Is Your Data Presentation a Tangled Mess? Computers have brought us to an age where data can be wrangled 8 ways to Sunday in a matter of nano-seconds. Some people call that the “heavy lifting” of data analytics. In my opinion, the toughest lifting of data analytics is when the data has to be communicated …
3 Ways to Fix the Data Dump Presentation
“We really want to help our technical teams communicate better.” This was the request from our data analytics customer when I asked, “What are you trying to change with training?” This is not an uncommon request. I’ve heard it increasingly over the past ten years. When I probe further to ask what they mean by …
4 Messaging Approaches for Data Analysts
“Why are my leaders always questioning my data results?” This was the question from my data analytics student and he was frustrated. So, I asked him, “What do you mean? Can you give me an example?” “Sure. Every time I give them the test results and I tell them what the results mean, they start …
What Planet Are You From?
Alien translator… That’s genius! As a child of the 70’s and 80’s I’m willing to admit… I’m a Star Wars fan. But I’m even more of a Boba Fett fan. Recently, while watching an episode of the streaming series The Book of Boba Fett, I noticed one of the aliens (I don’t know what they’re …
Want to be More Creative? Try this…
I was holding the marker, standing at the whiteboard and waiting for someone to give me an idea to write down… but they didn’t. They were tapped out. My students had just come up with about 20 ideas and were fresh out of material at this point. Have you been there? When you’re at this …
Three Tools to Make Better Decisions
We make decisions all day long. Some are simple (froot loops or cheerios?) while others can be quite complex (quit my job or stay?) Some internet sources say it could be as many as 35,000 per day, which obviously includes all the simple decisions. How can we get better at making the tough decisions without …
How do you Influence Without Authority?
When I was young we used to find adventure on the new home sites at the end of our street. A big pile of dirt would quickly become a trophy centerpiece to do battle for the reigning title of “King of the Mountain.” If you’ve never played it before, every person tries their best to …
21 Inspiring Quotes for Leaders
I’ve always loved the wisdom found in a short statement. In keynote speaker terms, we call these “sticky statements.” If you’re speaking to an audience and you make a statement that causes everyone to write it down, you just gave them a sticky statement. As we’ve brought the first quarter of 2018 to a close …