But the dream of networked lightning bolts and ellipses, the vision portrayed on many PowerPoint presentations, remains some way off.
— Damian Kemp, Caitlin Harrington, and Denis Fedutinov, "Removing the human factor: air forces eye unmanned bombers," Jane's International Defence Review, May 2008, p. 50
I apologize for having failed to write regularly, as I was reminded by a friend over dinner in the District of Columbia this week. So, today, I'll write a bit about writing and speaking. Another friend just today sent me (and the distribution) a note about his recent attendance at one of Ed Tufte’s lectures, describing it as “a life-changing experience”. I won’t go that far, but I do want to second the endorsement. I have most of Tufte's books, and finally last year attended one of his lectures. I've taught a few one-hour classes at universities on how to present, and each time I've drawn significantly on his work. I have some disagreements with his approach, but by-and-large I like what he is trying to do. I particularly remember this line, which I got again in that message today:
[Tufte’s] theory is this: you didn't suddenly become stupid because you came to work. Why is it (he asks) that you can process nearly 5,000 pieces of data in 10 minutes over your cornflakes (the average single sports page box score), but then are only given four numbers on a slide two hours later in a Powerpoint brief?
I’ve been following this debacle for some time. I’ll note that I do like one thing about B.H. Obama's national security advisor, Richard Danzig. When he was Bill Clinton's navy secretary, he banned PowerPoint from his office, telling the press that there were only two reasons for using briefing charts: "if field conditions are changing rapidly or if the audience is functionally illiterate."
As a consultant, I do a lot of briefings, and I write a lot of papers. I've written a few books as well. I don't hate briefing slides, though I make them, as does the Goracle, with Apple's Keynote instead. Unlike Tufte, I don't completely blame them for the loss of two space shuttles, though over-reliance on that sort of "thinking" may have played a role. Since I don't presume that my clients — who run some fairly meaningful industrial enterprises — are functionally illiterate, I always resist writing reports in the form of briefing slides. To do otherwise would be insulting: these folks are neither so distracted nor dull that they can't sit down and read a five-to-ten page report about things that are important to their businesses.
When I do brief, I don't write "decks"; I deliver briefings. The charts may be important, but the writing is merely supportive of what one is saying. If you want to distribute something, it's best to write it down in coherent college-level prose, or to record your narrative. We all have computers for that.
If you have the time to read Barbara Minto's book on business writing, I strongly recommend that as well. There are other ways to write effectively, but her framework is an important one to know.
That said, one really must take the time to read this stuff to understand it. It's dispiriting the number of times I've heard the names Tufte and Minto mouthed by people who clearly have no idea what their books contain. For week in, week out, throughout this business, I still see the same parade of slides with mice type, turgid prose, meandering arguments, missing data, faulty logic, and cartoonish clipart.
Lightning bolts. Ellipses. Yeesh. We can all do better.
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