Edward Tufte,‘The Cognitive Style of Power Point,’ page 156-185.
This is a chapter in his marvellous book Beautiful Evidence (2006) which ought to be mandatory study in business, engineering, economics, political science and much else.
In this chapter Tufte eviscerates those who practice McKinsey management by Power Point. There are some humdingers. One is Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address reduced to Power Point KPIs. Thus drained of meaning, no would ever remember it. Follow the link below.
Likewise is the painstaking argument that NASA disasters have occurred partly because of the superficial decision-making using Power Point. Gulp! It is not just the low-bid contractors but the absence of specification, documentation, and clarification, favouring instead hierarchical bullet points and discussion. Technical papers are boring compared to the light show! When post-disaster inquiries asked for the technical studies from which the presentation Power Points were derived, they discovered there were no technical documents. Just the PP slides derived from — wait for it — discussions. Now that is engineering! Not! Maybe that is how low-bid contractors keep the price down, saving on printing costs. (We all know how expensive toner cartridges are.)
The curse of McKinsey is not just limited to Power Point, as Tufte shows. When at launch the heat shield problem was detected NASA officials decline to ask the US Air Force to turn one of its spy satellites on the space shuttle to get a look at the hole. Why? Because it would have compromised the KPIs of the management team’s advancement to promotion. Rather than find out right away how serious the problem was, the managers decided it was not serious enough to risk personal promotion. Eight astronauts died in that crash.
Remember that O-ring? I do. He is even more direct in the piece linked below.
https://shorensteincenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HO_SNOW_2014_PowerPoint-Is-Evil.pdf
Dare we conclude similar light shows are the basis for other, military decisions, too. Probably, but these are only on the public record in Arlington. How Robert McNamara would have loved Power Point. Bad decisions, bad planes made efficiently!
In politics, we know that the Blair governments in Great Britain operated by discussion with the attendant vagaries, having nothing in writing that could be leaked or revealed through Freedom of Information requests now or ever. No doubt this approach explains much.