Most of us have sat through at least one classic data-laden presentation. The collated packet. The endless decks of "spreadsheet on a slide."
They're deathly boring, and worse, they're usually ineffective. Who's ever learned anything when they can hardly stay awake?
"Big data has a big communication problem," says Joey Asher, CEO of Speechworks, who likes to joke that 70% of all data is made up on the spot. "There’s tons of data out there--there’s more data than we’ve ever had--but the data by itself doesn’t really tell the story."
If this problem sounds familiar, it's because it's not new. Presenters have been wielding numbers to their disadvantage for decades. But with companies in every industry now relying more and more heavily on data to manage all aspects of their businesses, boring data presentations have transitioned from illness to epidemic.
"This is absolutely not new, it’s just heightened because of big data," says Asher. "The problem of communicating effectively with data is an age-old problem.What’s different now is there’s so much more data and people love to rely on it and the problem is just heightened."
Here's what you can do to make your data presentations stimulating--instead of soporific.
"Should we tell him his graph is upside down?"
Use data to tell people a story -- before you start showing them numbers.
The most important thing a presenter can remember, says Asher, is that your job is to tell people a story and use numbers to help do that, rather than just showing an audience rafts of numbers. Too often, he says, presenters "hit people with waves and waves of data" before they've even told an audience what the data is supposed to mean.
Avoid this mistake by telling your story first. Introduce data once the group understands what it is they're hearing about, and be sure to explain how the numbers further illuminate your message.
Don't immediately assume your audience understands the data you're using.
You may have been cranking away on this presentation for the past several weeks, poring over spreadsheets and losing yourself in reports -- but your audience hasn't been.
"The main mistake people make when they’re using a lot of data is the classic 'losing the forest for the trees' problem," says Asher. "The listener isn’t necessarily immersed in the data and doesn’t necessarily know what it all means the way you do."
Be sure you're fully unpacking all of the numbers you present, and addressing what they actually mean.
"Are they still awake?"
People don't always believe data. Use their skepticism to your advantage.
The overuse of data in recent years means that people are sometimes skeptical of numbers and what a presenter is trying to make them say.
"Data has a credibility problem," says Asher. "People don’t just believe your data just because it’s a number. People are more skeptical now of data than they’ve ever been. You can spin data and make it mean just about anything."
Political data, he says, tends to make people particularly wary, with business data coming in a close second. As a presenter, you can solve this problem by encouraging your audience to interact with the data and ask questions, rather than quietly page through a collated report. This may require a fair amount of prompting.
"It’s really important if you want people to believe your data to invite them to push back," says Asher. "Throughout your presentation you need to tell people to ask you questions. Some of this will be confusing. Some of this you may not believe. The best way to get people to interact with you is to invite people to interact with you. People in the audience do what they think they’re supposed to do."
Unless your company has a killer graphics department, skip the fancy data visualizations.
Think your presentation about deforestation would be twice as powerful if all your data points were represented by tiny stumps?
Think again.
Effective data visualizations are rarely created by people that aren't highly-skilled designers, so unless you have access to someone that can create stunning visualizations for you, forego the data graphics and focus on making your presentation sing.
Remember that it's YOU that speaks for the data -- not the other way around.
Nervous presenters often make the mistake of drowning listeners in numbers to prove their case, rather than using those numbers to help them craft a story they can tell confidently.
"It’s important to remember that the slides and the data aren’t the presentation," says Asher. "You are the presentation. The data doesn’t speak for itself--you have to speak for the data."
