how to present to get results

1. ANSWER FIRST

2. Decision Making Presentations
• SITUATION – Creating compelling decision making presentations is
widely held as a key skill for success
• COMPLICATION – Too many presentations fail due to lack of
structure and poor supporting facts
• QUESTION– Is there a framework that can help improve the
presentation by providing a clear structure and guiding strong
analysis
DRAFT 2

3. Answer First
Helps to create compelling business cases
guides the analysis
in the beginning
Prevents irrelevant
analysis
Prioritizes most
important
elements
Ensures no key
issues are
neglected
makes the
analysis more
bulletproof
Clarifies the
support points
needed to get buy-
in
Focuses bulk of
analysis time on
most critical
elements – making
these analyses
stronger
helps create
a compelling story
Immediately
engages the
audience
Focuses audience
on your
recommendation
and logic, making
tangential
conversations less
likely
Provides structure,
which makes it all
easier to grasp
quickly
DRAFT 3

4. Summary of Concepts
• Clearly identify the question to be addressed and
recap the (uncontested) background facts
• Always start your project (and usually your
presentation) with an answer (hypothesis). If you
don’t have one to begin with, do 80/20 analysis to
arrive at one. Having a hypothesis will drive a much
cleaner thought process about the logic needed to
drive a decision
• Key assertions answer the question – “what does my
audience have to believe in order to accept my
answer?”
• Make sure the assertions completely cover all the
important issues needed to accept the answer. Do
not generate assertions by asking “what data do I
have?”, but “what data do I need?”
• Use 80/20 to prioritize assertions and to generate
earlier confidence in the answer
• Second-level key facts support the assertions and
translate directly into slides
• Always have a stand-alone summary (plus a “million-
dollar” slide)DRAFT 4
-Situation
Complication
Question
Answer
Assertion 1 Assertion 2 Assertion 3
Summary
Next Steps

5. Rules of EngagementPREPARATION
Determine what type of
presentation:
• Informative/ Awareness
• Decision Making
• Sales
• Education / Teaching
Ask yourself:
• What question you are trying to
answer in this presentation?
Do you have a hypothesis?
Do all your prep:
• Gather the needed data
• Perform 80:20 diagnostics/ analysis
• Test to prove/ disprove your
hypothesis
Build your presentation as
described
PRESENTATION
Provide a high level overview
of :
• Situation: How are things when
everything is stable?
• Complication: What’s changed?
• Question: What question do we need
to make a decision on because of the
complication?
• Answer: What is the
recommendation?
• Discussion for the answer: (based on
support/ against answer), strategy,
basic facts, previous experience, etc.
Facilitate open dialogue:
• Encourage transparency, diverse
points of view and debate – all toward
advancing the topic
• Summarize next steps and
agreements
PARTICIPANT
APPROACH
Important to “show up” in
new ways:
• Listen for the primary issue / question
• Ask questions to gain clarity
• Offer your experience and intuition to
the dialogue
• Understand that the group has done
80% of the data analysis (not bringing
100%)
• Relax any expectations that all your
questions will be answered in one
session.
DRAFT 5