Stick a Fork in It

Why a PowerPoint Moratorium is Long Overdue

We've all been there.

I stared down at the set of PowerPoint slides on the table in my office and thought, What we have here is a failure to communicate. Setting aside my desire to make light of the situation, I asked the officer, “What are you trying to say with these slides? Help me to understand.”

The officer looked at me, clearly confused. “Well, sir, you said to keep it to ten slides or less.”

I spread the slides across the table into two rows of five. A standard organizational opening and closing slide, an agenda slide, four quad charts, and three slides that seemed to convey something, but I wasn't sure what. “Right. But I'm not sure that what’s here tells the story we need it to tell. Think about it like Design: a slide to frame the environment, a slide to frame the problem, and a slide to frame the solution. Then a wrap up to show our approach to getting to the solution and a timeline to get there.”

“But that’s only… five slides. You said to keep it to ten or less.”

“I did. You're right. And that’s less than ten. Five is about right for this level of briefing.”

“But what about the quad charts?”

“Take them out. You never want to show a three- or four-star quad charts. Only brief key information that drives a decision.”

“But the quad charts show our progress. We've got a lot done during the planning meetings.”

“They do and you have. But you want to show real progress, not that you've had a lot of a meetings. Meetings aren't the type of progress he’s looking for.”

A long sigh from the officer across the table from me led to a review of the bidding and very detailed guidance on how to convey the ideas we discussed. And as clever as I imagine the classic line from Cool Hand Luke, it’s true: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It’s not that the officer across from me doesn't have the skills to prepare briefing slides, it’s an undeveloped ability to communicate clearly. Something that’s really not that uncommon today, and certainly not something limited to the officer sitting across from me.

So it came as no surprise when newly-confirmed Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter called “no mas” on PowerPoint for a meeting of the minds in Kuwait this week to discuss the strategy for coalition efforts against the so-called Islamic State. As a Nation, we've struggled to define our strategy in the Middle East (airstrikes and training efforts are constituent parts of a military plan, not a strategy), something he surely recognizes. So, for one brief moment in time, the Secretary asked the senior leaders in attendance to leave their technicolor dreamworks behind: No PowerPoint.

The end result will be a free flow of ideas, unconstrained by the limits of a digital medium. Instead of leaders left wondering if the color of an arrow or the size of font conveys particular meaning, the collective group can focus on the key issues at hand. In other words, they can get down to the business of communicating, clearly and unambiguously.

But why stop there? Why not impose a Defense-wide moratorium on PowerPoint, even just for 30 days? Think of the possibilities.

Now, don't get me wrong. PowerPoint isn't the problem, it’s a symptom of the problem. PowerPoint is just a tool. You don’t blame the pen when you're a lousy writer, after all. Let’s set the tool aside and focus in on the tool behind the tool. Because that’s where the real problem exists.

Last year, I addressed this issue in a post for Tom Ricks in his Best Defense blog:

We suffer from a communication problem. Stringing together a coherent, one-page information paper is a challenge for many people; forget about a more in-depth “thinking” piece.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. But we have no one to blame but ourselves:

We often bemoan the loss of the Army’s Combined Arms and Staff Services School (CAS3), where young officers spent weeks refining their writing, speaking, and presenting skills. The feedback was honest, direct, and often brutal, but the end result was a marked improvement in communication skills. When the Army scuttled CAS3 in 2004, we surrendered the one course that sharpened the fundamentals we so desperately need today.

Thirty days. Back to basics.

The TRADOC commander, General David Perkins, once said that the problem wasn't PowerPoint, it was that “People start making slides before they know what problem it is they're trying to solve. Pretty soon, they've got a bunch of really great slides but they're no closer to solving the problem than they were when they started. But they've got some great slides.”

Start with writing. Before a single slide is created, require the “big ideas” to be written out in an one-page information paper. And until those ideas can be condensed into a single page, not one slide is created. There’s a scenefrom the film A River Runs Through It that captures this thought perfectly, as Tom Skerritt educates his son, Norman MacLean, in the fine art of writing succinctly. “Write it again, half as long.” That clip is 90 seconds well-spent with any group of leaders. “Again. Half as long.”

Thirty days. Back to basics.

Once the key concepts are clearly understood, then — and only then — do you break out the slide deck. And when you do, find your zen. Translating those ideas into graphic form doesn’t mean slides full of bullet points that should never leave the surface of a 3x5 card or images that induce nausea in your audience. It means thinking through how best to convey core ideas in a manner that stimulates thought and spurs discourse. It means visualizing key concepts in a way that drives decision making. It means communicating clearly, directly, succinctly.

Thirty days. Back to basics. That’s all I'm asking. And we'll all be better off in the end.