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In a regular workday, we often need to make a point. And what better hope of deliverance from the struggle to make a point than Power Point ?
Now, I have always been partial to words – I simply like them infinitely more than shapes or colours or numbers. They make me feel so understood. Staring in satisfaction at a phrase that perfectly sums up your thoughts is like looking at a best friend winking back at you over a joke that only the two of you understand. Unfortunately for me, words are anathema to the world of work. Reading, assimilating, interpreting – who has time for that. Who is stupid enough to traverse a white paper, when they could content themselves with looking at a pretty picture on a slide ?
In the three and a half years that I have been working, I have seen countless employees around me squinting at their screens trying to embellish their Power Point presentations with colours, shadows, pictures – a dash of this and a smidgen of that, all of these, of course, purely superfluous to, but apparently ‘accentuating’ the point they are trying to make. But let me ask you this – do you REALLY need that picture of a pile of coins to know that I am talking about ‘compensation’ and do you seriously need to see the photograph of a multi-ethnic classroom to know that I am talking about ‘learning’ ?
Why, then, are we perpetuating this hackneyed tradition ? Don’t get me wrong – sometimes a picture articulates an idea just as well as a word; it’s about choosing the medium one is comfortable with. What I wish to decry are two factors that I think underlie the working world’s eschewing of words:
Firstly, often a picture or an ‘effect’ of any kind does not serve to accentuate a point, but rather substitutes the point itself.
The second aspect is symptomatic of larger malaise – a general laziness, when it comes to reading, and rapidly diminishing attention spans. I have also often heard – XYZ (usually a senior leader) will not go through all of this (where ‘this’, for instance, is an explanation of the pros and cons of two approaches) My question is – Why not ? And, mind you, labelling anything that features more than two words as ‘gyaan’ is not a good enough excuse.
I choose not to lean on the phrase ‘studies show…’, but am inclined to think that the gradual decline of the reading habit has moderate to serious implications for our cognitive and emotional development – on how well we conceptualize, imagine, articulate, empathize and so on. In our world, however, progress up the echelons of management sometimes increasing immunity from reading. It might be pertinent to ask ourselves – How many man hours are expended every week to ensure that one person does not have to go through tLink to FB Notehe trouble of reading ?
In a regular workday, we often need to make a point. And what better hope of deliverance from the struggle to make a point than Power Point ?
Now, I have always been partial to words – I simply like them infinitely more than shapes or colours or numbers. They make me feel so understood. Staring in satisfaction at a phrase that perfectly sums up your thoughts is like looking at a best friend winking back at you over a joke that only the two of you understand. Unfortunately for me, words are anathema to the world of work. Reading, assimilating, interpreting – who has time for that. Who is stupid enough to traverse a white paper, when they could content themselves with looking at a pretty picture on a slide ?
In the three and a half years that I have been working, I have seen countless employees around me squinting at their screens trying to embellish their Power Point presentations with colours, shadows, pictures – a dash of this and a smidgen of that, all of these, of course, purely superfluous to, but apparently ‘accentuating’ the point they are trying to make. But let me ask you this – do you REALLY need that picture of a pile of coins to know that I am talking about ‘compensation’ and do you seriously need to see the photograph of a multi-ethnic classroom to know that I am talking about ‘learning’ ?
Why, then, are we perpetuating this hackneyed tradition ? Don’t get me wrong – sometimes a picture articulates an idea just as well as a word; it’s about choosing the medium one is comfortable with. What I wish to decry are two factors that I think underlie the working world’s eschewing of words:
Firstly, often a picture or an ‘effect’ of any kind does not serve to accentuate a point, but rather substitutes the point itself.
The second aspect is symptomatic of larger malaise – a general laziness, when it comes to reading, and rapidly diminishing attention spans. I have also often heard – XYZ (usually a senior leader) will not go through all of this (where ‘this’, for instance, is an explanation of the pros and cons of two approaches) My question is – Why not ? And, mind you, labelling anything that features more than two words as ‘gyaan’ is not a good enough excuse.
I choose not to lean on the phrase ‘studies show…’, but am inclined to think that the gradual decline of the reading habit has moderate to serious implications for our cognitive and emotional development – on how well we conceptualize, imagine, articulate, empathize and so on. In our world, however, progress up the echelons of management sometimes increasing immunity from reading. It might be pertinent to ask ourselves – How many man hours are expended every week to ensure that one person does not have to go through tLink to FB Notehe trouble of reading ?
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