Powerpoints 'R' Us

I was assigned to a Reserve Battalion for three years in the '80s.  That place had the largest workload of "reports" of any assignment I had in 20 years.  To compound the problem facts and stats were supplied to one desk based on calendar year and the exact same data was supplied to another desk based on fiscal year.  The list of required reports was amazing.  After I had been there for about six months I took of complete list of all of the reports the battalion and companies were sending up the chain with me to a Group staff meeting.  While I was there I visited every office that received one of our reports.  If the person at the desk couldn't tell me who used the report and what it was used for I crossed it off and told him that he would not be seeing it any more.  I did the same thing when I visited the Army headquarters at SLC a few weeks later.  For about the first 3-4 months we kept getting phone calls requesting we provide missing reports and I would remind the caller of my visit and that I was not supporting that report any more.

One of the things that happened when the computer invaded the Army was people in the higher levels of command started demanding more and more “information” in the form of slides, charts, graphs, …  They just went absolutely nuts over the perceived need to be provided information and the idea that some trivial detail might not be included in those presentations sent them into a panic mode.