CHAPTER 25
Dump Your Data to a Storyline
First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.
In our work culture, leaders rarely just point and tell people where to go and what to do. Instead, they go to a group and make a case. That group may be their own board of directors, their executive team, a client’s executive team, a project team, their own staff, or the general public. Even the president sometimes takes a case directly to the voters to drum up support in getting legislation passed.
If you’re a marketer, sales professional, engineer, health-care provider, or financial advisor, you’ll likely need data on occasion to introduce a new strategy, report, or product, or to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity. Data will help you build your case—but only if you present it in a coherent storyline.
But rather than building a case with a distinctive storyline, some speakers settle for presentation stew. And audiences dislike stew about as much as my teens always did.
“What’s wrong with stew?” I asked my daughter.
“I don’t like eating food that’s all mixed together.”
“Well, it’ll be mixed all together by the time it gets to your stomach.”
“Maybe so. But I still want it separate on the way down.”
We never settled the food argument. But I’ve noticed over the years that audiences don’t like presentation stew either. Not a little lump of this and a little lump of that.
Here’s how “presentation stew” almost happened at a client site recently. Having listened to the dry run of the client’s presentation for the upcoming annual meeting for managers in the field, I’d concluded that the executive team had nothing new to say—it was going to be “business as usual” the following year.
So I asked, “Okay, what’s the new message you want to get across to your team at this meeting?” The president and four VPs sitting around the conference table stared at each other for a few minutes. Then a couple of them tossed out ideas only to be shot down by a colleague’s “No, I don’t think that’s the message we want to deliver.”
I waited for agreement. Finally, after listening to his VPs discuss the options for 20 minutes, the president offered a tentative response to my original question. “I think our new message this year is this: ‘We met our goal to increase market share by eight percent last year. But we have lots of opportunity to grow market share next year by selling two product lines that we’ve neglected in the past.’”
“Is that really what we want to say?” The VP of Sales spoke up again. “I thought this update was to report specifically how we’d performed in each of our product lines by region.”
“Hmmm,” the VP of Operations said. “Then why do you have me giving all this information about how we’ve improved customer service in Region 7?”
Another half hour of discussion followed. After they determined their real message and purpose, they realized that nothing in their prepared presentation and slide deck actually delivered that message and built a persuasive case to spur their sales team to sell the two neglected product lines.
I wish this scene were an isolated case. It is not. This “presentation stew” is quite typical.
Consider these tips to tie your data to a storyline to make it clear and memorable.
Determine what story you plan to tell with your facts or data. Then select only the data you need to make your points clear, credible, and memorable. Think like movie scriptwriters. They don’t set out to write about every day in the life of a character—or even every day in the romance between John and Jane. They select a few key scenes. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy wins the lottery. Boy gets girl. Map out your storyline (or key points) before creating any slides or before putting any data on a slide.
You can “map out” the story with Post-It notes on your conference room table, with an idea wheel (see my book Speak With Confidence for examples), or with a simple list of key topics. This idea is simply to put together the skeleton story first, before developing the details.
Decide which points of your presentation need data support. Like the novelist who knows a lot more about the characters than the novel presents, you typically have much more data than you will ever use. Be selective; use data sparingly—or your audience will remember nothing.
Your goal is to present either an informative briefing or a persuasive case—not necessarily a comprehensive case. Again, consider your storyline. Who’s the audience? What’s the bottom-line message of interest to that audience? What do they already know? (Don’t tell them that!) How will they need to use your information? These questions should guide your storyline and data selection.
Think of words and concepts to convey your conclusion. For example, in my work in the defense industry, I’ve seen engineers start with 60 slides for a 20-minute briefing. But maybe only eight of those slides illustrate the 12 percent rejection rate because of a faulty widget. Rather than eight charts that show where in the manufacturing process the defects are happening, the engineer really needs only one number and one chart—or maybe no chart at all.
If the engineer intends to focus on the manufacturing step causing the high-reject problem, one chart should show that step in the process where 98 percent of the problems occur, coupled with the $XXXX cost, along with the 12 percent rejection rate. That chart would tell the whole story (what problem needs to be corrected and why).
Whether you’re developing a speech, preparing for a media interview, meeting with a client, pitching a proposal to your boss, or persuading parents of the soccer team to foot the bill to upgrade the soccer field, focus. Pick one point to get across. Then build your storyline by adding supporting data.
Everything flows from the story you’re telling.