PowerPoint often gets a bad press as a medium for communication. The Metro newspaper, for example, suggests that army generals are resisting being presented with graphics like the one below (taken from a report on stability in Afghanistan).
It’s an interesting example of why not to take the headline at face value and the impact of the author’s prejudgments on the tone of the piece:
- the graphic almost certainly wasn’t created in PowerPoint
- there are no bullet points
- take a second and you discover that it tells you a lot quite quickly (eg they think there are 11 big factors affecting the situation, you can see what those are and get a sense of how they fit together).
In fact, this is an example of a systems map. Even for those not involved in creating it or trained in systems modelling, this sort of graphic can be useful in informing and stimulating thinking.
It only needs us to take a few moments to look properly at something to start seeing what’s really there.
