Banning PowerPoint
It is by no means a new concept to ban power point. I think it is always an issue when we adopt a particular tool or technology to the exclusion of others. This quite often happens in cycles.
Photo by Caroline Attwood
The first cycle was personal contact and a hand-shake, which progressed to written contract and signature or letter. Skipping some cycles (like telegram) we moved to verbal, i.e. telephones and faxes and because of the immediacy of the communication, business cycles could be reduced. As the internet grew so did the concept and use of email.
Did you notice how some people adopted email for everything at that point? Instead of phoning or meeting and talking there was a tendency (and still is with some) to email about everything. The theory being that this avoids wasted time calling when someone is out. I can sign up to that but the sense of sending an email with just the word “thanks” has been questioned in many blogs.
Photo by Isaac Smith
Calling came back into vogue with the arrival of the mobile ‘phone. People would be talking everywhere and anywhere - occasionally very loudly. There was a slight ‘exit stage left’ for phone calls when texting became more popular due to the cheaper rates. I think we still do have a situation when a text is used sometimes when the right thing to do would be to call. I have had many text messages “I am on my way but I’ll be about 40 minutes late, sorry” the day after a meeting!
One sees a similar story in the adoption of office tools like the Microsoft suite (including power point) and Open Office Impress, etc. PowerPoint was such an advancement to the over-head projector that presentations were revolutionised and then murdered. After some years of ppt’s the phrase “death by power point” was added to the business vocabulary. I suggest that this happened for the same reasons I mentioned above - it was over-adopted and there was little thought about whether there was a better way to communicate an idea and get a decision or response.
It was so easy in power point, the application almost wrote the presentation for you! (Not). So it is natural that there was a time when it would be banned in certain companies for certain or all purposes. In the case of Amazon and Twitter they opted for a briefing document and I think that makes sense.
Photo by Dev Asangbam
In the 21st century we started to see exponential growth in many channels of communication. It started slowly with Skype (that was quite a revolution) and then fast and frequent followed Whatsapp, Messenger, etc. However, I still have a concern about the way communication is used. I am a member of a small band and before I joined they were already using messenger to communicate information like the date and time of the next rehearsal and to share recordings. This kind of thing used to be done by ‘phone and for some things (sending out a recording link, sharing a track) messenger is a great tool but not everyone checks it in real time and there are occasions when it is possible to turn up to a practice that was already cancelled in messenger. It somehow reminds me of the ‘apologies-for-being-late’ text messages arriving the day after a meeting!
Aidan Hoyle
5th November, 2019