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April 30, 2007
Presentation Skills for Business Intelligence - Nine Points of Roguery.
A long post today, I hope it is interesting.
It’s funny how an idea can be dormant for ages, then suddenly crops up everywhere again. I used to have a simple method for structuring presentations – specifically, where I had to present results of an analysis, and often a related proposal. Most of us in the BI world do this regularly. I had not shared the technique much, but in recent weeks I have found myself describing it in detail several times, sitting down with hassled analysts helping them pull together summary presentations.
The method is simply an outline that you can use to structure your presentation for best impact. I used to call it The Nine Points of Roguery – there is an old fiddle tune of that name – but please don't think I am suggesting that you should be roguish with your clients. Still, the method does describe nine points, as follows:
• Make 3 points that your audience will already understand
• Enhance and extend these three points
• Introduce three new findings from your work
Easy! I’m going to use an example to illustrate some of the ideas. Imagine that I have been tasked with examining customer data quality for a client and coming up with some suggestions for improvement. Here goes …
Make three points your audience already understands
You will connect best with your audience when you share common ground. By speaking briefly to a few familiar points, you show understanding of their needs. You can even make it clear that you know that they know. Of course, with your business experience, you understand this even better than I. Do not overdo it – flattery will get you nowhere – but it is good if your audience feels you address them as equals. You are all smart people, tackling a non-trivial issue.
What three points should you make? Naturally, the details depend on context, but do choose engaging, substantive, topics. Get to the core of your audience’s problems. If you need more structure, try the following:
Strategic impact. How does the current topic affect your audience’s long-term goals? How could a successful project help? What would failure look like?
Example: Direct marketing is a critical component of your client’s customer acquisition strategy. Poor data quality wastes money by inappropriately marketing to the wrong customers. It also risks alienating the public and damaging the company’s reputation.
A tactical concern. Do not spend too long on strategy: you will be aiming too high. What immediate concerns face your listeners? What decisions will they make today or tomorrow? Choose a tactical problem that concerns them directly.
Example: From mergers and acquisitions, your client has multiple customer data sources. There is an immediate need for a single version of a customer across the enterprise.
An obstacle. Why is the current issue not easy? Get into detail: is there a financial, technical or human barrier to success? Your listeners understand that difficulties exist. Still, you are reassuring them, in effect, that it is not stupid to be in their situation.
Example: Their most important source system is effectively legacy software. It has been used for many years, but is not compatible with more modern CRM or data quality applications.
Enhance your three points
You and your audience now have a baseline of shared understanding. Next, you should show that you have explored their issues further. It can be tempting to pull a rabbit from your hat, dazzling your audience with some revelation that resolves their problems at one stroke. In fact, most often you will not have such an eye-opener. Even if you do, my advice is to wait. In all cases, you must build authority first. Your presentation is not the Sermon on the Mount. You cannot simply announce “Ye have read … but I say unto you …” unless your authority is unquestionable.
So, develop your themes. When you present new findings later, the audience will appreciate your knowledge and experience. You can build this influence in several ways. Indeed, using a variety of techniques will be more appealing.
Extend. Expand one of your original topics by considering how the matter changes with time, geography, scale or some other dimension. Was this problem easier in the past? Why? Does the passage of time have an effect, making things better, worse, smaller, or larger? Could this impact of this concern vary with geography? Perhaps the US division suffers more than the European division. You get the idea. You are building authority by going beyond the obvious.
Example: Cleaning your client’s customer data is not a one-off action. Accurate operational data may be critical, but so is the ability to analyze customer behavior over time. Because customer data changes constantly, the client needs good quality historical data too.
Contradict. I’m contrary by nature, so I like this one. However, regardless of my own predilections, finding contradictions is an excellent way in which to expand a topic. Few issues that you cover will be simply positive or negative. Your task here is to find the silver-lining in the cloud, or, vice-versa. The underlying message is, naturally, that not only is the subject not simple, but also that your understanding of it is not simplistic.
Example: Creating a single version of your customer data from your client’s various mergers and acquisitions is a great vision. However, that single version will be an even more valuable asset than before. As such it may require additional administration, greater security, high availability and disaster recovery planning.
Personalize. Your clients are human. (If not, mail me: I would love to know more.) People relate most directly to the needs and experiences of other people. So, in every presentation, be sure to expand at least one topic to cover personal impacts. How does this concern affect the daily work of the manager, the DBA, the salesperson? Use named individuals if you like, but at least ensure that your presentation is not abstract. It should be rooted in the effects on real people of the problems you are covering.
Example: It is increasingly difficult to find staff skilled in the company’s legacy applications. There remains an administrator, Julie, and one developer, Bob. Julie spends too much time preparing dumps of text files for integration with other applications. Bob is stretched developing new reports to keep up with changing compliance requirements.
Introduce three new findings from your work
By now you have demonstrated an understanding of your audience’s needs. Further, you have shown experience and authority. It is now time for new results and recommendations. The structure of this section will, again, depend on the specific context. However, if you struggle to get that right, I would suggest that you invert one of the patterns we used earlier. Start with an insight or recommendation at a personal level, and then show new tactical and strategic ideas.
Personal insight. Do your recommendations or discoveries directly affect individuals, whether employees or customers? If so, be prepared to talk to that very directly. Do not cover every impact: just choose one as an example. A well-chosen example can establish an authentic connection with the audience.
Example: Everyone in your audience has received junk mail. Many will have received duplicate mailings from one company. From your research, you can show that missing out a good target may be less costly exasperating a good target. So, you recommend not only consolidating and cleaning customer data, but also aggressively purging duplicates. By setting the proposal in a personal context, to which the audience can relate, you can make this case effectively.
Tactical recommendation. This should be the pivotal moment. It is when you make an actionable and material recommendation. You may have many tactical points – specific steps your client can take to achieve their strategic goals. Should you not present them all? I would suggest not: you risk overwhelming your audience. Better to choose the most impactful and representative tactic and speak to it well. Your proposal should relate to one of the issues you have raised earlier. This is also a good time to address ROI and costs associated with the problem and solution. Typically, it is easier to evaluate ROI for a tactical recommendation rather than an entire strategy. It may also be more credible to your audience.
Example: You recommend migrating the legacy system to a new line-of-business or CRM application. Naturally, there are many sub-recommendations to be found in the report. However, overall costs can be estimated here, and supported with SWOT, cost-benefit or gap analyses.
Strategic insight and observation. Now you can close the loop, referring back to your very first point. You have established common ground with your audience and demonstrated that you understand their strategic, tactical, even personal, concerns. You have specific recommendations based from your analyses. Now, you should show that your suggestions are not only tactical, but that they can have strategic impact too. Relate your point directly to the corporate strategies of your client. If your audience does not primarily comprise strategic decision makers, you can still make this point: just do not dwell on it for too long and be sure to relate any suggestion to their own work.
Example: Direct marketing is still critical to your client’s customer acquisition strategy. With improved customer data quality you can significantly move beyond that approach. You can use your customer data to grow stronger customer relationships. Perhaps now, with a single version of the customer to hand, an effective loyalty scheme is practical across all the divisions of the enterprise, which previously poor data quality prevented.
And that’s the outline. Nine simple points which help you balance the client’s current understanding with your new insights. If you try it out, do let me know how it works for you.
Posted by Donald Farmer at April 30, 2007 3:19 PM
