When the big day has arrived and you're stepping to the front of the room, there are still a range of things to focus on if you want your presentation to be a success. This section will cover various presentation mechanics to use, as well as some important principles to follow, as you deliver your data‐driven presentation. Here are some of the concepts discussed in this section:

• Read the room and adapt your delivery to what you see.
• Handle difficult audience members.
• Be honest and confident while not hedging too much.
• Drive home the impacts of your work and related recommendations for action.
• Close with a “wow” to finish strong by tying the results to a larger context.

After all the work that went into getting ready for the big day, your final delivery will have a huge impact on whether those efforts pay off. Ensuring that you follow the guidance in this section will help you make your delivery compelling. If you win the trust and confidence of the audience, you can motivate them to embrace your conclusions and act on your recommendations. This, in turn, will allow your efforts to be a resounding success!

Tip 101: Do Not Read Your Slides … Ever!

One of the single most destructive things you can do to ruin any live presentation is to read from your slides. We have all been in a meeting where someone puts up slides, turns to the screen instead of the audience, and then proceeds to read the slide word for word. There are many reasons that is a bad thing to do and it is so obviously bad that it seems silly to be including this tip. However, given that people routinely read their slides, the tip is necessary.

For starters, reading from the screen adds no value. People can read the screen on their own. If all you want the audience to do is learn exactly what is written on the slide, simply put up the slide and tell them to read it. Then, sit down and stay out of the way. However, there is no point to scheduling a presentation in that case. Instead, save the audience's time and just send them the slides to read on their own and offer to answer questions via email.

When a presenter is reading their slides, they must completely ignore the audience and either face the screen or stare down at their notes. That is not engaging for the audience, and it leads to a monotone delivery that makes the experience painful. Remember the horrible teacher from the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off? Anyone? Anyone? Who wants to sound like him? Anyone? Anyone?

The best way to avoid the urge to read from your slides is to remember some of the other tips in the book such as keeping text to a minimum (Tip 30); telling a story, not writing one (Tip 3); and keeping your slides visual and to the point (Tip 6). If your slides are done properly, the audience won't be able to get the full scope of your point from the slide. They will see that you have something valuable to communicate, but it is impossible to simply read the slide to successfully grasp it all. The audience will need and want to listen to your verbal narrative for the full context. This will be more engaging for the audience and will also force you to be better prepared and exude more energy.

Sometimes people read slides because they do not know their material well enough to do otherwise. Reading the slides is the wrong solution for that underlying problem. If you are so uncomfortable with your material that you feel you must read it, then you should not give the presentation. It will be a failure, guaranteed! Either postpone the presentation until you are ready or send out a written document instead.

The only time to make an exception to this rule is if there is a particularly important phrase, title, or name that must be repeated exactly. If, in the middle of several minutes of good commentary, you need to turn and read a direct quote, a specific policy point, or a specific name from the screen, that is okay if it seems natural in context. People won't mind a short line being read if they are enjoying your talk and they'll appreciate that you wanted the quote or statement to be accurate.

Tip 102: Read the Room and Adapt

You must become skilled at reading the mood and reactions of your audience and adapting your presentation on the fly. No matter how well you plan and prepare your data‐driven presentation, it is impossible to predict how your audience will react until you are presenting. Technical people are not always the best at reading a room, so this skill may require intentional cultivation and practice if you come from a technical background.

In an ideal scenario, you know what your audience hopes to hear, it lines up perfectly with your findings and narrative, and there are no political undertones that might cause resistance. In the real world that will rarely be true, and any number of things can cause an audience to develop a challenging, defensive, or even outright hostile attitude.

If you present right after some very bad news was announced, your audience will start in a negative mindset. Sometimes, partial (or even false) information gets disseminated in advance about your presentation, which can cause audience members to start on the defensive. If you have misunderstood what the audience is hoping for, it can lead to immediate pushback. These are a few of many reasons why an audience might be difficult from the start.

Even if your audience is in a positive mindset at the outset, that can change. One of your findings might be more controversial than you expected. Someone might have a higher personal stake in the status quo than you realized. Your presentation might have errors or poorly worded phrasing (but not if you have followed the tips in this book!), which leads the audience to lose confidence in you and your results. Whatever the reason, an audience that starts friendly will not always stay that way.

If you sense the room turning against you, you need to identify why that is and try to mitigate it as soon as possible. You can even ask, “Some of you look concerned or unconvinced. Can you help me understand why that is?” Then, based on what you hear, you need to shift focus to addressing the concern(s) raised. There is no guarantee that you will swing the audience back your way. However, if the audience can see that you are attempting to address the concerns raised, they will be more forgiving.

In an extreme case, a major issue arises that must be resolved before the audience will be able to support your findings. If so, end your presentation and suggest that it be continued after the issue is resolved. This way, you stop the bleeding and prevent any further points you plan to make from being associated with what is, for now, an unsuccessful presentation.

Thus far, we have focused on an audience turning negative. You must also identify when an audience has been won over and does not need any more convincing. An old saying goes, “Know when to stop selling!” If an audience is totally on board and ready to act, then consider skipping or greatly shortening the remainder of your presentation. Don't risk derailing the excitement. More data and information can help win a skeptical mind over. More data and information, if not needed, can also accidentally place doubt in the mind of someone who is already won over. Don't sell past “yes”!

Tip 103: Do Not Look at the Screen!

I can't imagine anyone arguing the against the merit of a presenter making eye contact with the audience instead of turning around to look at the screen. Unfortunately, this is one of the most common errors made. Although less‐experienced presenters look at the screen all the time, even experienced presenters fall into this trap. Looking at the screen while you talk totally disengages you from your audience. If there are times that you need to take a quick glance to refresh yourself on a number, you can get away with it if you do it quickly and rarely. Maintaining eye contact with the audience should be your primary goal. One exception is when, as we discuss in Tip 104, you want to make a show of physically pointing to something particularly important on the screen.

People usually look at the screen because they are not comfortable with their material and they are using the slides as cheat sheets. Remember that in Tips 9 and 88, we talked about having a printout in front of you. Although it also isn't ideal to stare down at your notes, at least you are facing the audience. Large conferences have “confidence monitors” by the stage. These are screens facing the speaker instead of the audience. I love when I give a keynote and they have these because if I do need a quick peek at my slide, it is a simple glance down instead of a full turn around with my head looking up.

You can mimic a confidence monitor by having the computer that is projecting positioned such that you can see its screen. If I am presenting in a long conference room, for example, I'll put my laptop in the middle of the table at the end I will be presenting from so that it is facing me. It doesn't distract anyone in the audience, but it lets me see what's on the screen without looking behind me. If I am in a large room with a lot of individual tables, I'll put my laptop on the table closest to the front of the room by where I will be speaking.

In a worst‐case scenario, you may be asked to present from a computer tied into a room's system and it may be positioned in a way that you can't see it. In that case you have two options. First, you can place the slide overview printouts discussed in Tips 9 and 88 on the table or podium in front of you. Another option is to still put your computer where you want it and then advance the slides on your computer and the room's computer at the same time using two clickers. This can be tricky, but it can work.

Tip 104: Physically Point to Important Information

During a live presentation, it can add some flair to your talk to walk over to the screen and point to something important or to point a laser pointer at a key element of your slide. We talked in Tip 103 about never looking at the screen. As with any rule, there are exceptions.

One of the exceptions to Tip 103 is when you are making a critical point while highlighting information through your actions in front of the room. To highlight an especially critical number or statement, pause your talking, walk to the screen, point to the item you want to highlight, and then turn back to the audience to describe why it is so important. This approach should be used sparingly so that it doesn't become overdone.

When presenting online, you can't physically highlight points. Although some online meeting systems have a “pointer” that you can use, it isn't as impactful as in real life and I have rarely seen it used effectively. So, what do you do online in the place of physically pointing to something?

You'll read in various tips in this book about the effective use of slide animations and highlighted content. Those techniques are the key to meeting your needs online. When there is an important number you want to draw attention to in an online or hybrid environment, consider one of the methods from Tips 23, 95, and 96 to do it. Although those methods will enable you to make your point online, they are also great approaches when presenting in person. Even if you plan to walk and point to a number for effect, it doesn't hurt to have it highlighted on the screen as well.

Tip 105: Don't Let Bright Lights Throw You Off

When presenting in a conference room, classroom, or training facility, there is typically no special lighting. When presenting at a conference or major corporate event, especially if you are on the main stage, the environment will be very different. Main stages usually use professional lighting. In cases where the sessions are being filmed, this lighting is very, very bright, and it is often necessary to continually resist the urge to squint.

All those bright lights affect what you can see. Instead of seeing all the smiling faces in the audience, you are effectively blinded even as the audience sees you perfectly. This means that you may be able to make out general shapes of people, but you won't be able to see faces and reactions. This takes some getting used to.

The most common speaker reactions to the bright lights are to either look down to avoid the lights or to just look generally into space. Both of those approaches will look bad to your audience. You need to force yourself to look around and pretend as though you are making eye contact with the audience as you would usually do. Although you won't actually be making eye contact on your end, the people sitting near where you look will feel like you are looking at them. In their minds you are making eye contact.

When someone stares straight at their camera in an online meeting, as we'll discuss in Tip 107, your brain perceives that they are looking right at you. When you're looking around the room from a bright stage, you're using a similar perceptual trick to give your audience the impression that you are looking at them.

Tip 106: Don't Stand Still

You should not stand still during a live presentation. No matter how nervous you are, you must force yourself to project confidence. Movement is one way to do that. An early sign for me that a presentation is going to be boring is when the presenter stands directly behind a podium and doesn't move for the first few minutes. At that point, I freshen my caffeinated beverage!

It is very, very hard to be energetic and enthusiastic while standing still. The audience will also struggle to see your body language if you are hidden by a podium. By walking around with purpose, you inject energy into your story and keep the audience alert. This is because people's brains will take notice of motion and track it. As you move around, you can also make eye contact with people in different parts of the room and even move toward specific individuals to engage them. Depending on the projector configuration, you might be able to walk freely anywhere. In cases where you will substantively block the projector in some areas, move through those areas quickly to get to either side.

Getting comfortable with movement is another activity that you should consider filming yourself doing (see Tip 83). If you move too fast and too often, it can be distracting. If you stand still for long periods in between small bursts of movement, you will need to focus on moving more. You should also validate that you are standing straight and keeping your hands engaged, but not too active. If you do it right, the audience won't explicitly notice that you're moving around. They'll just notice that you are giving an engaging presentation. A final benefit of movement is that it helps keep you energized just like any physical activity does. Your own energy will drop if you remain perfectly still.

There are a few exceptions to this rule: (1) when you are forced to present in a very small room where there is simply no room to move; (2) when you are being filmed with a camera that cannot move, whether to support a hybrid online/in‐person presentation or a video for later use, which will require you to be mostly stationary to stay in the frame; and (3) when there is only a single, stationary microphone on the podium. In such cases, unless the room is very large, I will turn off the mic and just talk extra loudly as I move. If the room is too large or you have a quiet voice, however, you could be stuck. Luckily, many large rooms are equipped with wireless microphones that will solve the problem.

Of course, most of this tip ties to a live presentation in a room. If you are presenting in an online setting, then you'll unfortunately need to sit still in your seat in front of the camera like everyone else. This is one of the drawbacks to online presentations. Seeing just a face with a slide isn't nearly as compelling as seeing somebody live. Per the prior paragraph, hybrid sessions are also suboptimal because you'll be stuck staying within the camera's range for the remote audience. At least you'll not be just a face to the local, live audience in a hybrid setting.

Tip 107: When Presenting Online, Look Right at the Camera

When you look down at the images of audience members during an online presentation, your eyes are specifically not looking at your camera. This means that although you feel like you're doing the right thing by looking at another person as you would do in real life, the audience sees you looking down and away from them. You are, in fact, disconnecting rather than connecting with your audience.

Whether you are doing a formal presentation or just having a chat, force yourself to look squarely at your camera and ignore the video thumbnails of other participants on your screen. You may be wondering what the point of a video call is if you shouldn't look at the video of the other participants. I wonder the same thing all the time!

It takes a lot of practice to look consistently at your camera because it feels unnatural. I still find my eyes drifting, especially if someone is asking me a question because the natural reaction is to look at them. I am in the habit of validating where my eyes are looking regularly during an online presentation. This same technique is used on television. Notice that on news shows, guests and hosts often aren't looking at each other, but at a camera as they talk. Similarly, you should talk to the camera and not thumbnail images of your audience.

Figure 107a shows me looking directly at the camera. Notice how it seems I am looking right at you. Figure 107b shows me looking at my shared slide in the middle of the screen. It makes me seem disconnected. Figure 107c shows me looking at the bottom corner of my screen, at someone's thumbnail. This looks even worse.

Tip 108: Anticipate Random and Irrelevant Questions

There will sometimes be people in your audience who simply don't understand what you are talking about and/or care about nothing except their own agenda. When such people are in your audience, you can get questions that seem random, irrelevant, or off track.

The way to react when getting such questions is to keep your composure. First, don't show that you are puzzled by the fact the question would be asked. Other audience members may be groaning inside (or even openly!) along with you, but you shouldn't react as the presenter. Also remember that a person with an agenda putting you in an awkward spot is usually just a side effect of their pursuit of their own needs. Try not to take it personally.

You can't just ignore an irrelevant question. You must find a way to graciously move past it. If the question is quick and easy to answer, give the answer and move on regardless of its relevance. If the question would take you off on a distracting and time‐consuming tangent, explain that a proper answer will take more time than is available and offer to take the discussion offline. Others in the room will appreciate not having to sit through an off‐topic discussion, and the person asking knows that you are willing to discuss it, albeit later. Everyone is happy!

In rare cases of someone who just won't let their question go, hope that others in the audience will step in to support tabling the question. A last resort is to call a short break and take the person aside to ask them respectfully to let the question be tabled. If that fails, you may be forced to take the tangent, however reluctantly.

Tip 109: Handle Difficult People with Grace

Tip 108 discusses being prepared for audience members who disrupt your presentation somewhat unintentionally. But what about someone who is unexpectedly adversarial, argumentative, and contentious after your presentation starts? Such an audience member can be more difficult to deal with. There are times someone disagrees with the entire premise of the results you are presenting, and they don't mean to be personal. They may have been against the project since your sponsor first discussed doing it. There are other times where someone is very clearly attacking you on a personal level. For the most part, you need to deal with both types of people in the same way.

First, recognize that most people do not like to see others disrupt a presentation, especially with open attacks. You probably have a lot of supporters in the audience who are unhappy with the attack, too, even if they don't speak up. Because you shouldn't show frustration or anger as the speaker, you will have to handle your adversary with grace and placate them enough to let you move on.

Unfortunately, there are cases where you have been given bad information or you truly made a mistake. In such situations, it can be understandable that an audience member is upset and combative, especially if they are affected. I was once given incorrect information by a client on how to interpret a data field. Based on that incorrect guidance, I found some unsettling trends that caused the VP over the affected area to get quite upset during my presentation. After I explained how we got the numbers, he was able to point out that a key premise was false. All I could do was apologize and offer to revisit the analysis with the now‐correct information before moving on to the next part of the findings. If your attacker has a good point, as did that VP, acknowledge it, apologize, and move on.

Assuming your results are bulletproof, and someone is still being combative, then you need to try and handle them quickly and diplomatically. Perhaps you can answer their first question or even the first two, but you shouldn't devolve your presentation into a contentious one‐on‐one argument. Once it is clear the person is going to keep the attacks coming, suggest that the two of you take it offline and that you move on to the next point. As often as not, the person being difficult is frequently difficult in other situations as well. As a result, you'll have a lot of supporters in the room ready to back up your request to take it offline. When I have ended up in this uncomfortable situation, it is often other audience members who get the difficult person to stand down. Others know when attacks are unfair and unproductive and will often lend assistance.

In a rare case where nobody backs you up, you'll be faced with the no‐win choice of either continuing the contentious debate or moving on over the highly vocal protests of your adversary. Choose the option to move on, commit to it, and push forward as best you can.

Tip 110: Don't Correct People in Front of the Room

Unless someone has totally misunderstood what you've said in a way that could lead to huge problems and thus requires immediate correction, then don't correct people in front of the room. You can always privately grab someone later to explain where they went wrong. Publicly correcting someone can have multiple negative impacts on the effectiveness of your data‐driven presentation:

• It can embarrass or anger the person you correct (especially an executive in front of employees).
• It can scare other people from expressing their opinion for fear of being corrected.
• It can make you seem petty or overzealous when your clarification is hard for people to grasp.
• Depending on your delivery it can make you sound condescending and/or arrogant.

None of those are something you want associated with you or your data‐driven presentation. If you're unsure if something is important enough to warrant an explicit correction, then mention that there are some nuances worth discussing offline, but that for now it is best to move on. That lets you flag the need for clarification in a much less confrontational fashion.

In fact, you can often “correct” the person by saying that you can tell that you weren't effective in communicating your point based on the question or comment. Then, offer a more detailed explanation in hopes that it will address the concern. Another advantage of this approach is that if one person misunderstood something, it is likely others may have as well. So you can address what could be a bigger issue diplomatically by placing the blame for the misunderstanding on yourself.

The truth is that most times audience members misunderstand something, it is harmless. I wrote a blog (The Benefits of Ignoring When Executives Misunderstand Artificial Intelligence, International Institute For Analytics, January 2019) about how executives often misunderstand artificial intelligence (AI) in terms of how it works and where it may apply. I've had discussions with countless executives excited to “solve this problem using AI.” My view is that if the executive is excited to have you solve their problem, then go with it! There is no upside to correcting them. Just accept the challenge to solve their problem, with or without AI.

If you solve what the executive thinks is an AI problem without AI, the executive will still be happy. You can even say, “We were able to solve this without AI using our existing tools and methods. This allowed us to complete the project faster and cheaper than we expected. However, we'll absolutely consider AI for your next problem.” The executive will almost always be thrilled you solved the problem, will be willing to give you another one, and you'll develop a good relationship. If you shut the executive down by explaining why they don't know what they are talking about related to AI, they'll probably be hesitant to come to you again.

The same dynamic is at play with any presentation. If people are excited and ready to act on your results, let them get a little carried away with their use of terminology and give them leeway in their layperson's description of how the technical details work (as long as the liberties they are taking won't lead them astray in terms of the actions they'll take). Be happy the audience is on board and ready to act based on your work. If you aren't careful, a desire to ensure technical accuracy across the board can needlessly detract from the success of your presentation.

Tip 111: Never Pretend You Know If You Don't!

If you're putting together a written document, you can get away with including information that you struggle to understand yourself. For example, perhaps someone on your team provided you with additional technical details on how their portion of a project was executed. Even if you don't understand all the details of that person's work, you can include the information. If questions about your teammate's content come your way after you distribute the document, you can simply direct the questions to the teammate.

In a live presentation, you must be able to explain everything you're showing on the screen. If you put a number up on the screen, be able to explain what it is, how it was computed, and why it is relevant. It is all too common for a speaker to refer to a table of data while only being prepared to discuss a small part of the table. If you can't explain the whole table, your choices are to cut out the portions you can't explain, to learn about the parts you can't currently explain, or to have one or more people in the room as backup support (see Tip 97). Don't gamble that nobody will ask a question about the parts you can't explain and expose your ignorance.

Regardless of your preparation level, there are times that your audience will ask a question looking for additional depth or detail that goes beyond your ability to answer, even with your backup experts there for support. That is okay because even the best backup won't be able to handle every question that comes your way.

In the cases when you and your backup experts can't answer, simply state that you aren't the best people to answer at that level of detail, that you know who has the answer, and that you'll follow up later. Having a few occasions when you do have to defer a question that goes too deep can actually win you points with the audience because it shows that you are honest about what you know. Plus, you're the technical expert in the room. If even you don't know everything, then your largely nontechnical audience feels better about their own lack of knowledge.

What you absolutely can't do is to try and fake that you know more than you do. An audience can see through that very quickly and it will cause them to question everything else you may say. Most readers can probably think of an occasion when a speaker attempted to bluff their way through a question and came off sounding like they had no idea what they were talking about. It is tough to watch as an audience, though ironically the speaker often doesn't realize how they have embarrassed themselves.

Nobody expects you to know every detail about every aspect of a large‐scale project. They do, however, expect that in a live presentation you have focused on areas that you are able to readily explain. When they want to dive even deeper than you are prepared to go, they also will respect and appreciate your honesty about your inability to answer on the spot.

Tip 112: Stress the Positive

Just like semantics is everything in politics, semantics matter during a data‐driven presentation, especially to a nontechnical audience. Technical people are often straight and to the point with each other. People in nontechnical disciplines may prefer a bit more finesse. Businesspeople, for example, often choose words carefully to make sure that negative, unpopular, or surprising information is received as positively as possible by their own audiences. One approach that helps an audience retain confidence in your results, even in the face of known issues or gaps, is to focus on the positive rather than the negative aspects of what you've found.

For example, suppose that you did initial analysis that only covered the Northeast region. There is no reason to believe the results won't hold elsewhere, but until you run the numbers, you can't say for sure. You could say something like, “We analyzed only the Northeast region, which limits our ability to apply the results more broadly.” That sounds negative, and the audience might well decide it isn't worth doing anything until you expand your analysis. A more positive way to say the same thing would be, “Although these results are encouraging and we can take immediate action in the Northeast, we look forward to validating that the results hold for other regions as well.” This phrasing emphasizes that you have meaningful results worthy of action today in the Northeast (you do), even though you need to expand and verify them further.

Consider another situation when a major data problem is found. One way to explain it would be, “Given unexpected data issues, we were unable to produce any results for the specialty products category.” This raises in the audience's minds the question of what other data issues might exist that would further undercut your findings. It focuses the audience's minds on the negative. A better phrasing would be, “We have high confidence that the results apply to all categories other than the specialty products category. We are in the process of validating if the results hold there as well.” In this case, you've made clear that the results apply everywhere with a single exception (that doesn't sound so bad, does it?). You've also expressed that you are on top of determining if the findings also apply to that current exception. The audience will feel comfortable with that.

When delivering your narrative, always apply the lens of how what you say will be heard by the audience. Although you must always be honest, don't shift focus to a few negatives that exist in a sea of positive results. Your audience needs to have confidence in you and your findings, and focusing them on bad news undercuts that confidence by planting seeds of doubt. Even if you plan your talking points well during preparations, it is easy to be too cautious when you are presenting live because the audience makes you more sensitive to what you are saying. Force yourself to stick to what you planned up‐front and don't soften your message by letting yourself get intimidated.

In rare cases when most of your findings will be considered bad news, you can still focus on (1) why the results were bad, (2) what can be done to improve the results, and (3) how knowing the bad results can be used to advantage by the audience now that they are aware of the bad results.

Tip 113: Be Honest about Costs as Well as Benefits

It is easy to get excited about your results and focus the audience on the benefits you've found. However, you must also be honest about the costs required to achieve those benefits and the gaps in your findings. This is tough to do and takes discipline when standing in front of a room!

A common mistake occurs when predicting outcomes. Consider a virus that is found in only 0.5% of those tested. We can get 99.5% accuracy rate simply by saying every sample is negative without doing any testing! However, we also would correctly diagnose exactly 0% of those sick. A range of perspectives must be studied including not only true negatives but also false positives, false negatives, and the costs of each.

I once saw someone proudly proclaiming that a model identified over 90% of late payments in advance. Sounds great! The problem? Over 99% of the payments it said would be late were actually on time! In other words, there was a massive false positive rate and each false positive had real costs. Sure, we'd capture 90% of payments that did end up being late, but that doesn't sound quite so compelling once you recognize that for each correctly identified late payment there would be 99 erroneously flagged payments.

Figure 113a illustrates the benefits‐focused positioning of a late payment analysis. Figure 113b shows more information and brings the model's flaws into focus. Figure 113c is an appendix with the supporting data showing that although barely 0.5% of payments were late, the model predicted that 40% would be late. Acknowledging the flaws is a critical part of presenting this information.

Tip 114: Don't Hedge Too Much

We discuss in Tip 113 the need to be honest and to deliver not just positive but also negative findings. A related topic is how much you should hedge your results given the various assumptions and risks that you know apply to the findings. In other words, given a set of results (whether good or bad), there are still a range of assumptions and risks that could serve to enhance or lessen the results. You will often need to discuss these realities as part of delivering a fair and transparent data‐driven presentation.

When discussing how well a given investment portfolio would have performed in the past, it is necessary to point out that past performance is no guarantee of future performance. When signing a contract, there is often language discussing that in cases of major natural disaster, war, or civil unrest, either party is able to back out of fulfilling their portion of the contract. In those scenarios, the risks mentioned are standard and nobody worries much about them.

There are also assumptions or risks that are serious and material and those should not be sugarcoated in any way. For example, if I am considering a major surgery and there is a 50% chance I will die, then the doctor must be extremely diligent in explaining that and ensuring that I fully understand it. If I am just having a mole removed, I am still required to sign paperwork acknowledging that all sorts of bad outcomes are possible, but they are rare and neither I nor my doctor spend much time discussing them.

Use that same logic when discussing your effort's risks and assumptions. To the extent that being off just slightly with an assumption is the difference between huge success and huge failure, spend substantial time making that clear. Also spend time on the monitoring and control mechanisms that will be in place to identify and mitigate issues should they arise. In cases when the risks are rare or the assumptions don't have much impact within their plausible ranges, then mention the points to consider, say they aren't high risks, and move on.

I have seen presenters totally destroy the impact and credibility of their presentation by heavily hedging everything they presented. They talk about this risk and that risk. How this assumption may be too high or this assumption may be too low. After hearing enough ways that the results might theoretically be compromised, the audience loses faith in the results and will not act on the information. After too many hedges the audience will decide the findings are unreliable and risky, even if they really aren't.

Most menus will point out that raw seafood can cause illness. People know that and accept it. Imagine, however, that your server starts explaining the percentage of oysters that have some level of contamination, how many people have gotten sick from oysters in the past three months, and the relative illness rates associated with the various oyster varieties available for your dinner. At some point, you become too aware of the risks, and your appetite for oysters disappears.

The restaurant's oysters are no riskier than any other time you've ordered them, but the server's overzealous discussion of the safety risks of the food turns you off. Don't similarly hedge your findings so badly that you turn off your audience.

Tip 115: Be Clear about the Measure You Are Discussing

In the world of analytics, there are many different measures of a predictive model that can be relevant to discuss. Statistical significance is one. Parameter estimates are another. Impacts to the profit and loss statement (P&L) are another. All have merit and add value. What you must do as you discuss such measures is to be very clear about which measure you are discussing at any point in time during your presentation. Even if your slide is labeled, still verbally clarify what you are talking about as you present.

I've heard people discuss what “the most important factors” are in context of each of the three measures listed previously: statistical significance, parameter estimates, or P&L impacts. Although all three measures could lead to such statements, the metrics are very different from each other, and so an ambiguous statement could leave the audience unclear as to which you are referring to. If you don't make crystal clear to the audience what measure you are referring to, then the audience will make their own assumptions … and many will be wrong!

In keeping with the goal of influencing your audience, stay away from complex and hard‐to‐interpret measures. For example, a business audience really doesn't care about parameter estimates directly. What they care about is the impact those parameter estimates imply for their business. Skip technical measures and stick to practical ones. If you talk about how every dollar invested in a campaign will yield two dollars in profit, you'll win them over. If you talk about obscure (to the audience) concepts such as parameter estimates or significance level, you'll be written off as a technical nerd and your impact will be greatly diminished.

Tip 116: Don't Ask Which Findings Are Important

One way to inadvertently detract from your presentation is to ask which findings are important to the audience or, worse, if the findings are important at all. If you don't know that before your presentation, then don't present!

Tips 112, 113, and 114 talk about focusing on the positive and being honest about the negative while not hedging too much. This tip expands on those by suggesting that you never say something to encourage the audience to question if what you've presented is worthwhile to them. If you don't believe your presentation is worthwhile, then don't give it. If you do think it is worthwhile, then assume that your audience agrees and act accordingly.

Although it sounds helpful and open to ask which findings are important or what was valuable in your presentation, remember that you shouldn't ask a question if you aren't prepared to hear the answer. One possible answer to such a question is, “Now that you ask, I am not sure that most of this has any value for me at all!” That answer does not keep you and your audience in a positive mindset.

There are other ways to ask for audience reaction that semantically assume what you said was valuable. For example, instead of asking “Which of these findings are important?” or “Which of these findings are worth acting on?” you could ask “How should we prioritize the actions on these findings?” or “Which finding should we act on first?” The last two questions come from a position of strength that assumes that the findings are valuable. Small adjustments to your semantics as you present can have a major impact on your audience's perception.

Tip 117: Tie Facts to Impacts

Sometimes the relationship between technical facts and a business or practical impact appears obvious. However, you should always make an explicit connection for your audience during your data‐driven presentation. As we've discussed many times, the less you make your audience do any heavy lifting, the better. In the end, what the audience really wants most is to understand the impact of your findings. Don't disappoint them!

For example, it sounds great that a credit product enhancement that was just tested will decrease late payments by 10%, but you can't stop there. The audience will also want to know what the dollar impact of that 10% decrease equates to. The math to get from a finding to an impact can be complicated. If you don't do the work for your audience, your presentation will be less successful than it could be. In the worst case, the audience won't bother to do the calculations and they'll fail to take action on your findings because they won't realize the impact they are missing out on.

In another example, your study may identify that a new drug decreases the rate of complications from surgery by 10%. That's obviously good news. What's even better news is to hear how many hospital stays won't be needed, how many deaths are avoided, and how much money per patient will be saved. Anyone in the room will know that the 10% decrease leads to those other positive outcomes, but they won't know the specifics unless you do the computations and then show them.

Figure 117a lists a positive finding but stops short of tying it to broader impacts. Figure 117b adds details on important impacts, which makes the finding far more compelling.

Tip 118: Provide Specific Recommendations for Action

I played soccer for 30 years until my knees couldn't take it anymore and then I shifted to being a referee. I learned a tremendous amount from the senior referee who handled the game assignments for my area. In time, I realized that some of his advice didn't just help me be a better referee but also helped me become a better consultant and presenter.

One of the points the senior referee stressed frequently was that if I was going to make a call during a game, I should do it quickly and with confidence. Good referees trust their judgment and are decisive. I already knew from my playing days that players, coaches, and spectators are able to tell very quickly whether or not a referee is competent and confident. The first few minutes of the game set the tone and, as in other situations, it is hard to change the crowd's first impression.

Once the crowd sees that a referee has confidence and has been making the right calls, they will be much more forgiving when a rare mistake is made because the mistake is clearly the exception. If a referee is visibly struggling with what calls to make, people will feel justified in protesting. Delaying a call is a sign of weakness and indecision, and it isn't possible to command respect while projecting those traits.

This same advice can be applied to data‐driven presentations. When asked to present your findings, you should be confident in your work and recommend a path forward for your audience. It starts with confidently presenting and explaining the results you've found and what the results imply as outlined in Tip 117. You must go further, however, by taking a stand and providing specific recommendations for action that will enable the audience to make the potential of what you've found a reality.

Your audience won't always agree with or act on the recommendations that you make. This is no different from spectators believing that a different call should have been made in a game. However, you owe it to your audience to take a stand because they have a lot of other things to worry about. The more you can save the audience from worrying about how to interpret your results by doing it for them, the better.

Figure 118a shows one example of what a recommendations slide might look like. Before this slide, you would have laid out the potential impacts of the actions (see Tip 117). The recommendations are how to make those impacts a reality.

It is your job as the expert to make calls. If you don't have enough confidence in your findings to recommend action, then why should your audience?

Tip 119: Close with a “Wow” Tied to the Larger Context

You put together a terrific data‐driven presentation for your audience. You kept your slides clean, short, and visually appealing. You kept the audience focused on just one or two critical pieces of information at a time. You helped them understand what you found and why it is important. You discussed the substantive impacts your findings can facilitate. You even made recommendations that the audience is excited about. Is it time to say thank you and walk off the stage? Not quite.

After your recommendations, the audience is focused narrowly on your specific results. There is usually a significantly larger context within which those results apply. For example, there are critical corporate strategies that are being pursued, long‐term goals that must be met, and relationships with customers that must be enhanced. To the extent that you can close your presentation by tying your results to the broader context, you'll get your audience even more motivated to act. Take their mind out of the here‐and‐now and enable them to place the results in a broader context. Show how following your recommendations will not just help meet the needs of today but will also drive significant progress toward larger goals and strategies over time. Doing so helps end your session with a “wow” moment.

In the honey analysis example we've discussed elsewhere, the audience will certainly be happy to hear the potential impact your recommendations will have on honey sales in the immediate term. Perhaps there is also a corporate strategy to increase presence in the organic honey space. Another corporate strategy is to pursue direct interaction with customers instead of traditional mass marketing. The recommendations from Tip 118 directly support both strategies. Whatever short‐term benefits the audience will experience by following your advice, the bonus you can offer is that they will also be taking actions that align with longer‐term strategies and priorities. Supporting the broader strategies and priorities is a great path to getting promoted and long‐term success, so audience members will be even more motivated to act once they leave the room.

Figure 119a has an example of how to tie our honey analysis into a bigger context. It shows that today's results have long‐term, strategic importance that go beyond the tactical benefits of today.

Closing with a tie to the larger context can put a “wow” lens on top of your findings. Whether you have a short slide for this final appeal or you just verbalize it, it is a terrific way to end your presentation with a bang.