[Buffalobob]

One of the worst faults of power point is that it is much like opinion polls. The presentation can be made to influence the decision toward a certain direction by what is placed on the slides as "important facts". This then leaves the other 90% of the information to be assumed to be "not important facts". Thus you have a person who 1. cannot, or 2. will not or 3 should not make the decision effectively making the decision. When discussion is limited to what is on the slides (as it usually is) and the last slide presents "options" the ability to have innovative solutions not on the slide based upon data not presented goes right out the window.

Finally, the most common two errors are for the technical expert to assume the management expert understands what is being said and that information is actually being conveyed. And secondly, for the management experts to assume they don't need to hear from the technical expert. After 30 years of being an engineer it is pretty plain to me that I convey technically important facts very poorly to lay people but that does not diminish the importance of the facts. The most notable of those facts was that during the lead in drinking water crisis in Washington DC, that there was going to be a head on collision with bacterial contamination. I warned management as best I could and in the aftermath of the problem I was told by one of the managers who ignored my warning that it was just a "lucky guess" on my part. The morale of the story is that there are BS artists who make their living running their mouth about things they know nothing about and then there are people who actually know but whose chief skills are not in the verbal category. The space shuttle Challenger was in that same category - the engineer knew, but the management did not believe it to be an "important fact".