I have written about the extent to which PowerPoint has permeated the military in the United States. Many people, including high-ranking officers, believe that it has gotten out of hand. Well, it appears that PowerPoint has friends in high places and we see what happens when the Empire Strikes Back.
Salon.com reported about Lawrence Sellin, a United States Army Reserve Colonel in Afghanistan. Fed up with the constant onslaught of inane, numbing PowerPoint presentations, Sellin wrote an unauthorized editorial letting people know how he felt. Consider the following excerpts:
For headquarters staff, war consists largely of the endless tinkering with PowerPoint slides to conform with the idiosyncrasies of cognitively challenged generals in order to spoon-feed them information. Even one tiny flaw in a slide can halt a general’s thought processes as abruptly as a computer system’s blue screen of death.
…
The [Commander’s Update Assessment] consists of a series of PowerPoint slides describing the events of the previous 12 hours. Briefers explain each slide by reading from a written statement in a tone not unlike that of a congressman caught in a tryst with an escort. The CUA slides only change when a new commander arrives or the war ends.
…
The [Commander’s Update Assessment] consists of a series of PowerPoint slides describing the events of the previous 12 hours. Briefers explain each slide by reading from a written statement in a tone not unlike that of a congressman caught in a tryst with an escort. The CUA slides only change when a new commander arrives or the war ends.
Senior officials didn’t find his comments helpful or amusing. The transferred Sellin out of Afghanistan for his unauthorized pennings.
Admittedly, Sellin‘s writing a critical article about US military operations without proper authorization that was his undoing. Indeed, Sellin clearly knew the risks. He began his article, “Throughout my career I have been known to walk that fine line between good taste and unemployment. I see no reason to change that now.”
Score one for the defenders of innumerable bullet points, convoluted flow charts, reams of text and other horrors. A classic case of The Empire Strikes Back.
