Presentations in Action - Jerry Weissman [31]
Ms. Bumiller then went beyond the slide itself to discuss the chronic use and abuse of PowerPoint in the military, quoting two other senior officers: Marine Corps General James N. Mattis, the Joint Forces commander, who said, “PowerPoint makes us stupid,” and Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, a veteran of combat in Iraq, who said, “It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control.”
PowerPoint is a constant source of chatter in the blogosphere and the presentation trade, all of it a loud hue and cry against the software in general and its effect on the military in particular. In the vanguard of the attackers is Thomas X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel, who wrote a widely distributed article, called “Dumb-Dumb Bullets,” first published in Armed Forces Journal. He complained:
PowerPoint is not a neutral tool—it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making .... Instead of forcing officers to learn the art of summarizing complex issues into coherent arguments, staff work now places a premium on slide building.F39.3
As you’ve read throughout this section, I am in violent agreement with Mr. Hammes and all the other critics about the abuses of PowerPoint. My plea for simplicity in design is echoed by a cottage industry of consultants, coaches, designers, and authors. Chief among these are Garr Reynolds, whose Presentation Zen imaginatively applies the principles of Japanese minimalism to graphic design, and Nancy Duarte, whose slide:ology offers a wealth of simple but creative ways to display ideas visually.
However, I depart from counseling simplicity in the case of the Pentagon’s complex Afghanistan slide and side with those military commanders who see it as genius. The spaghetti-like image effectively illustrates the complexity of that situation. PowerPoint’s most basic function is to illustrate, not to make coherent arguments—that is the role of the presenter. Nor is it to document—that is the role of a text file. The one and only role of PowerPoint is to show what the presenter is telling.
One of the most illustrative and effective slides I have ever seen in the business world was for the IPO road show of a computer company. It was a single slide that showed the logos of the company’s customers—all 600 of them—an image to loosen the purse strings of any skeptical investor.
Sometimes, More Is More.
Section III. Delivery Skills: Actions Speak Louder Than Words
40. The Art of Conversation: Eye Contact and Interaction Start at Infancy
A book called The Art of Conversation states its case very clearly in its subtitle: A Guided Tour of a Neglected Pleasure. As the Publishers Weekly blurb notes, author Catherine Blyth’s main focus ranges from “small talk to pillow talk, from riotous raconteurs to crashing bores, from flattery to false smiles.”
But Ms. Blyth goes beyond the frivolous to touch on some of the more substantive aspects of human communication. One of them is at the origin of interpersonal exchange. She looks back at how parents relate to infants and says:
“Goo-goo” is the most important word in the world, because when parents coo at babies, they’re educating them in what behaviorists call “musical companionship.” As babies goo-goo back, they absorb timing, taking turns, tone, coordination, gestures, facial expressions, storytelling—the orchestra of instruments by which emotions are transmitted and relationships formed.F40.1
Ms. Blyth’s description of early relationships resonates with that of another book called Bonding: Building the Foundations of Secure Attachment and Independence, by neonatologists Marshall H. Klaus, John H. Kennell, and Phyllis H. Klaus. Although Bonding is more than two decades old, it has become a classic for new parents. In it, the doctors report on their studies of the behavior of mothers and their newborn infants. One of the primary dynamics they explored is eye-to-eye contact. Marshall Klaus noted:
The visual system provides