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Visit: http://occupymeeting.com
Written by Todd Barr, in collaboration with Venkatesh Rao
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DEATH BY POWERPOINT, RESURRECTION BY TABLET
The tablet stands ready to revitalize stupefying
corporate cultures everywhere. But only if you
choose to unleash it the right way.
Todd Barr
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@tbarr
Alfresco
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Copyright Alfresco Corporation 2012
All rights reserved
PowerPoint is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation
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For workplace revolutionaries everywhere.
Those brave souls who are grabbing tablets and escaping
death by PowerPoint across the world.
Those stealthy warriors who are back-channeling over IM,
twittering dissent, doodling creative ideas, and actually
choosing what to read via the good old browser.
Thank you. You are ushering in a culture of work that
actually works. Thank you for showing the rest of us the way.
This ebook is for you.
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CONTENTS
The Otherwise Engaged 6
The Tablet is Mightier than the Slide 8
From Pitch Cultures to Pitched Battles 10
Finished Business Seals Lips 12
The Makers in the Meeting 14
The Birth of the Studio 16
Cultures of Readiness 18
Content You Can Touch 20
The Journey Begins 21
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Meeting doodles are the graiti of business life. They reveal a very
dierent world from the one suggested by grim gures from employee
engagement studies, which claim that as many as 70% of the workers
are disengaged.
The word disengaged suggests a resentful and sullen attitude towards work.
It frames the problem of management in parent-teenager terms. It prompts, in
managers, a desperate attempt to prod the sullen worker
into showing some signs, any signs of life.
It turns managers into incompetent and anxious amateur motivational speakers.
Not much, just wanted to make
something funny and cute
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The doodles we received for the Alfresco Doodle Contest reveal
a very dierent world. An amazing world of latent creativity,
humor, humanity, curiosity and restless seeking of brain fodder.
The doodle on the facing page is one of several that you will
encounter through this book.
We believe the disengaged are not slouching in listless and sullen
passivity, waiting to be put out of their misery, as peers drone on
with the aid of unreadable slides.
These are people who are alive and well, and extremely engaged.
They are just not engaged in what you have to oer. The problem is
with what you have to oer, not with their capacity for engagement.
They are not disengaged. Merely otherwise engaged.
And perhaps the most important battlefront for reclaiming
engagement is the business meeting. An infantilizing psychic
prison like no other, within which millions of completely
functional adults are trapped at any given time.
Weve all heard the starkly poignant term that describes their
condition: Death By PowerPoint.
The meeting doodle is a clue that can lead you to a thriving world
beneath the apparent bleakness.
Here's a radical thought: rather than trying to ght the doodle
with increasingly high~caliber bullet points, red by increasingly
desperate presenters, might it make sense to harness the power of
the doodle?
Can we catalyze and amplify the anarchic creativity latent in
doodles, and unleash it on problems that people are actually
interested in working on?
Majority of American Workers Not Engaged in their Jobs, Gallup,
October 28, 2011 http://www.gallup.com/poll/150383/majority-
american-workers-not-engaged-jobs.aspx
WE NEED A WEAPON FOR THIS.
ENTER THE TABLET.
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If youve ever been at a meeting where a participant looked up
some fact online in real time and corrected a speaker, youve
encountered the early signs of how the tablet is turning into a
weapon in the ght against death by PowerPoint.
If youve been at a talk where the speaker announced a hashtag and
projected the tweetstream live on a second screen, and improvised
in response to the feedback, youve seen the power of an active
audience armed only with a limited tool, the smartphone. The
tablet is a lot more than just a larger smartphone.
Complete and utter boredom
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Ordinary technologies conform to
existing realities. Disruptive
technologies reshape them. It is
already clear that tablets are
a disruptive technology on par
with others that have invaded the
workplace over the last century --
typewriters, photocopiers, personal
computers, email, laptops and
smartphones. The only questions that
remain are when and where
the revolution will start.
Our candidate? Meetings. Today,
PowerPoint rules. Tomorrow, the
tablet will. It allows you to ght
data with data.
One is a weapon that allows one
person to force-feed processed
information to an audience desperate
to be otherwise engaged. A case
of many minds being held hostage
by one.
The other is a weapon that allows
an active and restless group to
go hunting and gathering in what
is increasingly a richly connected
landscape of data.
Why weapon? Why not tool?
As an ever-growing pantheon of
motivational speakers keep reminding
us, information work is not factory
work. It is creative-destruction in
a Darwinian economy of ideas.
Research shows that individuals
create best in solitude and isolation.
Committees and meetings do not
create. Their role is to serve as
mediums of dissent and contention.
Great meetings are gladiatorial
arenas where ideas conceived in
isolation can do battle. In this
war, data is the primary weapon.
The tablet can be the ubiquitous
window into the world of data.
The tablet represents the rst
serious assault on work cultures
dened by dull meetings. By the time
the revolution is done, the landscape
of work will have been transformed.
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Pitch culture is about shooting down an
unarmed audience with information bullet
points. What if there were designated
venues for pitched battles instead?
A pitched battle is a battle where both
sides choose a location and consciously
come prepared to ght. There is no
telling who might actually win. It is
an unpredictable event.
Computer-driven presentations are
only about a generation old. Digital
presentations did not really displace
transparencies until the late nineties,
when LCD projectors and laptops became
suiciently commonplace and PowerPoint
matured as a product (around 1997). Apple
oined the game in 2003, with the rst
release of Keynote.
Its the only character I know how to draw
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Despite its youth, the eect of presentation technology ~~ the trifecta of
laptops, projectors and PowerPoint -- has been extraordinary. The impact
has primarily been on two fronts: polished, high~prole presentations to
large audiences, and routine workplace meetings.
On the rst front, you could sum up the impact with one word: TED. An
entire culture of artfully choreographed digital productions, involving
voice, text, images, infographics and video, has emerged around modern
presentation technology. On this front, the impact arguably has been hugely
positive. Great talks combine the entertainment value of Hollywood movies
with the enlightenment value of great documentaries. Presentation software
has been a boon in this world.
And then we have the other front: everyday meetings. Here, the impact has
been somewhere between bad and ugly. Visualization guru Edward Tufte went
so far as to blame the Columbia crash on PowerPoint:
But shuttle disasters aside, the impact of presentation technology has
mostly been ugly. There has been an explosion of dull and unproductive
meetings that waste vast quantities of human potential. At best you might
have a hasty skirmish in the last ten minutes of discussion time in a
packed agenda whose primary purpose is to turn assumed consensus into
explicit consensus, and manufacture post-hoc ustications for courses
of action already decided upon.
Would you rather have pitched idea battles or crashed shuttles?
The language, spirit, and presentation tool of the pitch
culture had penetrated throughout the NASA organization,
even into the most serious technical analysis, the survival
of the shuttle
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The key to the death-by-PowerPoint
eect is that it encourages sharing
of information in rened, processed
and polished forms that discourage
further input, rather than in the form
of working documents that naturally
invite it.
Presentations are designed to shut
people up, rather than get them
talking.
The survey we conducted on tablet
use revealed that tablets are
favorite meeting and seminar devices.
The primary use? People consume
external content and do routine
internal communication.
When seated together in groups,
people naturally want to explore and
exchange new information, and talk
about it. They want to check out of
conversations they dont need, and
check back in when they can add or
derive some value.
This is not disrespect. It is
the most rational instinct in
the world.
It takes a uniquely gripping
performance of truly original ideas
a stimulating movie or a great TED
talk to compete with this natural
instinct and keep people quiet and
in their seats, content to merely
watch, listen and learn. Such silent
enthrallment is earned, not dictated.
Or it takes a lousy performance
working together with coercive norms
around expected behavior at work.
Real meetings, where things get done,
have shifted to water coolers, golf
courses and backrooms. Thanks to
PowerPoint, business meetings have
turned into a sort of theater of
record, an ongoing program of tepid
performances, designed for audiences
who have been coerced into their
seats.
What is the point of this theater?
To manage perceptions of empowerment
and collective decision-making.
For this function to be served, it
is critical that presentations be
polished enough to reduce discussion
to a few ritual remarks.
The polished slide deck is a
fait accompli that manages to
stie dissent without threat of
repercussions. The polish alone
underlines the futility of dissent.
Like the priest who announces before
a wedding, speak now, or forever
hold your peace, dissent is not
actually expected.
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What happens after such meetings? Slide decks are archived.
Defensive disclosure and plausible deniability aims have been met.
Cubicles
Coffeeshops
Meetings
Walking
Lunch Meeting
Seminar
or Conference
Home
= Respondent
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I have a lot of projects, initiatives,
business as usual responsibilities
all running in parallel so I need the
tentacles of an octopus to keep on top
of them.
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When traditional corporations began
to adopt open, collaborative models,
it was no more than lip-service.
What little autonomy was granted
to individuals was generally
inconsequential. Oice party~planning
committees across America are models
of open, participatory, bottom~up
governance.
The real moving-and-shaking continued
to happen in smaller cabals.
But once the nancial troubles of
the last decade hit, a few executives
genuinely began wondering: could the
methods actually work and help solve
problems that backroom machinations
could not? Could such processes do
more than pull oice holiday parties
together?
Innovations like Googles 20% time
began to spread. They represented a
trade~o: between predictability and
control on the one hand, and autonomy
and engagement on the other.
The culture that has started to take
root around such genuine autonomy
experiments is one of experimental
making.
This is no mere freedom to opine
and inuence.
This is primarily freedom to make.
Makers seek forgiveness when
necessary, not permission.
Empowerment in the sense of
permission is a meaningless word
to the maker.
Meaningful empowerment means
resources.
And makers have restless hands.
Hands that doodle under restraint
do a great deal more when left
unrestrained. If you yield control
to them, theres no telling where
you might end up.
But you can be assured of this:
wherever your unleashed makers take
you, it wont be into the bowels of
disengaged despair.
The meeting room has turned into a
maker studio. Even if only for 20%
of the time, in a small minority of
brave companies.
Most of what your internal maker
culture produces will be junk. That
is the nature of innovation. But it
will be better than listless memories
of useless meetings, languishing in
presentation repositories.
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Conference rooms are for captive audiences
and scripted theater. Makers work in studios.
They drift in and out of conversations, they
retreat to work alone or step out to try an
idea out on a peer.
But as our survey showed, tablets are
beautifully specialized personal consumption
devices. People re up laptops when they want
to create.
In the relationship between the tablet and the
laptop, we nd the seed that will grow into an
entire philosophy of work environments.
By separating consumption engaged
consumption-by-choice, not force-feeding and
making, the tablet allows us to optimize both
experiences and manage their interplay with
far greater creativity. The tablet has freed
the laptop to fulll its destiny as the maker
tool par excellence.
We seek such separation of functions naturally.
We have already seen it with a humbler piece
of work equipment: the chair.
Where do you sit when you do dierent things?
Increasingly, people reserve creative work
for cafes and other third~place environments
that catalyze individual creativity within a
mildly stimulating, but non-intrusive social
atmosphere.
Workplace cubicles are increasingly for
paperwork and ling.
Mindful, active consumption is for couches,
comfortable armchairs and boring meetings.
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Contention and debate are not for
chairs at all. We ght on our feet.
We prefer to walk on golf courses,
stand by water coolers or gesticulate
passionately near whiteboards,
smudging ourselves with permanent
marker stains. When you really want
to disagree with a speaker, you jump
up from your chair and grab the
marker or laser pointer. You knock
coee cups over in your enthusiasm.
In what sort of environment would all
this be normal behavior rather than
outright rudeness?
We are talking about the studio.
There is privacy and seclusion
for individual creativity, but
enough openness for serendipity
to leak in. There is room for
contention and collaboration.
Studios include arenas for
pitched battles.
We dont yet know how to create
studios for information work,
but were getting there.
Not all the pieces are in place
yet. As with the software-laptop-LCD
projector trifecta of presentation
technology, we need a similar
technology set built for making with
ideas. The laptop, which unchained
the maker from his cubicle, was the
rst piece. The tablet is the second.
Low
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MODE & INTENSITY of TABLET USAGE
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Medium High
= Respondent
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Its a familiar scene. The meeting has started. People fold down laptop
screens and look up expectantly. And then we have the predictable start-
up ritual for every PowerPoint-driven meeting. The organizer says,
with an embarrassed laugh, We seem to be experiencing some technical
diiculties, heh, heh."
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The VP frowns, a few people open
up their laptops again. There is a
general restless shuling and a few
sniggers and weak jokes.
Ten minutes later, the meeting nally
gets underway. A couple of smart-
ass slackers dawdle in late, condent
that projection issues will crop up.
The cost of meeting technology
fumbles is higher than you might
think. They promote:
- A general atmosphere of lassitude
and low expectations
- A ritualistic reinforcement of a
SNAFU culture
- A general loss of momentum right at
the beginning of every conversation
Where do you never see such dynamics?
Think mission-critical operations.
How would you react to these start-up
fumbles?
- Your pilot announcing over the PA:
Sorry folks, looks like one of our
engines didnt start, dont mind the
bumpy ride while we x it."
- A fellow soldier in a combat
situation saying, Oops, cant cover
you buddy, looks like I brought the
wrong ammo for this rie."
- A chef youve hired for a party
announcing, Whoops, sorry about
the ugly food folks, I forgot to
sharpen my knife.
The instant~on~never~crashes nature
of tablet computing does more than
create a pleasant user experience.
It creates a frictionless ow, which
allows you to lose your awareness of
devices and tools and focus on the
thinking. The tablet represents a
culture of operational readiness. It
is to the information worker what a
rie is to a soldier. Something that
is expected to work the rst time,
every time.
The gang of makers in a studio does
not fumble and stumble and allow
apparently trivial sources of friction
to drain momentum. Get it done
hangs in the air like electricity.
When two people are on their feet,
ercely disagreeing about something
and grabbing markers from each other,
where do they turn when only data can
resolve the conict?
THE HANDY
TABLET.
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Touch is more than just another modality of interaction with information.
Touch changes how we think. Matthew Crawford, author of the bestseller,
Shopcraft as Soulcraft, writes:
Touch unleashed turns us into makers. This is the paradox of the tablet.
By turning consumption into an active, engaged act, it can catalyze more
explicit kinds of production.
No modern tool has made us as passive as presentation software. Today we use
an adective that ought to be superuous, and speak of working meetings.
Meetings are not television. We are not collapsed on couches. We are sitting
in chairs in workplaces. So why do we need the adjective working? All
meetings should be working meetings.
This does not mean fumbling with cables or viewing conquest of a projection
SNAFU as a triumph. That is not the work we are in a meeting to do. We are
there to work with information.
Meetings today are about content you watch. Tablets can make them about
content you can touch. All work begins with touch.
A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our mode of
inhabiting the world: more passive and more dependent. And indeed,
there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called
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replacement part.
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As of this writing, the search phrase
death by PowerPoint returns over a
quarter million results.
So why do we persist with a work
culture that has so many obvious signs
of dysfunction?
Because we lack a credible
alternative. Dysfunctional can after
all, be better than non-functional.
Creating a culture of work that works
is not an easy task. It is not a
simple matter of banning PowerPoint
from meetings, issuing tablets to all,
adopting extime policies, replacing
beige furniture with colorful beanbag
chairs, tearing down cubicle walls and
adopting open oor plans.
These are just the tactics that are
available to you. Without a philosophy
to guide you towards thoughtful use,
they just add up to a lot of sound and
fury signifying nothing.
Some, like encouraging tablet use and
adopting extime policies, are likely
to be eective in many contexts.
Others, such as colorful beanbag
chairs are likely to be of symbolic
value at best.
To drive true transformation and
install a profoundly positive work
culture with deep roots, executives
and managers must face up to a
diicult challenge: systematically
choosing accomplishment over activity.
When you make that diicult decision,
the tactical decisions become simple.
How do you get there?
We will not pretend that we have
answers, let alone a checklist or
recipe. If these challenges were that
easy, there would be no need for
leaders and managers.
Our hope is that we have gotten you
thinking. Transformational change is
not for lazy thinkers.
We hope you will take on the challenge
of transforming your meetings, and go
on from there to greater things. From
great meetings to engaged employees,
and from engaged employees to great
companies, the road is a diicult one.
But we will be with you, every step of
the way.
We look forward to learning from you,
and we hope to help you learn from
others embarking on this journey.
Take a rst step at
http://occupymeeting.com