Just the conclusions?

I happened to be cleaning out my home office for some reason when I stumbled upon one of my old performance reviews. Given how dreadfully most companies conduct performance reviews, I usually pay little heed to the words written and just look at the dollars. It becomes a “putting your money where your mouth is” thing. Either the dollars match what you are saying or they don’t. If you say nice things but give a mediocre raise, then you can be sure that the words are hollow.

At any rate, I was (despite my tendency to just look at the dollars) re-reading the comments on this particular review. One of the comments was “… needs to tailor his presentation to the level of his audience. Senior individuals only want the conclusions… “

I have been well aware of the idea of tailoring to your audience for a long, long time. I think it’s one of those first thing you learn. Surely the most senior individual wants nothing to do with the dull details of your code, but what about the details of ones analysis? True, they probably don’t care about homoscedasticity in your data, but just the conclusions? That seems like the other end of the extreme – too little information. Is this really the right thing to do?

I think, if you ponder this proposal for a minute you will realize it’d be a foolish person who’d just come in with the conclusions. If I concluded to anyone, at any level, that “the world is flat” then I suspect the reasonable question they’d ask is “why do you think that is so?” This isn’t a question of tailoring to one’s level appropriately. No matter who you are, you can’t walk into a presentation with just the conclusions.

Why not? Any idiot (or liar) can write down a bunch of “conclusions.” In the absence of the data which shows why you believe what you believe, a slide of conclusions is worthless. Yes, there are nitty-gritty details of doing analysis, like how I transposed these columns of data into that pivot table in order to run my Mood’s Median test, which should be dropped from the presentation. But that’s the type of thing I wouldn’t explain to even the most detail oriented of my peers. Those details are irrelevant to everyone.

The issue isn’t what you should present to a senior individual, but whether what you have is worthy of any attention at all. Senior managers are still people whose brains work just like the brains of their subordinates. They need information to make decisions just as we all do, but they need information about different types of problems. If they don’t need to make a decision, what are you doing there at all presenting? And most importantly, if they asked for the information, then you can reasonably assume they wanted to hear more than the conclusion.

Bring along enough information to tell a complete story; far more than just the conclusions. If they just wanted the conclusion, you could send an email instead.

You know it isn’t training if…

Two days ago, while I sat through the first horrid day of “training” I came up with a bunch of thoughts about LEAN that will eventually turn into entries.  I also thought about something else, which was how terrible the training class I was sitting in was.

Not that this is a new idea, but it’s an important example of “Know Your Audience.”  Whenever presenting any material, there must be some consideration made to who you are talking to.  A deeply technical presentation to non-technical folks won’t work.  A high-level gloss over to deeply technical people probably won’t work either.  And last but not least, a rehash of what your audience already knows, whether it is at the right depth or not, won’t work!

So why in god’s name, would this team of 3 people invite 50+ black belts and master black belts into a room and try and talk to them about single piece flow, TAKT time, value stream maps and the 5s’ like we’d never seen them before?  Every person in that room had gotten almost 5 months, maybe more, of training on all this stuff.  Why did they walk us through a 2 hour process simulation that we’ve all already seen?  OK, if they had walked us through the simulation so we could see their proposal on teaching these ideas that’d be one thing, but having us sit through the simulation like we have no clue was insane!

In my mind, training means learning something new.  It isn’t training if the audience already knows the material.  It’s insulting to our intelligence.  It’s certainly a waste of time.

If you are going to “train” someone, you must:

1. Offer new information.  Now, if one attendee already knows the material, that’s not your fault, but the majority of your audience should be getting something new.
2. Offer it at the right level of detail.

If you’re not doing at least that, don’t invite me.  I wouldn’t mind a well put together training, but I’d settle for the two criteria above.

My instructions for a good data presentation

Good presentations are like mom and apple pie.  Everyone talks about giving them, nobody gives you anything specific to do to get from ho hum to hurrah with your presentations.  Well guess what, I’m not going to either!  So if that’s what you came looking for, sorry to disappoint.

I will, however, give you my instructions for giving a good presentation that includes statistics and data, especially in the business world.

1. Get a projector.  Most charts of statistical analysis are hard enough to read without having to squint at a tiny PowerPoint slide deck.  Plus it saves a tree and plays into #2.
2. Don’t hand out slides.  You can hand them out afterwards if people ask for them.  If you hand them out before, they will be flipping through them and not paying attention to you.  Handing out slides makes a mess out of #4.  It is hard to tell a compelling story when they already know what the end is.
3. Stand up.  You cannot give a compelling presentation sitting in your chair.  People will not be looking at you.  You will, I assure you, have to point at your charts, so you’d better be standing near where they are projected to do so.
4. Tell a story.  Nobody, not even a geek like me, is interested in a random assortment of charts that you want me to draw a conclusion from.  Put them in an order that makes sense, and walk me through your thinking.  That’s what analysis is all about, your thinking process.  Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t give them an executive summary at the start so they know what they’ll be hearing, but make it a teaser.  “Despite commonly held beliefs, it is unwise for us to invest in automating this part of the factory.”  See, you told them the conclusion, but they’re sure as heck going to be curious as to why you think that.
5. Know the data/chart/analysis tool.  I can only assume you have the data/chart/analysis tool/whatever for a reason.  If you don’t know it inside and out, DON’T USE IT.  There’s a good chance that someone in the audience will ask you what a residual is if you show residual plots from a linear regression.  There’s some chance that someone with a little knowledge will ask you a hard question.  If it happens, and you don’t know the answer, say goodbye to the credibility of your presentation.  A personal favorite “why didn’t you use a two sample T test instead of a kruskal-wallis?”  “Because the data was extremely non-normal and kruskall-wallis is more robust in that situation, even though a 2 sample T test can survive some non-normality in the data.  And yes, I did check for homoscedacticity in the samples. “  OK, so that last comment was unnecessary, but it will shut the know-it-all up.
6. Be prepared to explain simple statisical concepts.  Going to use a Pearson correlation?  You’d better be able to explain the possible range of result values (-1 to 1) and what being closer to -1 or 1 means.  Plus, you should have some idea on what’s considered no relationship, a weak relationship or a strong relationship.  For the uninitiated, they aren’t going to know what you are talking about unless you explain it.  Be prepared to teach. 
7. Big bold takeaways.  Regardless of all the data in the chart, overlay a box (or several) on it and tell them what you want them to take away from it.

Point is, I don’t want to see you mumble through your charts and data the way you would slides of your summer vacation.  Both are very boring to me.