SECTION 1
Planning: Reviewing Strategic Fundamentals

Regardless of the audience or topic, there are core strategic principles that underlie any successful, live data-driven presentation. This section covers fundamental presentation concepts that you should review and account for as you design, develop, and deliver your presentation. Here are some of the concepts discussed in this section:

• Realize that your presentation is at least as important as the work behind it.
• Understand your audience.
• Recognize your responsibility to make your material accessible to the audience.
• Embrace the need to tell a story, not just present facts.
• Be yourself and earn the trust and confidence of your audience.

The tips in this section will support the presentation creation and delivery process that follows. After all, doing a great job with the details discussed in later sections of the book won't make up for having a foundational presentation approach and strategy that is poor.

Tip 1: Results Are Not the Biggest Factor in Success

The most important factor in determining if a given project will succeed or fail in a business environment is not the quality of the results. In an ideal world, that would be the case, but it isn't true in the real world. Using analytics as an example, let's discuss why your presentation is at least as important as the results.

First, let's be clear that producing accurate results is crucially important. Every professional creating any type of analytical output must ensure that results are valid and accurate every time. However, from the viewpoint of project sponsors, the results themselves are at most 50% of the criteria that will determine if they view the project a success.

At least 50% of the success of a project will be based on how well the results are put together in a presentation, how that presentation is delivered, and how the results are perceived by the audience. The presenter must be able to explain the results in a way that makes sense to the audience and convinces them of the value so that they will be comfortable taking action. Success isn't just about focusing on finding the right results, however tempting that may be. Success also requires taking time to focus on the right interpretation, positioning, and presentation of the results to the (usually nontechnical) sponsors who asked for the project to be executed.

A nontechnical stakeholder won't care about the weeks of effort and the gory details of getting to the results. They care about what the results mean to them and their business. If you fail to get the results across to your audience effectively, the results may as well not exist. In other words, producing great results is necessary, but not sufficient, to have the project viewed as a success.

Given that the impact of mass advertising is very hard to quantify, why has it maintained a huge share of marketing expenditures? In part, it is due to the advertising industry's ability to make what they do compelling to their sponsors through a great story. Advertising agencies fully understand and leverage the power of presentation and emotion when they make their pitches to their clients. Imagine how successful an analysis can be if highly measurable actions based on solid analytics are paired with the excitement level that advertising pitches instill in their sponsors!

In many ways, making a complex analysis accessible to the audience can be harder than the analysis itself. It takes hard work, multiple iterations, and deliberate practice to develop the ability to distill a lengthy and complex set of results down to digestible sound bites. At times, you may feel you are watering things down too much and focusing on "fluffy" slides instead of "meaty" algorithms. Although it is necessary to have the details behind the findings available, the details shouldn't be brought out unless necessary (see Tips 15 and 16). A nontechnical audience's eyes will glaze over, they'll tune out, and they won't act on the results if your presentation gets too technical.

Your mission is to present results in a way that keeps the sponsors engaged and interested. You must accept the need to stop doing more analysis in favor of readying yourself to successfully present what you've done. Never forget that producing great results is necessary, but not sufficient, to having a project viewed as a success!

Note: This tip is based on content from Chapter 8 of my book Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave (Wiley, 2012).

Tip 2: Data Literacy Is a Two-Way Street

As discussed in the Preface, data literacy is one of the hottest topics in the business world as I write this. According to Dictonary.com, literacy is "The quality or state of being literate, especially the ability to read and write." The emphasis on the word and is my own and is done to highlight a common gap in the understanding of what literacy is. Specifically, most people tend to think of literacy as being about effectively reading and receiving information. People often forget that literacy is a two-way street that also involves effectively writing and delivering information.

Recognizing that literacy is a two-way street is critical if you want to deliver a successful data-driven presentation that effectively conveys the information and implications that you desire to convey. If your audience isn't understanding you, don't automatically assume that it is their problem that they aren't able to properly consume the information. It is also quite possible that you are delivering the information poorly. To achieve data literacy requires that you successfully write, speak, and convey the information while the audience simultaneously reads, hears, and receives the information correctly.

A big part of the job of a publisher like Wiley (the publisher of this book) is to provide editors who ensure that what an author writes is grammatically correct and comprehensible. Publishers focus on the writing side of literacy. We rarely see poorly written information that has been formally published in a book because of this editing process. However, you can likely think of occasions when you saw a personal blog someone posted that contained good ideas but was so poorly written that it was hard to understand what the author was getting at.

As you develop and prepare your presentation, take your side of literacy seriously. Make sure that you're viewing your content through the lens of those you will be speaking to (see Tip 5). Don't include terms or acronyms without defining them (see Tip 33). Have another person review your material and provide feedback just like an editor at a publishing house (see Tip 84).

The critical point to remember is that the onus isn't just on your audience to be ready to understand and receive the information in your presentation. The responsibility is equally on you to present and explain the information in a way that can be effectively received by your audience! Both sides of literacy must be present if you want to succeed.

Note: This tip is based on my blog Struggling with Data Literacy? That's Great News! (International Institute For Analytics, December 2020).

Tip 3: Don't Write Your Story . Tell Your Story!

When presenting technical results, it is your opportunity to tell a compelling story that informs the audience of the key facts and figures they need to know while also engaging and motivating them toward action. Your slides should serve only as visual backup for your main points. During the presentation all eyes and attention should be focused on you as you tell your story (we'll define more clearly what a story is in this context in Tip 4). There is plenty of time for people to read through the details. That time is specifically not during your presentation.

Many technical people make a major error when developing a data-driven presentation. Namely, they fail to distinguish between a detailed, written document and a visual, live presentation that tells a compelling story. A written document can (and often should) contain detailed backup data to support the points being made, and it can also include information that requires time and focus for the reader to absorb it. A live presentation needs to keep content as simple as possible. It is common to develop what is effectively a detailed written document and then present it live. The problem with that approach is that your audience will try to read everything on the slide while you are talking, which will make them miss much of what you are saying and miss the context you provide.

The slide in Figure 3a looks like many you have seen before. In fact, I have seen slides that are even worse! The slide is text-dense and hard to read. It would not look nice even as a handout. When projected on a screen during a presentation it looks ridiculous and destroys your credibility. Many presenters compound the error of including such a slide by then more or less reading what is on the slide (see Tip 101). That only makes the situation worse and bores the audience.

FIGURE 3A An Example of Too Much Text

Detail at the level in Figure 3a might be okay if it is being sent via email for someone to read on their own without a verbal...