But
it is not sour grapes. True, it took
me a while to feel comfortable with PowerPoint,
but the more comfortable I got the more distanced from it I became. This is a chronicle
of why and how I have sustained my not-too-fond feelings of .ppt.
One of the earliest interactions between the head of the company I work for and
me started off OK, but descended into unsatisfactory territory quite fast. When
asked what plans I have for doing the task assigned to me, I started detailing,
as is my wont, to enable a reasonable level of comprehension. But he stopped me
short: “You have to learn to speak in bullet points!”
That
is precisely the moment I started hating bullet points, and PowerPoint which has descended into
bullet points and their ilk – bubbles, 256 colors, fade outs etc. If there is
one characteristic that defines PowerPoint,
it is its inability to add value to information. OK, I have been too harsh – PowerPoint and also bullet points do
help in capsulizing but it is most often taken to extremes where the purpose of
elucidation is lost.
On
top of it, PowerPoint helps score
points, particularly when you have a selling job at hand. I am cynical enough
to acknowledge the truth in the refrain, “There is money in poverty.” Almost 10
years ago, in Volume III, Issues 5 & 6, 2002 of The Little Magazine, I
saw a page that looked to me to be a pictorial of this idea, of money and
poverty going together. I did some touch up to the page, given below; please take
in the whole, yet focus on the last frame, which is all mine.
While
the picture cannot be a PowerPoint
presentation, the statements in the frames are precisely the instructions one
gets from whoever is going to make the presentation. This is one reason for my
hating PowerPoint.
That
was in 2002. Fast forward to 2010 [1]. It is all about how PowerPoint wastes time and confuses decision makers, the precise
opposites of what it is supposed to enable – time efficiency and focused
decision making.
Look
at the .ppt slide below. “Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the leader of the
American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was shown a PowerPoint slide in Kabul
last summer.” The good military man’s response: “When we understand that slide,
we’ll have won the war.” I do not know whether the US actually won that war and
accomplished all it wanted to in that region of the world. But surely, the
general and his men must not have figured out that slide yet!
“PowerPoint makes us stupid.” Amen to
that. But, what is perhaps more relevant is PowerPoint
thinks you are stupid, stupid enough to want 256 colors, dozens of “bullet
points” and so on, just to aid comprehension. Come to think of it, it is more
or less proven that you need no more than four colors in a map to ensure that
no two regions sharing a border are of the same color. Go figure, then, the 256
you are offered!
“Some
problems in the world are not bullet-izeable.” I love such free-wheeling use of
one’s native tongue, no reference to dictionary or a thesaurus! My only grouse
on the above statement is if you can figure which problems are bullet-izable,
then there may not be a real need to bullet point it. Basically then, bullet
points fall between stools.
In
the military, the writer says, .ppt “ties up junior officers.” I can vouch for
that in my office, far from being a military outfit. I, though at best a middle
level manager ten years ago, avoided being stuck with that charge to a very
large extent. I was not a “systemizer” but a “satisficer”. If I felt the
substance in my slide – quietly ignoring the aesthetics aspects – will get the
job done, I took it as is. But, not
so my immediate boss! Unless he wasted the time of his junior officers,
including me (perhaps not realizing he is doing so), he would not be satisfied.
His satisfaction lay in engaging his juniors. Period.
But
things are changing, at least in my office. We do not have now the separate
unit which went under the name, “Presentation Cell”. I do my own presentations,
for the most part, and I do not want to waste my time. Our clients used to ask
for PowerPoint presentations of the
proposals we submit (perhaps they are not literate enough beyond bullet points).
I believe this has come down. Even the fewer presentations we do make are more
substantive rather than style heavy.
I
do not know what the situation is in the US military; but of my more immediate
concern is the trajectory of Indian military. There is one redeeming aspect to PowerPoint though, as per senior
military officers: “[T]he program does come in handy when the goal is not
imparting information, as in briefing for reporters.”
What
is the civilian version of this advantage? Well, presentations at seminars,
conferences, colloquiums etc. Yes, I do take a little more pain in preparing my
presentations in front of outsiders – more effort is needed to make them deaf,
dumb and mute!
All
said, I hate PowerPoint but for
selfish reasons I do not want it to go extinct.
Raghuram
Ekambaram
References
1.
We
Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint, Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, August 26, 2010 (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint.html?_r=0).
3 comments:
I use power poits for effect
and say whatever..no body notices it..LOL
DS sir,
You are saying this for effect, but without PowerPoint! You definitely are not the style-over-substance kind, I know. In Americanese, you are a meat and potato guy and do not go for salads, croissants and such!
RE
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