I am not certain where this began, and maybe a bit of a stretch, but it is too good not to share.
Of course, much of the credit goes to Jack Nicholson for his command performance and to Rob Reiner and the good people at Columbia Pictures for creating the classic, A Few Good Men. Someone has made a few tweaks for the consulting world:
“Son, we live in a world that has PowerPoint, and those slides have to be produced by men with computers. Who’s gonna do it? You? You, General? I have greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for my reports, and you curse my formatting. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That my reports, while drawn out, probably save lives. And that my formatting, while complicated and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don’t want the truth because deep down in places you don’t talk about at parties, you want my reports, you need my reports. We use words like SmartArt, nudge, and paste special. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent analyzing and creating reports. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain my formatting to a man who presents and gets promoted using the very report that I provide, then questions the manner in which I format it. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a mouse and keyboard, and build a deck. Either way, I don’t give a damn what you think the slide should say!”
Something to have handy next time someone gives you a hard time about your slides.