5 ideas to transform your deck into a masterpiece Monet would be proud of

Walking around London’s National Gallery, a friend of mine pointed out one of his favourite paintings, “each small part in the structure compliments the whole”. As grand as it might sound to say, this comment brought me back to the world of business, and within the world of business, to the humble slide deck (yes, my brain was comparing a Renaissance masterpiece to last week’s analysis of gross margins).

Over the years at Livi, we have developed our data stories and presentations into something of a fine art. Each presentation builds on the strengths of the last, and the quality continues to go up and up. It’s competitive and creative, we try different ideas and structures and compare notes, always focusing on how we can tell a story in the most impactful and insightful way.

Through all of this experimenting we’ve landed on 5 rules which will help you to improve the quality of your analyses. This post is focused on the last step in the insights chain, assuming that you have gathered, cleaned and statistically analysed your data already.

Here are the 5 rules:

1. Understand your audience
2. Find the “so what”
3. Build the deck’s structure
4. Make your insights pop within 3 seconds
5. Get feedback

Understand your audience

Who’s looking at the deck? Is it intended to synthesise the biggest opportunities or is it a more granular, forensic analysis of a specific sub domain like operational performance? Rule 1–0–1 when communicating in any context is to understand your audience so that you can deliver a message that speaks directly to them.

Pro tips:

• Find the right scale (high level view vs granular and technical).
• Write in a language that your audience can understand, and default to plain English.
• Identify your key decision maker, this is the person your analysis really needs to land with. It’s worth involving them early on.
• Get the timing right. If your audience is focused on lowering costs, a moonshot product analysis might feel out of step.
• Use the right tone: does this analysis reveal something expected or is it an earthquake that could threaten someone’s reality?

Underpinning the above is an emphasis on getting close to your teams and stakeholders so that you are in sync with their needs.

Find the “so what”

The idea of the ‘so what’ comes from the management consultancy arena and stands for “but why is this interesting?” or “so what should we do about it?”. The point here is that you may have produced a very thorough analysis, successfully identifying what’s happening and why it’s happening, but if you can’t point to what it all means as a £ sign (or other unit of value) then you won’t drive impact. You can do yourself some favours by asking yourself the ‘so what’ ahead of time and using the question to structure your analysis (more on this later), rather than retro-fitting it once the analysis is already complete.

Finding the ‘so what’ is challenging. From experience, I’ve seen many intriguing analyses that lack a fundamental explanation of why the findings matter. Is it interesting, yes, is it impactful, perhaps not. Always remember, if no one takes action after reading your deck, then it doesn’t matter to your audience. If a tree falls..

Pro tips:

• Consider what we stand to lose if we don’t take action.
• Make sure you know the size of the opportunity on the table.
• Look ahead by 6 months, where could we be if this change improved things as anticipated?
• Break down the structure of the problem before diving into data.
• Hone in on the key factor by mapping the problem in a driver tree.
• Be brave. State your actions and takeaways clearly; try not to just present data, rather diagnoses and actions.

After defining the ‘so what’ we can start to structure our argument.

Build the deck’s structure

The structure ensures that readers always understand where they are in your argument. It keeps people from getting lost and controls the pace of the narrative as you lead people through your argument.

Building the structure up front will also reveal flaws in your logic before you start the hard graft of analysing data, so it is worth investing a good chunk of time here early on. I try to view building the structure as not just a tool for the benefit of the reader, but rather as something that helps me to map out and understand a domain.

A great book to read more about how to sculpt a structure, leading from key takeaway, is Barbara Minto’s The Pyramid Principle.

Pro tips:

• Outline the structure up front at the beginning of the deck.
• Start and end with the biggest findings, people forget the middle.
• Tell people what you’re going to say, say it, remind them what you said.
• Call that structure out as you move through the slides, e.g. if the analysis has moved on to revenue, add a ‘revenue’ label to the slide to remind readers where they are.
• Read through all the headings like a story, does it make sense with no data?

Build slides that follow the 3 second rule

This is one of my absolute favourite guiding principles: is each slide so impactful that the reader gets the message within 3 seconds? Your goal here is that the argument on each slide should leap from the page, as clear as day.

This follows even if the slide is fairly detailed and granular. In cases where the data is more intricate, your headline takeaway from the slide should still register in 3 seconds.

Pro tips:

• Say what you think the data is telling you in headlines. “sales in 2017” 🚫 , “smartwatch sales up 100% y-o-y, showing great potential for expansion into wearables” ✅
• Mirror statistics used in the headline in the charts beneath. If you mention a 100% y-o-y increase in the title, call it out in the chart below.
• One point per slide. It’s better to have more slides than condensed, confusing ones.
• Re-read with fresh eyes and apply the 3 second rule.

Get feedback

My best work tends to share a couple of things in common: it is rarely the first attempt and it has usually been polished with feedback from my peers. I love feedback, it’s the place where you learn if your message is successful, if you’ve explained things clearly enough and whether it makes the grade.

Establishing a feedback culture is a fly-wheel and can propel a mediocre team into a group of world beaters. This is because receiving good quality, candid feedback helps you to improve your work and learn new skills. It means that when other analysts ask you for feedback, you have more tools at your disposal to help them. Everyone gets stronger and so does the feedback.

Pro tips:

• Get feedback from people not involved in the project.
• Create a culture of candid feedback, and make it a habit (forums vs individual pairing).
• Take feedback from the experts.
• Check your work against analyses from external sources.
• Fight for your own ideas, don’t just adopt criticism verbatim.
• Employ a growth mindset. Keep an open mind and don’t take constructive criticism defensively.