By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to focus on thoughtful decision-making. Reading time: 3:14

Imagine the power little Johnny had in his finger. He amazed the other kids on the farm who hadn’t yet learned the art of hypnotizing a chicken.

Little Johnny would first hold a chicken’s head down against the ground so the chicken would stare straight ahead on the ground. Then he would draw a line along the ground with a stick or a finger outward in front of the chicken.

The chicken would then freeze, trance-like for up to 30 minutes. It’s a biological defense mechanism the chicken has evolved to quickly play dead trance-like whenever it feels threatened. The suddenly “paralyzed” chicken then thwarts off predators very effectively.

Likewise control-oriented managers have learned how to paralyze an audience in a deep freeze like trance. With PowerPoint slides.

PowerPoint is in fact so numbing that the media relations officials in the Pentagon call it –Hypnotizing Chickens—when they show a series of boring and confusing PowerPoint slides for 25 minutes of a scheduled 30-minute news conference. That leaves only 5 minutes at the end for reporter’s questions “from anyone still awake,” notes Thomas X. Hammes, a retired Marine colonel.

Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps has had to ward off more than his share of PowerPoint presiding -a.k.a. “hypnotizing chickens” antics via PowerPoint. No wonder he flatly states: “PowerPoint makes us stupid.” Continue reading →