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| A client who created a Powerpoint-based curriculum was attempting to convey a sociological phenonemon he called "leadership clustering" - the tendency of gifted generations to hold on to power, passing over younger, more disadvantaged generations for top positions in national leadership. He originally used about 20 slides to convey his message, admitting that he was disatisified with the outcome. I showed him how to engineer his lecture into just 5 slides, using select animation features. This freed him to spend more time speaking to his class than to the projector screen. The left axis is age, the bottom axis is birth year. The diagonal lines you see represent the life spans of US presidents and Soviet premiers, from birth to the time they assumed positons of national leadership. As you can see, the generation that came of age during WWII in both countries tended to form a "club", passing over an entire younger generation for national leadership. The red line in the US graph signals the election of the first baby boomer president, Bill Clinton. He is followed by George Bush and the contender, Al Gore. If the theory holds up, baby boomer presidents will hold the White House for the first third of this century, passing over Generation X altogether for the presidency. Incidentally, this professor received the highest faculty and student evaluations that year. |