Death By PowerPoint...

Sometimes an article comes along at a perfect time and hits a sore point.  This one did for me.  Recent events at my own employment where promotions to management (and no, I was not seeking the position in question, just a bystander watching events unfold) were based not on the understanding of an issue, product or procedure, not on intelligence, potential or even the ability to kiss ass but instead upon the ability to take notes like a secretary and compile them into pretty PowerPoint slides.

Not that this was the promoted individual's fault, they were merely taking advantage of a corporate sickness.  Instead, like in this article describing the both the modern and WWII military, it is the upper management's fault for desiring a product that looks impressive to their coworkers vs. one that actually conveys information in an accurate manner.  In truth, the management asking that these documents be produced likely has less than an appropriate understanding of the topic at hand but having underlings prepare pretty slides with different fonts, a plethora of colors and lots of arrows makes them FEEL like they have a comprehensive grasp of the situation.

At some point it feels like all organizations of a certain size contract this disease--one where people say "I'm too busy and important to try and get people to understand these complex issues, so I'm going to assign someone beneath me to boil it down into some simple bullet points and sliding pages" and soon it ends up with "I don't really understand these complex issues, so I'm going to assign someone beneath me to boil it down into some simple bullet points and sliding pages so that maybe I can grasp things".  Once this starts, the snowball rolls downhill, gathers speed and results in a group of people where everyone is sending everyone pretty PowerPoints all day in order to try and convey every issue, policy or procedure, no matter its depth or breadth.  I'll stop here though as the articles linked below explain the problem present in most companies these days (and evidently the military as well) far better than I can--though I could throw together a nice PowerPoint to try and explain it!

War on the Rocks: PowerPoint 1944
Colonel TX Hammes Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets...