I’ve see lists of bad slides, but this one takes the cake! I wouldn’t have said anything if this diagram had been called a document, but it was called a slide. I expect military documents to be complicated. But I don’t expect them to make slides of these documents.
Here it is:
The worst slide in the world
I found this at http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/12/02/2140281.aspx. Check it out.
Here’s the description:
“Below is the military’s schematic, a map of the counter insurgency strategy, that shows what U.S. troops hope to accomplish in Afghanistan. The slide is undoubtedly overwhelming…”
I sure hope they don’t send the PowerPoint file to the soliders in Afghanistan and ask the soliders there to use it as a field manual! OK, I know they won’t do that.
Do you have examples of bad slides that you can share?
This is a so called “Business Dynamics” analysis that is common in management consulting. (You can see the logo of the consultant firm at the bottom of the page). The tool is useful to understand the relationships of many dependent factors, and to find reinforcing loops that either improve a situation, or the other way around, find traps that deteriorate it. It is a problem solving tool, not a presentation slide. But what you can do is present it with the message “it’s not easy”, and then put an overlay with a big bright arrow on where you are going… Read more »
This is a great find!
Jan,
The TV station did just that, overlaying emphasize of a section and blowing it up, which was useful. As a problem-solving tool, or an analytical tool, it’s fine. After all, not every situation is simple. But as you said, it shouldn’t be a slide.
[…] why they took so long to find this, since I first saw it and blogged about it last December, in my blog post, “I have seen the worst slide in the world.” But for fun, it’s worth looking at! April 28th, 2010 | Tags: New York Times, worst […]
When General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, was presented the slide, he dryly remarked, “When we understand that slide, we will have won the war.”
We knew Afghanistan was a complex situation, but come on, the commander could better grasp the situation than he could the slide.
Actually, it all depends on the purpose of the slide. If the purpose of the slide was to show how interconnected and complex the whole situation is, this slide achieves that purpose quite well.