Published cartoon ·
VP of Deck Compatibility
Six reassuring slides. The risks are in the appendix.
Why this one bites
The VP processes a messy technical reality into a presentation in which every slide is on track. Nuance is cut away, difficult items fall into the appendix and the presentation template becomes the standard against which reality must fit.
The satire follows a reporting function that has begun protecting the narrative from the evidence. Clear communication should make a difficult situation easier to understand. Here, executive friendliness means removing the details that might prompt an inconvenient question or a necessary decision.
Accessible summary
- A machine takes in risks, dependencies, unknowns and reports. The VP presents six green slides while an employee holds a detailed technical report beside scissors and a bin labelled Nuance.
- Red items, uncertainty and caveats fall into an appendix chute. The closing line makes any problem that does not fit the slide out of scope.
Reading notes
An executive summary should help a reader identify the decision hidden inside technical detail. This machine performs the opposite service: it removes the detail that might require a decision. The green slides are compatible with the presentation format because inconvenient uncertainty has been routed somewhere the audience is unlikely to visit. The appendix becomes a storage location for facts that would interfere with the story.
The scissors are a useful distinction between editing and distortion. Editing can shorten an explanation while preserving its conditions. Distortion retains the positive conclusion and discards the condition that makes it provisional. A launch can therefore remain on track in the deck while the dependency required to launch it is still unresolved in the engineering report. Both documents exist, but only one reaches the meeting that controls the resources.
The satire is directed at a reporting incentive rather than at presentation software. A clear slide can reveal a problem quickly. The failure occurs when visual consistency becomes more important than fidelity to the work. The question to ask of any reassuring summary is what action the underlying evidence requires. If the answer has been moved to the appendix along with the risk, the deck is no longer communicating the project. It is protecting the audience from it.