Home>General Interest>T. X. Hammes on PowerPoint

T. X. Hammes on PowerPoint

by on July 12, 2009 in General Interest

Great article by a great Marine and true Strategic thinker. His thesis, PowerPoint ain’t a good decision tool.

Comments (3)

Comments

  1. Anonymous says:
    July 12, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Aaaand forwarded to every staff officer I know.

  2. VFRMarine says:
    July 13, 2009 at 5:24 am

    Unfortunately, this has become part of the culture. Accordingly, removing it will be a Sisyphean task. Even scaling it back will require the intervention of some enterprising senior officer. What gets me most riled is the time wasted preparing these slide packets.

    I’m a staff officer and I avoid preparing these things like the plague. I’d rather answer the “why no slides 4?” question than reduce my arguments to bullets.

  3. LTC (R) Ralph Butera says:
    July 22, 2009 at 5:01 am

    Col Hammes brings out many valid points concerning the briefing methods employed by current staffs, however, I find that the attack on Power Point is an attack on the symptom not the disease. If done correctly the MDMP process can be quite effective with power point, but our ill-trained staffs use it as a show-boat rather than a tool. I’ve address a reply through AFJ to these points and will be happy to share them with anyone willing to read. The military needs to assure our staff officers are giving ANY and ALL information in a clear manner.