Another great email impacting leadership and the art of decision making by my friend COL (ret.) TX Hammes, who is the author of the book Sling and Stone. For further details on what PowerPoint has done when laid over the culture of control see Chuck Spinney’s blaster from nine years ago, www.d-n-i.net/fcs/comments/c353.htm
http://www.afji.com/2009/07/4061641
Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make. Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool — it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.
Don Vandergriff 