Powerpoint, Obedience and Conformity: Why do smart people feel compelled to use Powerpoint when it's no longer "best practice"? If it ever was...

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Powerpoint, Obedience and Conformity: Why do smart people feel compelled to use Powerpoint when it's no longer "best practice"? If it ever was...

Date Created: 17 Aug, 2006, 06:41 PM

Back in August this year, I found myself sitting in a Knowledge Management networking event, hearing of research into Human Resources measurements, especially those resources often considered "intangible".

I noted at the time, in preparation for this blog entry:

"Already, we're up to slide 9 as I blog, and I have not see one picture. I have seen one flow diagram, and several hundred words, mainly quotations from authors.

The others in the audience don't seem to mind. They cast their gaze from the slides, spread over two duplicated screens, to the speaker, who's standing between the projected images of his slides. I'm feeling my energy ebb away since this is not exactly scintillating although it could be, because it's referring to original research.

We started with 8 points on a slide which is the plan for the session, what the speaker hopes to cover. They are all there on one slide, with no effort to highlight any one. But I suppose it gives us some kind of story, in that we start with point 1 and we'll end with point 9.

I spark up a little because a white paper publication of ITC consultant Graeme Philipson, whom I mentioned in a previous blog entry after he'd become a switcher, is discussed in the context of return on investment of e-learning.

The speaker is unaware if he is the same guy who writes for the Age newspaper for its IT section, but I do."

Shuffle forward a few months, to today's Age article by Philipson which is also relevant because he discusses on the job training. Most corporations, he contends, slavishly follow outdated and untested hand me down ideas of how to best train their staff.

In his article, Philipson interviews Charles Jennings of the Reuters News Agency. He's an Australian who is "Reuters' global head of learning" and was in the country recently for the Global Summit 2006 conference.

A couple of quotes from Jennings to lead you into this current blog entry:

"Too many learning professionals and managers are obsessed with transferring information into employees' heads, even though they know that the amount of information is growing very quickly and that the nature of that information is changing. They also know that people's work is constantly changing.

"These changes mean that knowledge workers actually need less knowledge to do their jobs than they did a generation ago. Formal training is less effective as the amount of information increases and its shelf life becomes shorter."

He goes on a little later to discuss the 70:20:10 rule:

"About 70 per cent of organisational learning takes place on the job, through solving problems and through special assignments and other day-to-day activities.

"Another 20 per cent occurs through drawing on the knowledge of others in the workplace, from informal learning, from coaching and mentoring, and from support and direction from managers and colleagues. Only 10 per cent occurs through formal learning, whether classroom, workshop or, more recently, e-learning.

"But most organisations invest at least 80 per cent of their training budgets in formal learning, where little of the learning takes place. And formal learning is also generally less effective than informal learning."

And so we come to today's blog entry. Yet another go at Powerpoint and its use in business and schools.

It comes as I read two quite different sources of criticism. One is within a new book published by a friend, Shelley Gare, one of Australia's best journalists and now the published author of a new book I noted on the shelves of Borders last night.

It's called: Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense (Park Street Press, 2006). You can read a long extract from The Australian (where Shelley was editor of its Book review section) here.

In the book, she finds several opportunities to rip into the mindset behind Powerpoint as an example of an airhead's tools. Try and get a hold of it as its dense with stories applicable to the US, the UK and Australia.

Overnight too, on the Blackfriar's Marketing blog, I noted that Carl Howe has written an entry discussing a new article from the Wall Street journal I'd missed. Written by Jared Sandberg here (rego. required), Carl offers the following quote:

"Over the years, the software has been blamed for boring people senseless. The phrase "Death by PowerPoint" is common corporate parlance. Some companies and conference organizers have prohibited PowerPoint, and the press perennially skewers it as a thought-free plague. One legal scholar, tongue-in-cheek, proposed a constitutional amendment banning its use."

Carl goes on to write of how his company, being Mac-based, is somewhat liberated from unthinkingly committing itself to using Microsoft software, and thus can eschew the Powerpoint orthodoxy for Apple's Keynote.

As an aside: A few weeks ago I walked into the lion's den and presented a workshop on Personal Knowledge Management to sixty accountants, part of the 5000 attending a three week accounting congress put on by Chartered Practising Accountants Australia society. (I was seminar H38, above left)

The evaluations are still coming in, but after the workshop, the co-congress ordinator and I sat down and quickly eyeballed the feedback forms (the stuff that will either get me invited back or not for next year). Every feedback form prominently mentioned my presentation.

Later I had the opportunity to see why. I attended others' workshops as a guest and saw Death By Powerpoint in action, big time. I'm guessing almost all those who attended my workshop had never seen a Powerbook in action, much less a Keynote presentation at their conference.

I had to make special arrangements to bring my Mac and hook it into the system. Mind you, the Congress tech. crew heaved a sigh of relief when I arrived at my allotted venue with my Powerbook, as they correctly assessed they would have little work to do. Any one who rolls up at a corporate function with a Mac knows how to work it and connect in to the provided A/V equipment.

Back to the story: The Blackfriars blog courteously links to my previous blog entry about the ineffable characteristics of Keynote compared with Powerpoint, and who is using or or making the switch in the face of Powerpoint domination in corporate and academic life, and filtering down into school life.

Those who've made the switch, both to the Mac and to Keynote and who swear they'll never go back, have some understanding into why people stick with the tools they're expected to use. Indeed, one of the things that got the accountants sitting up and paying attention was my missive to them that most knowledge workers in 2006 are being corralled from fully exploiting their talents by being expected to use ineffective tools for knowledge gathering and sharing, made worse in toxic organisations where "trust" is an ugly word.

I also happened to say that Personal Knowledge Management has as one of its tools a superior understanding of how adults learn and share information. I asked the group to carefully watch how I presented my case: both the content (movies, pictures, my few words on the slides) and my manner. I argued that in 2006 presentation skills are an essential tool of personal knowledge management.

Those of us who've always used Macs have a harder time understanding why our colleagues slavishly stick with their Windows-based systems, especially those who work for themselves and are not locked into the corporate mantra of allegiance to Microsoft.

So, it comes as no surprise that I've been thinking about this of late, especially as I've been workshopping my Presentation Skills keynote to professionals such as the leaders of Occupational Therapy Australia, as well as private individuals who want to impress the hell out of their audiences when they present.

I offer them the trifecta: how to best use Keynote, how to better present their ideas to match current awareness of human learning attributes, and in some cases using my clinical skills to guide them overcome their public speaking anxiety. (When the latter is so serious as to interfere with their work, my fees are substantially covered by our national Medicare scheme if referred by a doctor.)

But I've been thinking afresh about the panoply of reasons corporates stick so slavishly to a style of information exchange that has clearly both outlived its usefulness and can be shown with a little research to not match the so-often touted "best practice" standards.

Another aside: The more time I spend studying knowledge management in organisations the more I'm aware of how consultants bamboozle management with these kind of jargon expressions - e.g., "best practice" - which used often enough are rendered meaningless. Joel on Software has a marvellous take on consultants in a recent blog entry here.

So why stick with something that is so broken?

Well, I had to remind myself of "why" in recent weeks when I stood for election for the Chair of my local professional society. (I lost). I had prepared a presentation for why I was the better candidate along with my chosen Secretary (or so I thought), but on the night I was told I was limited to 5 minutes to present my case. To sum up 20 years of achievements, and then speak of my plans for the next two years, and speak of my current concerns, was simply too much for such a short time.

So I thew away my prepared speech (I was only told 2 minutes before I was due to speak that I was limited to 5 minutes) and so spoke off the top of my head. I regret that now since no matter what I said the outcome in terms of voting would likely have been the same. I would have preferred to be remembered as giving one of the great non-winning speeches in my society's history!

(UPDATE July 21, 2007 - almost nine months after the election, with the committee about to move a motion of no-confidence in the Chairperson - my opponent - he resigned, along with his elected Secretary. One of the more embarrassing andf shameful episodes in my professional society's history)

But the same content of what I wanted to say applies here, to why and how so many are slavishly tied to Powerpoint.

Let me give you an example. Trying to find the link to my workshop for OT Australia, I located this link to where graduating students of the OT course at La Trobe University had a two-day conference last week to present their projects. Here is the expectations of them from the website:

"Student presentations

It is prefered that you show your presentation in Power Point. A data projector and laptop will be setup in each presentation room.

Using Powerpoint:
You will need to put your presentation on either a CD or a memory stick. Floppy disk is not acceptable. We suggest that you have a backukp copy (on another CD or memory stick) and also email your presentation to yourself at your La Trobe Student email address. That way, if for any reason your CD or memory stick does not work, you can download your emailed copy as a backup. It is also recommended that you have your presentation printed on transparencies as well, incase of technical difficulties (we will have an overhead projector at the venue as an emergency backup). There will also be a DVD player available incase of any possible problems showing DVD footage on laptops.

Using overhead projector, DVD or video:
If you need to use overhead transparancies, DVD or video, contact Christine Walters, as early as possible and she will book the item for the room you are presenting in. (Not using Powerpoint will not affect your assessment)".

I'm sure glad that last sentence was included, just in case there was any doubt!

But maybe they should have more accurately said, "Using Powerpoint may affect your assessment!" This of course is getting students used to the "real world", where attendance at conferences means you front up with your "Powerpoint" on a CD or USB thumbdrive and hope and pray the laptop you're expect to use has all the fonts, audio components, and movie codecs you need! Otherwise, KISS and just make them simple text slides (zzzzzz!)

Ok, so what had I planned to say in my speech which I put to one side? Well, part of my issue was non-transparency, secret meetings, and lack of due process on the outgoing committee of which I was a member. I had witnessed "groupthink" in action, with some smart and able people unwilling to stand up and say, "Excuse me, but when did we move a motion to permit this or that to happen?"

There were times I was the only one to actually ask for due process to be observed and rail against the incompetence I witnessed.

So the only way to put your money where your mouth is means to stand in opposition when the time comes for elections to roll out, right?

I needed the assembled members (50 out of 4000 members because postal voting was not permitted) to understand what life had been like on this committee in recent months, while my professional society was in delicate negotiations with the Federal Government over rebates for psychological services.

So I had intended to invoke one of the classic psychological experiments to explain my experiences. That experiment, and the ones that it inspired have direct relevance to all manner of human behaviour in 2006, as well as behaviour in 1945, as you'll soon read. And less tragically, as you'll also see, as to why Powerpoint still dominates despite its much-described and disliked shortcomings.

The experiment is known as the Solomon Asch conformity experiment, and it was originally published in 1951 or so.

Let me set this up for you. Asch was a Polish-born Jew who came to the US in the 20s and thus escaped the destruction of Poland and much of Europe in World War II.

He became a Professor of Social Psychology in Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, but my guess is that he became intensely interested in the outcomes of the war in the years after when lessons were learnt. I'm guessing he asked himself how it was that one human could do to another what the Nazis and their sympathisers did. And then, when asked at the Nuremberg trials, so many would say, "I was only following orders".

The links to recent war atrocities and actions by junior officers in Iraq should not be lost on you. (Yes, it's a bit of a heavy blog entry today, but it's my birthday so I'm indulging myself).

So Asch set up a very simple experiment to begin his understanding.

Imagine this scenario.

You are invited to an experiment (actually compelled nowawadays if you're an undergraduate psychology student) and told it's an experiment on visual perception. That's no surprise for a student in the 1950s since psychophysics dominated academic psychology at the time.

You meet up with seven fellow subjects whom you don't know and are asked to take your seats. In fact, the seating arrangement is a setup because you end up being at one end of the row of subjects.

The experimenter explains your task. He or she is going to show you a set of lines on a piece of paper, and also display a "test" line on another piece of paper. It looks like this:

Starting at the far end, your "colleagues" are asked to state aloud which of the sample lines - A, B or C - is the same length of the test line on the left.

Now the way this was setup a five year old could tell you it was B.

(Sorry, just kidding, it's really....A)

But starting at the far end, you start to hear the answers aloud: The first subject says A, the second A, the third B and so on... A, A, B, A.

And in some cases: B, B, B, B, B, B, B. Or A, A, A, and so on....

You get the picture. You're always last listening to these people getting it wrong.

Now it's your turn. You KNOW it's C. But seven strangers who seem to be pretty normal (maybe you've seen them on campus) are all saying "you're wrong" by implication of their answers.

What are you to do? Be the lone wolf who says "you all need your eyes tested", or make some excuse that maybe your spectacles "need adjustment but from the angle I'm at, with the light in the room the way its, and maybe I had a really late night, but it kinda looks like maybe C could be the answer... maybe..."

When all the other students, who are of course confederates of the experimenter and are following a set script, all said the same answer, some 40% of naive subjects fell in step with them. That percentage dropped when there was not unanimity (but the correct answer was not mentioned) and dropped even further when just one confederate said the correct answer. That seemed to give the poor experimental subject some breathing room to not be on their own against the world: self-doubt diminished considerably.

When those in the high conformity group ("they're all against me!") were debriefed, they described it as an extremely unnerving experience, and thus revealed for Asch some of the important elements in how human beings can do to another what occurred in Nazi-ravaged Europe, when "we were just following orders."

Some of Asch's students and observers went on in their professional lives to become leading psychologists, inspired by Asch's classic experiment. One, Stanley Milgram, took a leaf out of Asch's book of manipulating experimental situations.

Three months after the Eichmann trials in Jerusalem in 1961 (ten years after Asch's conformity experiments), Milgram constructed a series of very famous "Obedience" experiments, where experimental subjects were informed they were to administer small shocks to fellow subjects who, out of view, could be heard but not seen occasionally sighing when the shock was applied, under the direction of a "famous" white-coated experimenter giving firm directions.

The shocks were "applied" if a word-pair test was "failed" by the subject, who was also supposedly possessed of a heart condition.

As Wikipedia reports, Milgram wanted to find the answer to this question: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

Milgram's experiment started out nice and easy, but as it progressed, the demand for higher shocks increased, to the point where screams of pain were heard, and yet the subjects continued to administer the shocks under direction of the experimenter! Of course, no shocks were applied at all, the screamer was a collaborator and faking it, and the subjects were debriefed (Are you now seeing the connection to Powerpoint presentations? Just kidding... sort of).

This kind of experiment would never pass the Ethics Committee of any reputable University in 2006.

Milgram himself wrote: "The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."

Later, in the mid-sixties Milgram turned his attention to what's known as the "small world problem" which gave rise to the phenomenon known as the "six degrees of separation".

Another student of Asch's was Philip Zimbardo, who gave us the infamous Stanford prisoner experiments, where groups of subjects were randomly spit into prison guard and prisoner in a social psychology experiment which now again, would never be passed by an Ethics committee.

Zimbardo, who was formerly President of the American Psychological Association, and whom I met because I did an Australian section for his TV series, Discovering Psychology (I did the TV section on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), showed how easy it was for normal male American students to be turned into cruel, beastly captors who stripped the dignity from their prisoner colleagues. This might sound familiar to those of you closely following the actions of the military in Iraqi prisons, especially those at the lowest end of command.

As Zimbardo says: "Our planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life had to be ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress."

Asch was so profoundly relevant with his original conformity studies, and those of Milgram and Zimbardo which he inspired and which still have profound importance fifty years later, that after he died in 1996, the University of Pennsylvania helped set up The Solomon Asch Centre for the study Ethnopolitical conflict in 1998.

Now for some this history of social psychology might be seen to be a tad over the top when it comes to understanding the proliferation of Powerpoint in industry and schools. After all, it's just software isn't it? And bad presentations are the fault of the presenter, right?

No, it's not. It's a way of thinking how best to influence others, just like Colin Powell did when he went to the United Nations and offered them a Powerpoint-based reason to invade Iraq on a mission to find weapons of mass destruction. Go read about it here at the offical Secretary of State webpage and read some commentary about it here. While there (at this latter link) also look about for the contribution of Powerpoint to the NASA Challenger disaster. The report roundly condemns NASA reliance on Powerpoint.

We really shouldn't be so surprised to hear of the use of technology to coerce, influence, and persuade humans to do things that in hindsight is regretful to the point of shame. Leni Reifenstahl proved the value of the motion picture in 1934 In Nazi Germany with Triumph of the Will.

I'm guessing that educators and trainers will one day think the same about the misuse of Powerpoint, and I'm guessing it's well under way right now.

Oh, and one more contribution of Solomon Asch's to our technology discussion, so appropriate on the day the Zune is released: you know that so-called iPod halo effect supposedly driving iPod owners into Apple stores to buy other Apple products?

Yep, the Halo Effect ("if it looks good it must have other positive qualities") was also Asch's concept (1946).

Now you know the basis too for those Think Different ads featuring Rosa Parks, Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan and others. Conformity and obedience versus innovation and challenging the mainstream. There's more to choosing the Mac and Keynote than just their pretty appearance.