Professor T X Hammes wrote an article for Joint Forces Quarterly about why Microsquish PowerPoint Presentations are a bad forum for decision making.♠ Someone then made a PowerPoint presentation of the article.
I think the first Gulf War was the first time that PowerPoint like presentations became a tool in the decision making process, although vu-graphs had been around for a long time, and their use was even taught at Staff College, when I attended in 1974.
Regards — Cliff
♠ No, I didn't read the article, I reviewed the PowerPoint presentation.
Scott McNealy, while president of Sun Microsystems, banned the use of PowerPoint entirely within his company for many of the same reasons. (Also citing the person-centuries of tail-chasing effort to manipulate clip-art as opposed to focus on the points intended to be communicated).
ReplyDeleteI still toil in one of the many circles of PowerPoint hell that exist all over high-tech industries, and I would concur 100% in the paper's observation that though it makes a pretty useful briefing tool, it makes a horrible decision-making platform, even though folks raised on its use can rarely understand the distinction.