“PowerPoint makes us stupid,”/Update: "On PowerPoint rangers"

Quite:

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A PowerPoint diagram meant to portray the complexity of American strategy in Afghanistan certainly succeeded in that aim.

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I'm sure the CF are just about as PP-addicted. When I was in the federal bureaucracy I was utterly unable to cope with PP despite a couple of quick courses. Not sure if I should be stupidly proud or something. By the way, federal cabinet briefings are largely PP "decks", a certain path to better governance, eh?

Update: BruceR. at Flit:

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Another leader, a previous commander of Task Force Kandahar, had a habit of putting scans of his own hand-drawn back-of-an-envelope schematics, clear, well-drawn and content-rich, as the lead graphics in written documents outlining the way ahead in much greater detail. Comprehension benefited from the graphic, but didn't depend on it. The method underscored his own clarity of thought and purpose quite effectively, I thought, combining the intimacy of someone explaining his plan to you on a napkin one-on-one with the power of electronic mass transmission.

I guess what I'm saying is brilliant communicators are brilliant because they don't let the technology or others' expectations get in the way of their thoughts or their message...

...if you go straight to the slide deck without having done the analytical work up front, yes, odds are whatever you present will be junk: good presentation skills can prevent you degrading whatever clarity of thought you possess, but they can't augment it. I think T.X. Hammes' summary is dead-on: "PowerPoint [used alone] can be highly effective if used purely to convey information — as in a classroom or general background brief. It is particularly good if strong pictures or charts accompany the discussion of the material. But it is poorly suited to be an effective decision aid."