The BP oil spill in the gulf is a complex and serious situation. On top of the very immediate and long term consequences, there are tons of lessons to be learned about management, communication, and risk.

Lots of companies have risk management strategies and disaster recovery plans. On The Daily Show, Jon Stewart got a great deal of comedic mileage from first showing representatives of other oil companies stating that they would not have drilled the well the way BP did and how they had contingency plans for disasters, but then revealing that they all had the SAME plan (probably cloned from an association or reference…or maybe purchased from the same consultant).

And the plans were obsolete…clearly they had spent their days on a shelf somewhere.

Point: Catastrophic failures don’t happen very often so nobody really expects them. It takes awhile for the reality to sink in when they do.

Similar in character, though different in scale, from the performance requirements for quality inspectors. Quality inspectors look at a lot of good parts and only very rarely encounter defects…at least in a mature process. It is one thing to teach and qualify that an inspector has the capability to identify a defect but may be another to ensure that they always expect to see one. It seems like there is a delay in many cases of recognizing that a disaster is, in fact, occurring. In the BP example, there were reports of unusual pressure readings and equipment problems before the explosion that started the leak…but apparently, they weren’t recognized as symptoms of a serious problem and, probably, because serious problems hardly ever happen. Most likely, none of the managers had ever been through something like that. (Disclaimer: I’m speculating here.)

But a disaster is different from normal performance in another significant way…in most cases, the performance situation is novel, so, it has never been seen before. There may be a general procedure but it probably has to be adapted. Most likely, it will need to be invented. That means a delay in decision-making. Who is in charge? What options do we have? Which one should we pursue? Where can we get the resources (people, equipment, even funding)?

And, you can’t ignore the pressure. A disaster brings out everyone second-guessing, criticizing, offering “help,” and demanding a quick fix. Not only does that make leadership in these situations painful but more difficult. All that pressure can cause leaders to make decisions and statements they might not otherwise. For example, is it a good idea to worry about who is to blame and is it necessary to scathingly denounce those responsible right away? Or is it better to fix the problem first and worry about blame later?

Managing during a disaster is a huge challenge. But the risk is always there…will you be ready?

You may have heard the expression “the problem is, you don’t know what you don’t know” used to describe how unknowns create risk in decisions. (You may also have heard the expression “too bad stupid doesn’t hurt”…but that’s just funny).

In general though, when we hear someone speak “with authority” we assume they know what they are talking about. This assumes that they have developed confidence based on years of study, hard work, and even being wrong enough times to have “learned the hard way.”

But, that is not always a safe assumption. (Are any assumptions ever safe? Never mind, different topic.) Often people who are not that competent over-estimate their own competence. That’s not too surprising. The real surprise is that people who are very competent often under-estimate their competence. As a result, if you listen to people’s own PR, you run the risk of trusting the less-competent individual!

In 1999, Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University published the results of a study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Their “Dunning-Kruger Effect” noted that, with a range of skill areas (from playing chess to driving to reading) the following are typical (emphasis added).

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

Another psychologist, C.F. Downing determined that this sort of reverse bias applies to intelligence, with more intelligent people believing they are less intelligent than they are and less intelligent people…well, you get it by now. It leads all the way to “depressive realism” which argues that people who are depressed actually have a more accurate view of what is going on!

What does it all mean? It just means that the more you know, the more you know there is more to know. And, that we should avoid using self-assessment when getting an accurate assessment is important.

On Wednesday, March 03, 2010, the ABC station in New York ran a report about a New York City police officer who went public about quotas. Apparently, the police are given specific targets to meet for arrests and summons. The complaint was that the quotas were being enforced blindly…so officers had no choice but to miss their numbers (and be disciplined) or just arrest people indiscriminately to keep their numbers up. (The original story.)

Well, are performance measurements and quotas bad? Large organizations need to manage by the numbers to keep things fair. Don’t they?

From a human performance perspective, there is actually a lot wrong with this approach, whether it is used in law enforcement or other businesses. For one thing, the numbers need to be connected to the desired performance and they need to be under the control of the performer. In this case, the measure doesn’t track the real desired results and it isn’t in the control of the performance because it doesn’t account for situational differences.

First of all, the measure is tracking activity, not results. The number of arrests look like results but it is more like measuring the number of proposals a sales person generates. Yes, there is a relationship between arrests and crime just as there is a relationship between the number of proposals and sales. But, what we are really looking for is a measure that tracks the amount of good arrests or, ultimately, the amount of actual crime.

Counting arrests is a problem because it assumes a constant volume of crime. To establish a required number of arrests for all police officers on all shifts in all areas implies that there is a stable amount of crime and the police can reasonably be expected to solve a certain amount of it. This may be approximately true over time (but probably not) but can’t possibly be true on a daily basis. The performer cannot control their performance on this metric. Unless they cheat.

One part of the bad news is that holding performers accountable for measures that they can’t control breeds cynicism and actually harms performance.

Imaginary dialog. (Italics/parens indicate what the individual is thinking but not saying.)

Sargent: Here is your quota. (I have a pretty good idea about what goes on in his area…I’m glad I don’t have to meet these targets.)

Officer: But we’ve been patrolling heavily and crime is down. I don’t think I can hit those goals, especially during the day. (Surely he knows this isn’t reasonable.)

Sargent: I don’t want to hear about it…just hit the numbers. (I have to maintain a firm hand as a leader. Besides, the people I answer to are so far removed from the daily problems of the beat officer that they won’t hear anything I say about the quotas either.)

Officer: Yes sir. (My only hope is to cheat.)

The result is wasted time, money, effort, and also injury to innocent people. With the side benefit of misleading statistics on record.

This sounds like lots of businesses actually…the farther away from the actual work you are, the less you will be able to understand the issues behind the numbers and the more likely you are to turn it into a clear cut, simplistic question. “Did you make the numbers? No? Then start making the numbers. I insist.” It highlights the importance and the sad lack of knowledgeable management. Maybe even worse is that there is management training out there that will teach you NOT to “take on your employees problems.” Which some people translate into meaning “don’t listen to any explanation or get dragged into troubleshooting.” Which is really not helpful and not managing either.

But back to the measurement question. What should they measure then?

I’m not an expert on law enforcement but if you are trying to measure police performance, how about measures that measure what you really want to improve that are also in the control of the performer? By the way, this isn’t easy but here are a few ideas.

• You really don’t need more arrests. You either want more convictions (as an indicator that the right person was arrested) or, ultimately, reduced crime, maybe based on reports or complaints by citizens. Some kind of ratio would be a good place to start.
  • A ratio comparing arrests with convictions (or plea bargains) to indicate the quality of the arrests.
  • Ratio of crimes reported to crimes solved.
  • An index incorporating crime per capita, arrests (or convictions), complaints, and feedback from the public.

In a business, besides looking at the performance and setting measures based on indicators that the performer can legitimately control, it is also critical to incorporate knowledgeable managers who can understand the context of the performance and make allowances where appropriate. There is a point as you progress up the “food chain” though, where you lose touch with the day-to-day issues…or even to where the management never had the know-how in the first place.  (For example, how many mayors or public commissioners are former police officers?) In those cases, the higher-ups need to listen to the people on the ground and develop enough trust to have rational discussions about performance.

If you want the measures to drive performance, it is critical to define them carefully and consider the possible unintended consequences because people will really try to make the numbers…even if it might be better if they didn’t.

In his book “The New Brain,” Richard Restak describes a study where scientists first taught a monkey how to move a cursor (to get food). Then, they implanted an electrode in such a way that, after some practice, allowed him to move the cursor only by thinking about it! He controlled a cursor on a computer screen by using his mind! (Sorry about all the exclamation points but…WOW…and “who thought of that?”…and “they should probably stop.”)

The strangest thing was that, once the monkey learned how to do this, he would no longer use his hand to move the cursor. Even when they disconnected the electrodes, he still sat there  trying to move it with his mind (presumably, based on brain scans). (If you want to see for yourself, start reading on page 195  of this book.)

As a performance consultant, there were some things of specific interest to me. One was that the monkey seemed to have an innate sense of efficiency. When he had a way to do something with less effort, he refused to go back to a way to achieve the same thing with more effort. (It did hurt his productivity though.)

People do that. Once you know you can do something on a computer, people resist writing things out by hand. Think about how so many of us have shifted our bill paying or shopping from a manual process to a computer process. If you do that enough, the thought of actually getting in your car and driving to the store is something we try “actively” to avoid. And, in business, there is a real push right now to shift more and more of the work from an operation that happens in the physical world to an operation requiring a set of decisions entered into a computer.

• Part drawings are entered in a computer and just downloaded to the machine for fabrication
• The process of invoicing and collecting is often not much more than a structured email
• Companies prefer to throw information out over the web or through elearning rather than assembling people for meetings and training

In a way, this seems like an extension of the way documentation sort of replaces actual work. We had a project once to analyze the capabilities and design performance tests for a number of roles in a manufacturing organization.  There was a role called “Quality Assurance Rep” whose responsibility was to approve manufactured lots of product for shipment. You might think that they checked samples, walked around the production area, etc. but you would be wrong. (There is a Quality Control Rep that does that.)

The QA Rep basically verifies that the documentation is good. They do look at the test results and verify that all the tests were done and that the results showed the products to be within spec. They checked the manufacturing information and verified that key temperatures were logged and that they were within spec. They confirmed every production task was initialed by an operator and that the operator was qualified (that is, that his or her training was up-to-date…they checked that on the computer). But they really don’t know if that lot is good or not. They only know if all the boxes were checked and that everyone wrote down what they were expected to. I am not saying this is wrong but it certainly seems almost like a lot of effort just to make sure the record or evidence of performance is acceptable.

The question here is “where is work headed?” There are still plenty of people who physically do work. Doctors talk to and check out patients. Mechanics fix cars. Carpenters build buildings. But lots of the wealth today is generated by people working with information which draws more people away from actual tangible outputs. Will we get to the point where we expect to just sit at our desk, type, and click?

We like to challenge that tendency when we can. For our projects, we frequently go into the workplace and observe the performance. (On one project, we were at the clients pharmaceutical plant by 5am to observe set up and shift kick-off. When we finished work at 3pm it was mighty strange to go back to the hotel ready for dinner…) But often getting physically active, even if it is just going into a meeting room and writing on some flipcharts or sorting Post-Its(r) or index card really improves the energy level and ideas. And there is that nagging bigger question…if all we do is manipulate pixels all day and, in return, someone sends us a representation of money…is that really creating a more fulfilling work environment or only just a way to expend less energy?

Once again, it is time for the annual ISPI international conference. San Francisco.

I have a series of things to do on Wed. But I’m just an attendee on Tues and Thurs. The kick-off is usually the time to figure out the “big ideas” for the conference…hopefully, we will be focusing on more than just elearning and technology this year…

Wednesday will be busy.

• 10:30am  Hosting a table for the ISPI Pharmaceutical Industry group. We’ll be talking with people about the team’s purpose and what we’ve been doing. The goal…recruit some new members and build interest in the team.
• Noon   Hosting a “Chat and Chew” table on the topic of “Web-based Collaboration Tools.”
• 2pm  Presenting an educational session “A System for Developing and Assessing Performance.” This is a case study of an accelerated training and performance-based qualification project for a major pharmaceutical organization.
• 6pm  Participating in a reception for authors who contributed to ISPI’s new book series “Improving Performance in the Workplace.” (I contributed a chapter in Volume 3: Measurement and Evaluation titled “Testing Strategies: Verifying Capability to Perform.”

After that, Thursday should be cake!

As with any conference, it is a great opportunity to catch up with people you don’t see too often. And it is a chance to sort of step back and look at where the profession has been and where it could be going. I’m looking forward to it!

In Tom Peters’ book “The Little Big Things,” he argues that cross-functional cooperation results in measurably better results. Not new but true. We’ve seen it.

What’s different, is that Peters goes further in citing a number of seemingly little things that drive that effectiveness. For example, co-locating people. Using round conference room tables. (You can listen to a chunk of this book on the web (read by Peters) at http://www.tompeters.com/books/little-big-things/ by the way.) Ultimately, he argues that by continuously identifying and tweaking seemingly insignificant details, you eventually end up with excellence. I think this type of excellence is also very difficult for your competitors to imitate and the day they decide to, they are starting way behind you.

Anthony Bourdain in “Kitchen Confidential” makes a related point. He argues that the real heroes in a restaurant ktichen are not the high-profile celebrity chefs, because many of those can be prima donnas…you can’t function with a kitchen full of them. You really need a crew of dependable, consistent, hard-working line cooks who won’t compromise on quality, speed, or accuracy. In short, they work toward excellence by executing a lot of little things right, consistently.

In HPT, we often work with cross-functional teams because we are trying to collect and build know-how and, often, there is no one source for that know-how. I’m going to start thinking more about what little things we can do to improve that process. Not just during our meetings, but afterward.

We also target excellence in our work. In every project we think about what will make this a valuable project for the customer and for PRH Consulting. Where is a boundary where we can really push into new territory? How can we do this differently and better than last time? How can we give the customer what they meant to ask for, if they had known ahead of time what to ask for?

Also though, there are lots of little points to be made, practiced, and reinforced in training. One mention in a training program won’t generate excellent performance. One big idea in a training session might lead to changes in the business but not directly. Often, training needs to include practice and reinforcement of the little things (for example, using simulations or other learner application exercises) to build a foundation for excellence on the job. Of course, if the manager doesn’t continue the reinforcement, the change will be short-lived unless the employee carries the torch.

Both of my sons had to wear braces…one of them liked it so much, he went around twice! We went to a local orthodontist recommended by a friend (don’t remember who but thank you.) This doctor may have never read any of the business books about excellence, quality, customer-focus, etc. but he really practices what they preach and it is very much in line with the idea of focusing on the little things. For example

• Self-check-in using a computer in the waiting room. The interface is so simple that the youngest patients can use it with ease.
• Separate waiting area (with a closed door) for people who want to talk on their cellphones.
• Coffee in the waiting room.
• Usually, some kind of contest, such as guessing the number of items in a jar, identifying pictures of celebrities as kids, coloring, etc. is going for the kids ot play while waiting.
• Occasionally, they will sponsor outings, such as free bowling or skating at certain times for patients.
• They have a standard routine for kids when they come in so they “know the drill.” (They carry their file in, can brush their teeth, and then wait on a bench. Parents not allowed.)
• The initial consultation involves looking at digital photos of the teeth on the doctor’s PC while he explains how and what they can/will do.
• When you leave after an appointment, you get a print-out with a summary of the visit, a reminder of your next visit (which, I think, is in the form of a sticker for your calendar…I might be confusing this with our regular dentist though), and a section you can tear-off to give to the child’s teacher or school office as a doctor’s excuse.
• When it is time to get your braces off, you see your name on a bulletin board congratulating everyone who is getting their braces off that week.
• You also get a gift certificate for portrait photographs for the child when they get their braces off. One copy goes to the orthodontist who hangs it in his waiting room.
• The day the braces come off, the office staff all gathers, claps, and presents the child with a basket representing pretty much everything they weren’t allowed to have when they had braces, including an apple, gum, crackerjack, and even (a little) candy.

By the way, this isn’t some young guy who has way too much energy and is hungry for business…my guess is that this doctor is well over retirement age…he is at least 70! And most of the ideas above really don’t take much cash to implement…just paying enough attention and then putting in the effort. In a world where people dream of retirement and winning the lottery, it is a joy to see someone with so much enthusiasm for his work at that stage of his career. I can only assume he loves people — sure it has to feel good to help others get great smiles but you wouldn’t be that good at it if you were not sincere.

Recently, I saw an ad in the March 2010 Issue of T&D  looking for instructional designers to create “innovative elearning…” It caught my eye because it was looking for volunteers to build training for kids. But it rubbed me the wrong way and reminded me of a continuing concern I have that when people think “instructional designer” they immediately think “elearning.” Maybe some ID’s like that because it gives us a niche…after all, technical know-how is a sure way to define turf and make it easy for others to figure out what you do.

But, instructional design is more than development. I see it as including

• Analysis of performance and identifying the required capabilities
• Designing ways of assessing for and developing those capabilities
• Developing instructional processes and supporting materials (including assessments)
• Evaluating the effectiveness of the solutions

(The above is really a narrow definition of ID because many of us include “performance consulting” as part of our focus.)

It seems to me that if the focus is only elearning and only development, there are a number of key decisions that the ID will not even be involved in and will only be able to influence slightly (if at all). Not good. You can create nifty interfaces for effective teaching programs that are targeted (potentially) at the wrong things. Sure it can be fun and creative but you won’t be able to reliably get results beyond “neato!”

The key benefit an ID can add to a project is really about capability. What capabilities are needed? What capabilities are there? How can we effectively install those capabilities into the target audience(s)? How can we build supporting materials that really work in the instructional process? Or, even as on-the-job references?

Ultimately, we can identify capabilities that are difficult to develop or critical to successful performance and help create plans and strategies for managing the risk. Often, we can identify ways of simplifying the performance or building tools to reduce the load on the performer, which makes a higher level of performance possible.

Somehow, we need to look beyond (and show our clients and colleagues how to look beyond) outputs and focus instead on the desired outcomes, that is, improved performance. This isn’t a new message…but apparently, everyone still hasn’t heard it.

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For more information on the field of Human Performance Consulting, check out ISPI.

One of the biggest complaints in schools is that the “No Child Left Behind” act has set up standard test hurdles to be cleared by all schools and students. The idea seems sound — set a standard and then expect everyone to meet it. It allows teachers the freedom to vary their methods but, ultimately, they would be held accountable for results.

In practice, it doesn’t work that way. In the informal conversations I have had with people in the education business, this is seen as a wrong and short-sighted idea. If there is a test, “teachers will not worry about the kids learning…they will just teach to the test.” At its most absurd, an example of this would be, instead of teaching how to add (the core capability) teachers would teach how to add “5 + 7″ because that is on the test.

I would h0pe that the actual test content is not available to allow teachers to directly teach the test answers. But is there any harm in defining in advance the subjects and type of test questions (i.e., the capabilities) to be tested? In fact, that would seem to be the best way to get standardization.

One thing that muddies the waters though, is that teachers are accustomed to having almost no oversight. They are pretty much allowed to do whatever they want in their classroom. In a business, managers who run their organization well, meeting their goals and getting good employee feedback, are often left alone as well. But someone is looking at the results. The standardized tests are the results. So, if they are well-designed tests, they would show which teachers are getting the job done and which are not. Many get concerned because results have never been tracked and reported so publicly before..and anytime you introduce testing it is perceived as threatening because the performers are being asked to 1) trust that the tests are fair and 2) that the results will be used constructively. Often, that is a big leap to expect people to take.

As it turns out, it can be argued that the tests are not completely effective. Of course, to my knowledge, we haven’t taken the step to figure out exactly what we want students to be able to do when they get out of school. If you don’t know what you are shooting for, any attempt to measure whether you have hit the mark is a futile effort.

Another problem is more practical. Tests for large numbers of students are built for electronic grading — so every question has to be multiple choice or some other easy-to-grade format. If life were only multiple choice…it would be so much easier. But figuring out which of four (intentionally unambiguous) options is the right answer isn’t the same as have the capability to do something. It doesn’t prove that you know something other than how to use the process of elimination.

Another problem is that the tests are often administered poorly. In some cases, students with learning disabilities and IEPs (individual learning plans…which means they are intentionally NOT following the same sequence and pace as the standard) are still tested. In one case, students that could not read were forced to take the test but their aide was not allowed to read them the questions. So, they looked at the tests and randomly filled in circles…

Finally, it seems that the tests are intended to measure a minimum standard. But, due to the emphasis placed on them, they are in danger of becoming the actual goal. An effective teacher who is focusing on getting real and important learning to happen should produce students that blow through the simple standardized tests like a trained athlete would ace a basic physical. Administrators and parents wouldn’t need to fret so much about hitting the numbers. (Anecdote: We probably all know at least one teacher who has had an irate parent complain about a poor grade on an elementary school test impairing their child’s chance to get into Harvard. Any society that doesn’t see that as absurd should go slap itself.)

The fix though, is not to discard the tests and go back to the good ole days. The first step should be an analysis of the performance, followed by the design of tests that test capability (not the ability to guess multiple choice answers) related to the desired performance. Then, checkpoints should be designed to allow teachers to track how well they are progressing toward the standard. And, somehow, individual differences need to be accommodated so the test really measures, rather than blindly generating meaningless numbers for administrators to gloat over or fume about.

This is not dissimilar to a standard performance-based ISD approach that we (and many others) use to develop custom training programs. It’s frustrating to see a problem continue when the means to fix it is well understood and available.

Without some kind of test, there is no verification of capability. Performance testing is the most accurate but can be difficult to administer. We still have to decide though, is making it easier to process a large number of poor tests really a better solution?

Was touring Edward Tufte’s website the other day and found a rant against Microsoft Powerpoint. As sort of a fan of Tufte but also Powerpoint, I had to check it out.

His primary complaints seemed to boil down to three things, which don’t really seem to be (completely) Powerpoint’s fault.

• Because it is there, people overuse the built-in templates for bullets, hierarchy, etc. They create too many slides of text statements, indented indefinitely which all eventually blur together. 
• It encourages people to think in “small frame” snapshots. They pop page after page of info on the screen without maintaining a story line. Even worse, there are things that can be made clearer by comparing them on the same page, rather than putting them on two consecutive pages, but Powerpoint discourages doing that.
• It encourages people to adopt a sales-like tone…turning informational reports into something more like a persuasive pitch document.

(Tufte has some great lines by the way…for example “The rigid slide-by-slide hierarchies, indifferent to content, slice and dice the evidence into arbitrary compartments, producing an anti-narrative with choppy continuity.” Check out the original. Or, an article by Tufte that appeared in the September 2003 issue of  Wired.)

Wait though…is it really Powerpoint’s fault? Or is it the author’s fault? Or maybe it is the fault of the business environment. Powerpoint has become a standard. In their haste to keep up, often people don’t spend much time thinking about their document and message — instead, they just do the first thing they think of. Or, they don’t really value the benefits of developing a good presentation over a generic one. Or, they don’t really know what a good presentation or document could look like. (Maybe Powerpoint has some influence/blame there…)

Of course, people in business today will always complain about having to read a lengthy document. And, people who write documents know that “nobody reads anything” so they often limit their information to distilled formats, like bullets.  Or, they assume their Powerpoint is just support for the talking they intent to provide along with it. They believe they can carry the narrative between slides and fill in the gaps between cryptic statements and bullets.

OK, plenty of blame to go around. But what can you do about it?

At PRH Consulting, we tend to use Powerpoint as we would blank paper. You are stuck with a page view, true, but you would be with paper also. (In fact, one of the downsides of the Google Docs’ competing presentation tool is that you can’t make the page any size you want…you are stuck with letter size.)

We have been known to create presentations in Powerpoint but also to use Powerpoint for documents and large-format drawings. In fact, our approach to building content frequently attempts to straddle the world of group-presentation and individual reading…for much of our training, we like to give the user an option to present it in a group setting, use it in a small-group coaching setting, and even as a self-study document. It isn’t easy but it is very possible to do this effectively. The key is knowing the story you are trying to tell, then putting only that information on the page in whatever format does it the best (including a table of numbers, if appropriate…everything doesn’t have to be a graph). Miscellaneous side points, tips, and “watch-for’s” are added using icons or call-outs to keep them out of the way of the main point but still available where they make the most sense.

So, you don’t have to use the built-in outline hierarchies…we often don’t. When we do, we will typically customize the master so it doesn’t have huge distracting indents or multiple types of fonts or bullets that can also be unhelpful clutter.

We use tables alot to compare information or concepts — often in training, you may initially think you want people to understand concept A and concept B but then figure out that you really need them to be able to tell the difference between A and B…if that is the case, you need to be able to put A and B side-by-side to compare them.

Organization of a large presentation or document in Powerpoint can be tricky — a mind-numbing succession of slides is as monotonous as windshield wipers. But you can create slides with a different/recognizable format/color to mark transitions between sections. And we’ve all seen the menu or miniature flow diagram showing “you are here” on every page…it can be overused or pointless (for example, if it is so small you don’t know what it is telling you) but can also be used effectively.

Unfortunately, we are guilty of making questionable assumptions at times. For instance, we have been known to force clip art relating to the message into a slide every now and then…sometimes it is OK but occasionally it probably isn’t necessary. Yes, sometimes it is there only because it felt like there wasn’t enough “visual interest.”

Ultimately, it seemed that Tufte’s message was to “respect your audience.” Don’t waste their time. In our business, we would say that you should have people apply the information you are giving them in a job-like situation. Don’t do data dumps. Don’t present information that you know the audience will not remember later. (As a test, think about the last presentation you attended. Now, try to remember one slide…can you? If it was a good presentation, you may be able to remember the main message and some of the stories/anecdotes used for illustration…but probably not specific bullet points.)

But some “dumbing-down” may be unavoidable. Many writers are lamenting the negative impact on attention span that our immediate communication technology is causing. It is so easy to fax, text, IM, email, etc. that we have lost the patience and ability to actually focus on and read something more in-depth. In fact, in many cases, politicians do most of their debating by flinging buzzwords and talking points around and then just repeating the ones that seem to resonate as opposed to providing reasoned arguments. Maybe we have to become smarter people in order to end world domination by Powerpoint.

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Full disclosure: At PRH Consulting, Powerpoint is our tool of choice for as much as possible. To us, it is equivalent to a blank sheet of paper but easier to use and more widely available than nother drawing programs so, if we hand it off to a client, they have the capability to modify it later.

For another counterpoint, see David Byrne’s post (yes, that David Byrne). Although, I’m not sure he really helps the case for Powerpoint…my knucklehead’s take on his message is that what makes Powerpoint cool is it’s lameness. Not what you’re usually looking for in an advocate but, what the heck…it’s David Byrne…you have to read it!

For more information on how technology is affecting our brains, you could check out “The New Brain” by Richard Resniak, MD.

I was browsing Edward Tufte’s website the other day and stumbled upon a one-paragraph post in which he described being brought in to consult with a large pharmaceutical company to help clarify and simplify their drug labeling and supporting information. His complaint was that he couldn’t make much progress because of the conflict between regulatory and business requirements.

He didn’t provide details but I think I know what he meant. We have experience working with pharma companies and have run into a similar roadblock. Everyone might want to do something but either the fear of fines/penalties (and the associated bad press) or the reluctance to endure the soul-crushing approval process required for any change keeps them from doing it…it just isn’t worth it. The regulations want to cover every possible outcome…the result is that all risks are treated equally — the most remote risk has to be addressed as fully as more likely risks. The result is that companies avoid rocking the boat wherever possible.

For example, let’s say you have a part of a process that you think could work better. Maybe you even occasionally have problems with it. Everyone might believe the right thing to do is to make a change to the process. But that would be very difficult. Of course you would need to actually figure out the change and document it and train the employees…that is a given. But in a regulated industry, you will probably also have to re-validate the process, which is time-consuming and costly…you really don’t want to do it if you don’t absolutely have to.

The result is that it is almost always easier (and preferred by management) to not change the process. Instead, you change the procedures and train the employees more. The first and most common fix to any problem becomes information and training.

The bad news is that creates a snowball effect…everyone has to be retrained, sure, but also those additional materials have to be kept current. Every time there is a correction, there is more information and training to update. Over time, that adds up to a lot of resource and cost but with little return in value.

The fix isn’t to learn to be more efficient at making information and training revisions (though, that never hurts). And it isn’t to sneak process changes in somehow so they don’t require re-validation (if that’s even possible). The real fix is a different model for regulation and rule-making. I don’t know what it would look like or if it’s even possible (or would even be welcomed in the industry). But the mountain of constraints creates an environment where performance is limited, not by capability, but by risk avoidance.

For an interesting talk on how this same principle plays out in our legal system, check out Philip Howard’s talk on www.ted.org “Four Ways to Fix a Broken Legal System.”