7 Effective Tips for Presenting Data at Work!

Key Takeaways

this is a good graph but it can be better did you see the three changes that make this new graph more friendly to the audience let's get started hi friends welcome back to the channel if you're new here my name is jeff and as an ex-management consultant and current product marketing manager i've probably given around thousands of presentations at this point in my professional career some were good some were bad some are really bad but the important thing to note is that data by itself is useless your job as a presenter is to help your audience cut through all the noise and help them interpret the data in a meaningful way so in this video i'm going to share my top seven tips when it comes to visualizing data incorporating charts and graphs into your presentations and telling a persuasive story diving to data visualization tip number one never present a single number since it gives the audience no context let's say the iphone goes on a huge sale for 5 000 us dollars and they sell 10 000 units is this good is this bad there's no way of knowing unless you compare historical performance because this tells a very different story than this if you don't have access to historical data the next best thing is to use industry benchmarks for comparison remember any number short of making stuff up is better than nothing when presenting data and quick tip here never compare apples to oranges if you have quarterly data compare that to other quarterly data i recently came across a report where someone compared quarterly data to ytd year-to-date numbers this comparison can't be valid because the time frames are different data presentation tip number two there should only be one focal point for any table chart or graph and this because our brains are wired to recognize patterns and we immediately notice things that are out of the ordinary leverage this behavior to easily focus your audience's attention on the one thing you like for them to take away to give a counter example this chart only has three elements but our brains still struggle in the first few seconds to really understand what's going on here so not recommended if you really must include multiple data sets in one slide i recommend you present those in stages for example one two three so as to not overwhelm the audience quick disclaimer here this tip does not hold true for decks designed to be standalone there are those presentations where there are a lot of words and elements on purpose because it's supposed to be circulated within the company and be understood with no context data storytelling tip number three this is actually my favorite one is to use colors to provide contrast back to our brains we're much better at identifying color than shapes so if we apply a splash of color to our previous graphs as you can see here and here we have dramatically increased the effectiveness of our message pro tip what i like to do is use light gray for like the much earlier data dark gray for the time period right before like the current one the my company's brand color for the current period and a lighter shade of that for forecasted numbers this makes it very intuitive for the audience to understand the relative importance of what they're seeing by the way let me know down in the comments if you like a video dedicated to building slides from scratch since there's a lot more to presentations than just charts and graphs for example having a strong action title in your slides can make or break your presentation table visualization tip number four be consistent with your style and format throughout the presentation for example you can see that i use the green highlight to highlight the highest numbers here and the products are listed in descending order from the most sales to the least not only does this next table use a different color to highlight the highest percentages but the headers have all changed as well and this can be very disarming to the audience who again are looking for a pattern and consistency tip number five when it comes to creating charts is extremely powerful when it comes to pitching business proposals or asking for additional investment and that is to use something i call a comparison chart yes you can create a simple line graph to visualize that growth if you receive more support but why not take a step further to show the two possible scenarios side by side if the underlying calculations are accurate this chart makes it seem almost foolish not to invest in that acceleration plan to get game of thrones season 8 redone by capable directors pro tip when creating comparison charts always make sure to include a call out sticker that provides specific details about that element i'll talk about exactly what stickers to use and when to use them later on in this video tip number six use appropriate chart types so apparently you're just never supposed to use pie charts i don't know exactly why but there is a saying friends don't let friends use pie charts so stay away from those line graphs are great at showing changes over time the one thing to note here is to not manipulate the axes to fit your agenda for example taking a look at this line graph you might come to inclusion that this weight loss plan is amazing look how quickly your weight is decreasing however if we were to zoom out we see the larger picture there's a gradual weight loss over the course of 12 months the rule of thumb here is to start from zero if you can then clearly show where you have zoomed in if need be and my personal favorite waterfall charts we used to love using this back in my management consulting days because waterfall charts are amazing at showing how one number relates to another for example there's nothing wrong with this bar chart we see the 2020 revenue and we see the 20 30 projections but how exactly did we get there in this waterfall chart we can clearly see the factors contributing to this change how much each product skew is going to grow and we can even see here there's a negative downward pressure stemming from legal risk and this is something the audience would never get from a simple bar chart and tip number seven is to use stickers to protect yourself during presentations if you've ever seen something like this in a powerpoint or google slides deck you know what i'm talking about wip stands for work in progress so if someone clicks into your presentation is not done yet they know it's still ongoing if you see a for discussion sticker it usually means it's a very rough first draft and you need someone like your manager to review and let you know if any changes are needed the preliminary sticker means a slide itself is completed but the data within is still ongoing for example the market survey is still going on but you're presenting your initial findings so far and finally the illustrative sticker i find this to be the funniest one because it basically means you get away with making stuff up for example if i say 50 of the us population hate game of thrones season 8 i obviously do not mean only the states on the left-hand side here hate it because let's be real 100 of us hate season 8. no all jokes aside you use the illustrative sticker to make it clear that while the specific diagram or chart is not 100 accurate the message you're trying to convey holds true if you enjoyed this video on data storytelling tips for presentations you might enjoy this playlist where i talk about how to succeed in the first years of your career see you on the next video and in the meantime have a great one you