Tag Archives: PowerPoint

Essential…

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In light of what seems to be an impending shutdown of the United States Government (yeah, Congress, I’m looking at you), there has been much discussion about what makes one an “essential” part of the workforce. Air traffic controllers? Yeah, makes sense. Nuclear submariner? Yep, you make the cut. But where the line of essential stops, there is a vast gray area of things that seem important, but no one can say for certain that they are technically speaking, essential to public safety.

That being said, there’s something profoundly disheartening about getting the official email that not only are you nonessential, but so is your entire office and everyone else in your building for that matter. In fact, you’re so nonessential that when the funds run out, you’re going to turn the lights out, lock the doors, and just walk away. It does give someone given to a somewhat cynical outlook reason to ponder what that could really mean in the teeth of exploding deficits and a Tea Party that seems to want a federal government that operates under the Article of Confederation.

It’s fair to say that my PowerPoints aren’t going to put an end to the war(s) or inspire an economic rally, but I have a secret, unredeemed belief that with the right (or any actual) leadership, both here locally and at the highest levels things do not have to be as they now are. If not essential, we can certainly be productive… but only when we have leaders worthy of good and faithful followers.

Incubation period…

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As of a couple of days ago I’ve been running my Hail Mary play to get out of Memphis for seven months. I dropped my first resume in the files on August 22nd, so you can check my math and make sure I’m doing it right. Seven months is what I’ve come up with… and in that time I’ve drilled exactly 276 dry wells. I’ll drill 5 more tomorrow and five the day after that.

This great escape can be left to incubate for another seven months, but know this – You can cut me off from the civilized world. You can torture me with powerpoint until I’m tapping out briefings with bloody stumps of fingers, but you cannot break my spirit. My voice shall be heard from this wilderness. I shall be delivered.

Respect the rank, not the person…

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We’re the government and no self respecting government agency goes more than a day or two without having a meeting. Mostly, given our slightly inconvenient location just outside of BFE, we keep our meetings to ourselves. Sadly, though, there are times when someone vaguely approaching the definition of a VIP shows up. Such an arrival, of course, requires a meeting befitting the distinguished status of the guest. That means the development of many, many wonderful charts… because the more charts presented for your consideration, the more important you are in the hierarchy. And then there’s the hardcopy – because a VIP apparently can’t be troubled to remember something from one minute to the next without having a fist full of paper slides in front of him. Reading the ones projected across the room onto a 8×10 foot screen would certainly be below his esteemed level of dignity.

With enough notice, it’s generally possible to make anything happen. Deciding at 8:30 that you want to change half the slides for a meeting starting in half an hour, sure, that’s manageable. But for God’s sake don’t come back ten minutes later and tell everyone they’re late to the meeting… that isn’t supposed to start for another twenty minutes. And then pace the aisle sighing and making comments under your breath about being unprepared. When the only thing keeping someone from beating you to death with a keyboard is an ingrained sense of respect for rank and a desire not to go to jail, it seems best not to antagonize that many of your underlings all at one time.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Master of PowerPoint…

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In my agency, if you can open a PowerPoint presentation, change the master background, and really do anything more than straight bulleted text, you’re designated a PowerPoint Ranger and subject to 24-hour on call status for emergency slide making. Like today. When the boss realized an hour before a meeting that’s been on the schedule for six weeks that he hadn’t made any slides. Of course it’s not an official meeting if there are no slides, so slides we must have.

Here’s a snippet of conversation the followed the boss’ panicked rush to my desk:

A COLLEAGUE *sarcastically*: Did he just ask you for a batch of slides from the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and our agency’s role in the invasion of Normandy?

ME: Pretty much, yes.

It’s PowerPoint. We’re not building nuclear-effing-weapons here (seriously, we’re not). Tell me, please, please tell me that I’m not the only person in the building who can consolidate 40 slides built for six different meetings over a period of 18 months into a 10 slide set, set them on a light blue background, add animation, embed video, and link documents that are available on our archive drive to open when you click the key word? Oh. Wait. Apparently I am.

I earned my undergraduate degree with honors. I made a 3.6 in my MBA program while working full time. I can’t tell you how glad to see six years of college education, ten years of professional experience and generous pay and benefits package being put to good use.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Lord of the Slides…

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There are few things as terrible as showing you have more than a passing competence and even the most marginally technological task. Once you have crossed that boarder between the digital world and the one that exists only on paper, you have doomed yourself to endless days of PowerPoint. Create, review, edit, review, edit, review, edit, review, publish. It will drive the tempo of your day and haunt your dreams in the darkness. It is the very beating heart of what is wrong with us.

No matter how good you are, no matter how skilled you are at filling the white spaces, by the time you distill a complex idea into three or five bullets (it’s always an odd number, by the way. An even number of bullets looks awkward on the page), you’ve eliminated its identity as a complex idea. Now it’s just two syllable words on a screen dumbed down to the point where even the slowest guy in the room can draw some conclusions. It’s perhaps the most depressing bit of technological innovation ever.

Just the thought of the three slide sets sitting on my desk right now waiting to get punched up almost makes me physically ill. The lesson here is to shoot for mediocrity. Do too much and no one ever leaves you alone. Do too little and you’ll be the first of the dead wood to fall. Find that sweet spot in the middle and you can ride out a career with as few problems as possible. And for God’s sake, whatever you do, never under any circumstances let anyone know you can build an awesome deck of PowerPoint slides.