Prosody

I have recently started to learn American Sign Language, as a necessity, because a loved one continues to lose her (already diminished) hearing.  One of the fascinating aspects of learning a language that replicates communication through gestures is how many dimensions are required to communicate the intent and emotional quotient of the conversation.  Hand sequences ranging from open, closed, up, down, left, right, inward, forward to hand speed and facial expression are required to communicate verbal and emotional context (happy, sad, angry, frustrated and so on).  Without these cues, the conversation is monotonic and is subject to misinterpretation.  Our emotional state conveyed in the language we use is really what paints the context of the message we seek to send.

Thinking about how rich our communication pathways are, it seems counter-intuitive that we go to great lengths to remove this multi-dimensionality in how we communicate and discuss thoughts and ideas in the business world.  While the goal of brevity in presentation is valuable, it has evolved to applying brevity in discussion.  Mostly this is a combination of laziness and the urge to sell or pitch ideas with some efficiency goal in mind (in a minority of cases it is a means of stifling dissent or skepticism).

This is observable in how popular business applications like PowerPoint (or KeyNote and Slides – not to pick on a single vendor) are being used, not as pure presentation tools, but to simplify and reduce the necessary considerations for robust discussion. In analytics or any visual display of quantitative information, the corollary can be made for Excel (or Numbers and Sheets). 

The problem with these tools is that they are inherently presenter centric and not audience or content focused. They are an inefficient way to present data rich concepts and most importantly they are poor at showing multi-variate systems where feedback and simultaneity are critical to understanding the problem at hand. 

If your goal is to use a “data driven” or “evidence based” framework for decision making, then you need to first recognize, then understand the prosody of your data. Failure to do so can result in a false sense of confidence that you have command over the dynamism of the underlying problem which can result in decisions that lead to catastrophic outcomes. 

In 2003, the space shuttle Columbia, due to a compromised heat shield on the leading edge of its wing, disintegrated upon re-entry into earth’s atmosphere. Seven lives and a multi-billion dollar vehicle were lost as a result. NASA and the prime contractor, Boeing, were aware of the damage to the wing during launch however a decision was made that the risk was not significant to warrant re-thinking planned re-entry.  This decision was made even though the damage potential of the debris and the resulting calculated level of threat it implied was outside the test database used to calibrate the risk models being used. 

Instead of standard engineering reports, a presentation tool used to display the risk assessment of the damage.  Dr. Edward Tufte, who was part of the accident review board, severely criticized the use of PowerPoint as a tool to simplify complex engineering risk assessments for decision making.  His comprehensive report can be found here.  Ironically, oversimplifying the risks was also one of the cited causes leading up to the space shuttle Challenger tragedy some twenty years prior (in that case by Dr. Richard Feynman – specifically cited the lack of engineering rigor and completeness, the use of de-quantified language, pitch-y messages and over-reliance on simplistic explanations in the launch approval process).  This highlights how habits that become ingrained in culture can be hard to correct, even in the face of tragic loss of life and property.

So, how do we avoid the trap of over simplifying to get what we think we want, rather than stimulating discussion?  Framing the problem correctly and commanding the data is a starting point. What does this look like in practice?

The above is a picture of a blackboard at The Baylor College of Medicine, taken in 2005.  No one knows who exactly did this, likely one of the Bio-Chemistry professors, however, it is an great example of a sequence of diagrams and key words to guide the speaker and audience through some complex relationships and stimulate discussion. 

As access to more detailed data becomes widespread, the urge to overly summarize to bullet points requires restraint in order to fully understand the underlying dynamics of the system. Forcing the presenter to write a narrative allows them to better summarize complex issues into coherent arguments and think through the various positions carefully. This allows the decision makers to be properly briefed on all the alternatives. This is hardly new as an approach. E. Edward Demming's methods of quality control drive decision making downwards to the appropriate level because of the fundamental relationship between decision time and methods being relative to the criticality of the decision and the penalty of getting it wrong. We do ourselves a disservice in reducing discussions to monotonic conversations based on expediency. Fortunately, we are starting to see some organizations start to push back against misuse of presentation tools and settle for written memos.

The critical issue is there are tools for presentation, which are not for discussion. In a multivariate and data rich world, we need more discussion, not less.