How many SWJ writers can you spot in this article?

Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times tackles an issue of vital military importance: the pervasive use of PowerPoint. The article includes sound bytes from Gen. H.R. McMaster, Col. T.X. Hammes, and that helicopter guy that posts pictures of Megan Fox on his website.

Thanks to all the tweets that alerted me to the story just now.

Tom Ricks, what hath thou wrought?!

From today's "The Best Defense", regarding a TISS forum this past Friday:

[USMC General James] Mattis also spoke without any computer graphics. "The reason I didn't use PowerPoint is, I am convinced PowerPoint makes us stupid." I don't know if I'd go that far, but its absence of verbs does seem to me to emphasize aspirations without saying what actions we intend to take to realize them.

Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster, who also spoke at the conference, also took a pop at PowerPoint, saying that when combined with certain ill-advised metrics, it "is really dangerous."

This prompted Spencer Ackerman to sound off against, well, Microsoft in general. While the post was, well, a little ill-conceived, Ackerman does make some good points. He talks about using a program similar to Google Documents in order to collaboratively work on projects instead of systems like, say, AKO. It's something I've been toying with in my "COIN for Aviators" project, and I think I might give it a whirl. I've just started a Google Wave with, well, the only people I know of that are participating in Google Wave: Adam Elkus, Captain Hyphen, and Josh from al-Sahwa. Guys, help me pass the wave along. (I have no idea how this Google Wave thing works, but it looks interesting. Let me know if you would like to help out)

For those of you who would like to bash the military's use of PowerPoint, however, I merely direct you to the following classics:

• Jason Sigger: PowerPoint Rangers, Rally on Me
• Matt Yglesias: The Military's PowerPoint Problem
• TX Hammes in Armed Forces Journal
• Gulliver at Ink Spots
• I take on PowerPoint and get an admiral to weigh in at Small Wars Journal
• Schmedlap has a PowerPoint presentation on why PowerPoint presentations are bad
• Adam Elkus at Red Team Journal
• Reach 364 at Building Peace

On Powerpoint (again)

I have to control myself, as Jason Sigger and Matt Yglesias have both posted articles regarding the military's abuse of PowerPoint--most notably the tendency to over-simplify complex topics into slides which have the intellectual impact of cartoons. This latest round of anti-PowerPoint sentiment comes hot on the heels of Major General Michael Flynn's critique of the intelligence community in Afghanistan. Says Maj. Gen. Flynn:

The format of intelligence products matters. Commanders who think PowerPoint storyboards and color-coded spreadsheets are adequate for describing the Afghan conflict and its complexities have some soul searching to do. Sufficient knowledge will not come from slides with little more text than a comic strip. Commanders must demand substantive written narratives and analyses from their intel shops and make the time to read them. There are no shortcuts. Microsoft Word, rather than PowerPoint, should be the tool of choice for intelligence professionals in a counterinsurgency.

Whenever this topic comes up, I feel like I'm a shark that just smelled a drop of blood in the water, and I wind up ranting and raving. To protect my sanity, I'll just direct you to Jason and Matt, who have an excellent summary, as well as some classic anti-PowerPoint rants:

TX Hammes in Armed Forces Journal

Gulliver at Ink Spots

Me in Small Wars Journal--includes a reply from Admiral JC Harvey of the US Navy

Schmedlap (for those of you who need the slides)

Adam Elkus in Red Team Journal

Reach 364 at Building Peace

And so forth and so on. Most of these articles contain great links as well, so check them out. Honestly, I'd write more on this topic, but I think quite a bit of it has been done before.

My head will hurt if I look at this today...

Kings of War, the Danger Room, and Building Peace have all linked a chart (courtesy of MSNBC News and Talking Points Memo) released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which apparently sums up the entire Afghanistan surge in one, easy-to-read chart. Ready for it?

It all makes sense now!

While I have yet to read through this chart in full, the bizarre lines and ambiguous phrases bring back bad memories of the infamous "Powerpoint Slide of Win", which came out of US Central Command during the build-up to the Iraq War. Indeed, what could be simpler than this:

Seriously, it's worth looking at, although without any accompanying information to put the chart in context, I suspect I might not get much out of reading through the entire thing. Nevertheless, it will be well worth a detailed examination in full...

...after I leave Las Vegas, of course.

Contractor Question

In the military, we contract everything. Contractors cook our food and wash our clothes. Contractors do almost all of the teaching and flying at flight school, at least in the Army. In fact, it's a rare sight to actually see a flight school student at Fort Rucker among all the contractors and retirees in the area.

Contractors also serve as infantrymen in Blackwater (or Xe), and they perform maintenance on all of our vehicles. With contractors outnumbering Soldiers two to one at one point in Afghanistan, it's safe to say that almost everything is contractable these days.

So does that mean I can contract out making PowerPoint slides? Please?

Latest news

Two links:

• Do you hate making or even just viewing needlessly complex PowerPoint slides? If so, then I have the article for you at Small Wars Journal.
• Secondly, Jason Sigger at Armchair Generalist points out that Iraq has been a violent place for a long time. How long? Apparenlty, a very long time, judging by an article in which archaeologists have uncovered the remains of neanderthal believed killed by a homo sapiens some 50,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountains of Iraq.

Today

Posting will be erratic for the next few days. Expect an article from me in Small Wars Journal within the week.

What could I be possibly writing about in SWJ? The Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The SOFA agreement which mandates that US troops be out of the cities by 30 June? Counter-narcotics in Afghanistan?

Nay, something that affects all Small Warriors: Microsoft PowerPoint.

This article was partly inspired by a recent discussion at companycommand.mil, in which platoon leaders and company commanders noted that they spent an inordinate amount of time on PowerPoint slides instead of on actual leadership functions. I think that anyone in the military, corporate boardroom or classroom might get a kick out of it.

The Military, the Corporate World and Academia Agree...

Powerpoint is useless...

From Collegehumor.com:

Okay, let's start a new COIN rule...

Here's my proposed revision to the counterinsurgency field manual. I would like to say that one should not attempt to explain a counterinsurgency, a stability operation, and reconstruction program on just one Powerpoint slide. It brings back bad memories of this plan:



But I saw an article about a talk given by David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency strategist, which had this slide, and I nearly lost it:


But then I read the description of the slide from Sic Semper Tyrannis, which noted that this was not the be-all, end-all counterinsurgency/stability/governance plan. Whew. Rather, it simply demonstrates that Kilcullen "attempts in this mess to show how complicated this form of warfare may be".

That's putting it mildly.

Okay guys, it's time to discuss PowerPoint

(I know that Powerpoint is pervasive in the military, and most government organizations also.  I'm actually curious as to how those of you in the private sector are using Powerpoint, if at all)

Powerpoint is to written communication as Star Wars:  The Phantom Menace is to the original Star Wars.  Yes, it's kind of pretty.  It wows the audience.  Animated helicopters can move across the screen and cause as many "oohs" and "ahhhs" as double-bladed lightsabers.  But at the end, you're left with a deep sense of nothingness.  The overly simplistic bullet points of a Powerpoint presentation are about as sensical and juvenile as Jar Jar Binks.  The CGI characters might look pretty, but I'll take the profound impact of "Do or do not, there is no try" over "Meesa called Jar Jar Binks" any day, just as I'll take a book over a Powerpoint slide any day.

Powerpoint is a tool, just like any other computer-based product, and it's only as good as the people who make the slides and convey the information.   A number of studies (and one doctoral thesis) have been done on the psychology and over-simplicity of Powerpoint.  But I think I'll add in some amusing anecdotal evidence that might shed some light on the situation.  Feel free to add in your own Powerpoint stories to the fray.

New Orleans, 2005.  In the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a battalion intelligence section, concerned with the threat of crime in New Orleans and how it affects the ability to successfully restore order to the city, produces a Powerpoint slide to illustrate when and where crimes are being committed in New Orleans.  A massive ring dominates the PowerPoint slide.  Around the circumference of the ring are the times of the day, from 0000 to 2359.  Concentric circles indicate the day of the week.  Small dots litter the circle.  

The slide is shown in a briefing.  Eyes squint and try to make sense of the slide.  They spend a good minute or two trying to decipher the cryptic information.  What profound information was it trying to tell us about crime in New Orleans?

It was trying to tell us that most crimes in New Orleans occur on Friday and Saturday night.  

Great!  Next thing you know, the Intel section is probably going to tell us that the number of boobs flashed in New Orleans increases 50000% on Mardi Gras, and they tend to target the Girls Gone Wild Camera crews.  

Powerpoint also has the ability to over-simplify or greatly obfuscate topics that shouldn't be.  Take "Phase IV Operations"--the plan to rebuild Iraq after the 2003 invasion.  Just look at this plan for reconstructing Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion (this is the actual US Central Command slide for "Phase IV", from early 2003 or so):

Simple, right?

Powerpoint has also been used to grossly oversimplify safety hazards in the Space Shuttle Columbia.  NASA has recognized the error of its ways and has gone back to the practice of writing good old-fashioned engineering reports, as they provide much more relevant information than the cartoonish bullet-point words and pictures which dominate PowerPoint slides.  

With this said, I want to hear your Powerpoint stories.  Ever spend hours on a slide just to add in bells and whistles to make it look pretty?  Ever have a slide that said absolutely nothing?  Ever spend time dumbing down something blatantly obvious in Powerpoint?  

I'm certain there's thousands of Powerpoint Rangers out there who would love to chime in.