I had the privilege of hearing Lea Pica (https://www.leapica.com) present “GET THEIR ATTENTION – How to Present Results to Get Results” at the Microsoft internal One Analyst conference on Friday. Lea provided some great advice. Among the following three main takeaways were a variety of pragmatic tips that will make all of us more interesting to listen to.
Three takeaways:
- Be your audience
- Use your tools wisely
- Maximize data absorption
Equally impressive was the work of the graphic facilitator who created the following recap of Lea’s talk in real time. Check out @RonnyK on Twitter for graphic summarize of the two other key note speakers – Scott Berkun and Foster Provost. These recaps are very cool, and all three keynotes were excellent.
Lea’s presentation was a great reminder of all the things I should be doing to improve my presentations. Unfortunately, that’s the problem… it was a reminder.
Only one year ago, I took the communications class in my data science master’s program (DS 735). The class had a 4 week module on presentation skills that used a couple of the same authors (Nancy Duarte and Scott Berinato) that Lea recommended. Suffice it to say that Lea’s message was not completely new.
In my final discussion post for the class, I identified “work on presentation skills” as one of a four next steps / actions after the class. Yet here I am a year later needing to be reminded of all the things I should be doing to improve my presentations. That realization started me reflecting on why I don’t feel like I’ve taken much action on this. Why is data storytelling so hard?
I came up with three primary reasons why data storytelling is hard for me. Maybe this will resonate for others… here they are:
- Lack of practice – We all know that it takes consistent practice to break old habits. And old habits are what we have when it comes to presenting; bullet point driven PowerPoint slides are the habit. While I present fairly often, the opportunities are ad hoc and frequently are done on short notice. It’s easy to fall into the same old pattern.
- Storytelling doesn’t come naturally – For many analytical types like myself, persuasive storytelling is not a natural thing to do. For example, one of Lea’s points was “don’t let your data viz tool decide what matters to your decision makers”. You need to highlight the point you’re making and support it with data. My natural tendency is to let the data make the point… which it frequently doesn’t do without studying it for a while. Studying slides is not what you want your audience doing as they won’t be listening to you while they are studying. The broader task of weaving in a story can be even more challenging.
- Effective presentations are hard work – The One Analyst conference consisted of Lea, two other key note presenters, and eleven internal presenters. While the internal presenters did a good job with their content, there was a clear difference between the ‘professional presenters’ and the internal presenters. The first two points that I made certainly are part of this difference, but another factor is the amount of effort put into the presentations. It’s hard work to build presentations that bring in imagery, build targeted visualizations, include animations for you to control the messaging, etc. It’s reasonable to go to a lot of effort if you are preparing for a TedX talk, are presenting to a large audience, or getting paid to present. It’s another thing if you’re presenting to a small group internally. How should you scale the effort?
As an example, here’s a presentation scenario that I’m actively working on. I’m co-presenting a 30 minute presentation for our leadership team tomorrow. I found out that I would be doing the presentation last Wednesday. The only information I had initially was the title. That was a good starting point as it was a topic that I have some expertise on, but I still wasn’t clear on what the audience really wanted from the presentation.
So I had two working days (already full with meetings and the conference) to clarify what the audience wants from the presentation, collaborate with two others that are located at different locations than me, and come up with a persuasive presentation that will drive investment decisions.
It’s pretty easy to fall back to old habits in this scenario. But since I went to Lea’s session and was reminded of what good presentations look like, I’ve been fighting those habits. I’ve been thinking about the audience and the targeted outcomes. I’ve put together persuasive charts that highlight key improvements in a couple of scenarios. I’m limiting the bullet points and building visuals supported by the verbal message. And I’m working on it on Sunday since the time to do it well didn’t exist otherwise!
Ultimately, Lea’s three key takeaways can be scaled from a TedX talk down to a 10 minute project update at a team meeting. All it takes is to invest a little more time to apply the guidance, keep striving to break old habits, and keep working to improve… at least that’s what I need to keep reminding myself!
Picture details: Bainbridge Island, WA, 1/26/2019, iPhone 7, f1.8, 1/967 sec, ISO-20