“We have met the enemy and he is Powerpoint” says a senior officer in U.S. army after he saw a slide shown above, which is a diagram about the military strategies in Afghanistan made by Powerpoint. He even remarked that we would have already conquered the terrorists if we figured out the spaghetti-like slide when the audience erupted into laughter in a conference meeting. It is not just government officers who are complaining. As an engineer myself, I increasingly find that Powerpoint is the culprit in modern enterprises that lowers down the productivity because of its time-consuming and over-simplified nature, or over-complexity for that matter.
Making Powerpoint slides is obviously a time-consuming task, which, all too often, overwhelms the concrete and productive work. The purpose of making slides is for the convenience of presentation, however its time-consuming and overwhelming nature goes against this intention. A junior officer based in Afghanistan said that he spent most of his time making Powerpoint slides when interviewed by New York Times. In a modern enterprises like the one that I am working at, employees making Powerpoint slides are easily spotted in the office. Sometimes, one may wonder what the slides are about when they make slides all the time. The time-consuming nature of making slides occupies too much time for people that would otherwise be used to do more productive work, thus bringing down the productivity.
Powerpoint slides tend to be over-simplified, as some victims might state, or over-complex for that matter, the reason of which can attribute to another nature of making slides, interpretation. When making slides, one needs to interpret concepts and ideas in a thesis or a report into Powerpoint language, bullet points. However, the fact is some logical relationships are often too complicated to be stated in this forms. On a contrary, some ideas are straightforward enough that they need not to be interpreted into the diagrams in Powerpoint, or simply not applicable at all. Even so, people in modern enterprise tend to stick to Powerpoint while neglecting the downsides.
In China, People sing praises to Powerpoint while it is undermining their productivity without their notice. Chinese people, from central government to small local business, are inclined to rank form as their first priority, while Powerpoint really hits the spot for that need. In addition, due to the bureaucracy, it is always your superior who is the presenter of the slides instead of you who make the slides. Therefore, making Powerpoint is not only an interpretation from reports to bullet points but also an interpretation for your superior to understand the reports since they are too busy to read it through. The double interpretation task increases the work load of employees that wasn’t in existence before, thus lowering down the productivity.
All in all, Powerpoint is the reason of a low productivity in modern society due to its time-consuming and misinterpretation nature. A good presentation does not mean fancy pictures and animations shown on slides but a lively and wholehearted speech delivered by the presenter that arouses compathy and recognition from the audience, which can never be done by just several stupid bullets points.
