In the final analysis, new-style executive presentations handle conflict and stress for the decision maker in the same way that Disneyland handles these issues for its patrons:  keeping them mostly out of sight and out of mind, but preserving just enough of them to make the experience somewhat "stimulating" and "fun," in a bland sort of way.

Stressed-out executives have found it only too easy to become hooked on communications of this type.  This has often allowed style to take precedence over substance.

In fact, the phenomenal recent growth in demand for management consulting services may be attributable largely to the appeal of these vendors’ methods of organizing and presenting information--since outside of a few smaller "boutique" firms, the expertise of the consultants provided on any given project is not typically very deep, and many of the consultants are just barely out of college.

Even after any outside consultants have packed up and moved on, over-use of this type of communication can keep decision makers substantially out of touch with their businesses.

Partly this represents a simple aversion on the part of executives who have become accustomed to the smooth ease of consultant-style communications to re-enter the bumptious, fractious, and messy process of sorting out real-life business problems in conjunction with the people who actually face them day to day.

But it is often also largely a matter of simply having heard certain blandly non-inflammatory statements repeated enough times, and seen certain compelling graphic images in enough presentations and documents, that these have effectively become "true"—whether or not they actually had anything to do with the realities of the business and its operations.