Management is basically a post-grad degree in Business Management and Execution. An essential difference-maker. I use each pretty much every day as one of the leaders of my company.
I don’t see how that is lucky. Personally, I would much rather do all that. At least then someone other than me has seen all 40 pages worth of information. My supervisor would not read anything that had paragraphs and did not want anything other than the shortest executive summary to be written at all.
Professional management consultant here. The limitations of Powerpoint is that it can only convey information as intelligent as you put into it. I get what the article is saying. There is definitely a tendency to use Powerpoint to lend excessive credibility to questionable conclusions. In fact, the Partner I report to in my firm frequently asks me to tear apart the questionable conclusions his people put in slides that are supposed to go out to clients.
That is f*cking hilarious. I may have to bookmark that.
Isn’t that true of any communications medium? 
From OP’s cite, here’s a quote that seemed surprising:
It often means we don’t do any work, we just analyze and refine our analysis. It isn’t exactly a value add. Sometimes four slides of Powerpoint bullets and “trust me to do my own damn job” would enable you to actually get things accomplished with a reasonable amount of headcount. Instead of having your headcount write 40 page whitepapers.
Exactly. PowerPoint is merely a vehicle for revealing that your management structure is fucked up. That’s not PowerPoint’s fault.
Unfortunately in my company, PowerPoint has become the defacto standard for communicating complex ideas. Instead of having a call with key stakeholders to discuss and gain support for a project proposal, often someone will ask me to create a slide deck so they can “socialize it”. Urrggh.
So let me get this straight - I’m going to spend 2 hours distilling a complex idea into 10 slides, and hope that everyone somehow gets it, rather than get everyone on the phone for an hour or so, and just, uh, I don’t know. . . TALK ABOUT IT?
PowerPoint is designed to provide a backdrop in a 10±foot interface environment, to accompany a knowledgeable and engaging speaker. It’s a presentation aid, not a communication medium like some would like to believe.