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 →