STRATSCRAPS v 142
performative authority
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When multiple artists critique a facet of contemporary culture, it is usually a good idea to take note– regardless of stance on the matter.
And slide decks have been a long time subject of ridicule.
Using PowerPoint, Artists Ask How Performative Presentations Shape Our Thinking
the above article opens with a quote from 2003…
“Edward Tufte critiqued the program for impoverishing the art of rhetoric, normalizing the slickly presented non sequitur, and condoning the proliferation of painful graphic design.”1
And goes on to discuss another essay, Erica Robles-Anderson and Patrik Svensson’s “One Damn Slide After Another”
It critiques presentation software for creating a reliance on performative authority.
“Slides “are not designed to provide audiences with evidence that speaks for itself” … They’re props—boxes full of “content”—supporting a choreographed performance.
But what happens when those slides are made to stand on their own—when they’re projected onto a gallery wall, played on a loop in an event space, or presented online—with no orator present to guide us?”
Sound familiar?
Isn’t that is what happens when slide decks are sent rather than presented? Or when they are something that is reviewed and shaped by anyone but the performer?
“Franck Frommer argues that PowerPoint is an ideological apparatus that has allowed decentralized organizations to discipline knowledge workers. As bureaucratic corporations gave way to liberated firms, project-oriented, entrepreneurial extroverts became the favored kind of employee.
These individuals, marked by their ease in precarious conditions and networked worlds, imagine themselves as creative and free. For them, work is neither job nor calling, but rather a site for personal growth.
Presentations, a form of work once reserved for the managerial few, became performance opportunities for the many, moments of personal expression where individuals could gain attention and approbation by demonstrating the capacity to communicate, adapt, and shine.”
Here I have a conflict of viewpoints. I strongly believe the importance of using decks/presentations as moments of personal expression.
But it is also true that the form of the slide is at odds with true knowledge work. As soon as we start crafting stories rather than diagnosing problems, we’ve strayed from our core purpose. Suddenly we’re selling, not informing.
I love making slides. It reflects my non linear thinking style and allows me to collect first, sort later. But maybe slides should be for organizing thought, rather than for sharing it.
Jeff Bezos is the worst, but maybe he’s right about the memo.
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I take issue with this for several reasons…
Only two positions on the chart are positions that require skill or craft – the position of the joker and the servant.
These are two positions that strategy should strive for..
Re; the jester;
“They have little to gain by caution and little to lose by candor—apart from liberty, livelihood, and occasionally even life, which hardly seems to have been a deterrent… If they talk the king out of slicing up some innocent, it is not only to save him from the king's wrath but also to save the king from himself - they can be the only ones who will tell him he suffers from moral halitosis."2
And re; the servant;
That is absolutely what a strategist is. We are in service to the creative team and the client but most of all to the work. We exist in service of the work and the job the work is meant to accomplish.
The two worst things to aspire to? A king or a prince. The two positions least affiliated with the truth and least likely to understand the real world.
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No comment.
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When the problem is detached from the context and system, it is easier to fix.
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but also…
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ORDER OF OPERATIONS
First, put “what you’re doing” to paper
Then, spend real time getting total alignment on “what the output is meant to accomplish”
Now scratch out “what” and start over with the second thing at the top of your hierarchy
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Do nothing on purpose, or it’ll happen on accident
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We don’t think about the second one nearly enough…
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And everything that follows falls under the category of “short notes without a home”
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Attention is always bi-directional
What I mean is that the things you examine externally will shape how you self reflect internally.
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Focus on signals, not messages.
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Strategy is a practice, not an ideology.
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to find a balance between accuracy and expression, between tradition and experimentation, between direction and discovery
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The share of voice stock exchange.
WEEKLY MONSTER
I’ve been rebuilding the strat_scraps website…
stay tuned.
Source: Beatrice Otto, Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World via martin weigel