There are some great quotes from former Talking Heads artist David Byrne in a recent edition of Wired News, about his use of Microsoft Powerpoint presentation software as an artistic medium. Says Byrne:
“American culture is becoming a culture of pageants….We’re surrounded by show, just as the Roman Empire turned to bread and circuses to hide other things that were taking place.”
In the pageant of everyday business life, Powerpoint has become the performance art of choice…in a deadeningly dull and meaningless way. In the presentation program, the world becomes linear, complex challenges become short bullet lists, and vaguely colorful backdrops and fonts become substitutes for reason and critical thinking.
Like all good artists, Byrne has taken the tool and attempted to stretch it into a medium of expression.
“…people make art out of all kinds of crappy things — Lite Brites, or Pixelvision cameras. For every odd little tool, there’s someone out there who’s chosen that as a medium. And in spite of the limitations of a given technology, they turn it around so that each defect becomes a positive quality.”
It’s a great metaphor for using all business tools and strategies to support the arts. If we’re not careful, the tools can drag us into their preferred behavior, rather than us harnessing them for ours. Just as Powerpoint can enable soft, fuzzy logic, such business trappings as debt financing or board meetings or market reports or customer surveys bring their own energy to our management processes, and can dull us to the power of what we do.
There’s an old consultant’s saying that “If you only have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail” (Google tends to attribute the quote to psychologist Abraham Maslow). Problem is, we’re not working with nails, we’re working with the social connection with creative expression. We can still use the hammer, but we can’t let the hammer use us.
