In the IT business – we have a big advantage. Very cool solutions that truly help businesses solve problems. Nice!
However, that is not our challenge. The IT challenge is actually whether your target – be it client, colleague or boss – actually wants to buy YOU! The unspoken questions become – ‘what value do you bring’, why should I trust you? What will YOU do for me?
Businesses understand that with an economy in a fragile recovery, it is impossible to ruthlessly raise prices and to aggressively grab market share. Instead, it would appear that the game is to add value, offer the customer more and constantly justify their existence.
From an individual perspective, we need to take note. Taking a leaf out of the book of ‘big business’, for our own use as individuals, is worth a go.
WHAT ARE YOU WORTH??
Never forget that people buy people – and every time that you explain the benefit of your offering, the value of your products or the brilliance of your service – people are really choosing whether they buy YOU or not. Here are some ideas on how you can increase your own buyability.
My family and I just returned from a fantastic vacation on a cruise ship. On our last day we attended a Q&A session with the captain and a few of his officers. People were very interested in the details of the ship. The captain quoted a few numbers:
Weight: 85,000 tons
Installed Power: 48,000 HP
Length: 264 meters
Beam: 32 meters
Our 85,000 ton cruise ship
While the figures are certainly impressive I realized that they do no mean much. My boys asked the obvious question: “How much is that?” The numbers are just too difficult to understand. Indeed: What does 85,000 tons really mean? (Have you ever lifted something that heavy?) Plain digits rarely resonate with people – they do not communicate a story and they are often hard to understand. And this can be problematic in business when we present figures. We typically present them to tell a story and to instill action but the sheer nakedness of the digits hides the true meaning. That’s what happened during the presentation of the cruise captain.
CONTEXT AND MEANING
A better approach is to present the numbers and put them into context with something we are all familiar with. It helps people understand. This is especially helpful for larger numbers like the examples above. Let’s take a look:
85,000 tons is about as heavy as the combined weight of 56,667 BMW 5 series sedans.
48,000 horsepowers is the equivalent of 240 BMW 525d limousines pulling in unison
264 meters is as long as 2.6 regular soccer fields
32 meters is about half as wide as a soccer field
Here we go: 2.6 soccer fields long, with a huge stack of cars on top and a few hundred Beamers pulling the thing. Now that puts this into perspective and it is actually quite impressive. My kids understand that and they had a serious look of surprise on their faces.
STEVE JOBS – THE MASTER
One person who has perfected the technique of explaining and making numbers shine is Steve Jobs. He has delivered some classic explanations in recent history:
“1000 songs in your pocket.” ….Jobs is explaining what a 5GB iPod is able to do
“Our market share is greater than BMW or Mercedes in the car industry.” ….Jobs was critized about the low market share number of 5% in the computer industry back in 2003
ENHANCE YOUR NUMBERS
When you present numbers, try to put context around them. Compare them and relate them to something relevant. Pick something that your audience is familiar with. This technique is extremely effective and can really amplify your message. And it is not all that difficult. Best of all: you can use it in many different situations. Whether it is in a business meeting, your next presentation or to simply explain a few things to your kids.
“Remember, data is a representation of real life. It’s not just a bucket of numbers. There are stories in that bucket. There is meaning, truth and beauty.” Nathan Yau
P.S.: Speaking about context. Here is a fine example. We happened to spot the marvelous “A” yacht of Russian billionaire Andrei Melnitschenko. Look at the first photo and then scroll down to look at the second one. The first photo makes it difficult to assess it’s true size. It is hard to believe that this ship is a bit longer than a soccer field. The second photo provides the context of the fishing boat.
How large is this gorgeous yacht? Hard to tell from the picture.The small boat adds the context
There are a bunch of apps for the iPhone and the iPad that I would not want to miss. But there is one that certainly sticks out because it really helps me. I am talking about TripIt.TripIt is a very cool service for all business travelers. Before I found this service I always struggled with filing and arranging all my different travel details. Adding the stuff to my calendar was even worse. My wife Jen hardly ever knew where I was staying. And I can honestly admit that I have driven a bunch of cab drivers crazy when I tried to retrieve hotel addresses on my Blackberry. But one day I heard about TripIt. And wow….I was blown away. It’s not fancy but it does a few very simple but highly effective things:
It consolidates all your trip information. When I receive the confirmation emails for flights, hotels, rental cars and such, I simply forward them to TripIt (my email address is registered with them). TripIt then automatically groups all related travel confirmations into trips and syncs it to the app. That alone is perfect: all travel info in one place instead of multiple confirmation emails.
TripIt consolidates all your tip data in the app
Once the data is in the app you can quickly retrieve all the important infos about your journey. When I check in at the airline kiosk, for example, I use TripIt to retrieve the booking code. Or when I get into a taxi, I use the app to quickly pull up the hotel name and address. No need to search for the confirmation email to pull out papers.
All the infos you need
TripIt also let’s you share information with other travelers and that is pretty cool! Whenever I go on a trip with colleagues we share the stuff and that way we all have our flight infos etc.. No more emailing and exchanging of details. It’s right in the app with your travel data.
The app also allows provides an iCall feed that let’s you sync the trips with your different calendars. All flights, train rides & ship journeys automatically appear in my Lotus Notes and MACBOOK calendar. My wife also receives the updates.
iCal feeds rock
Last but not least, LinkedIn & Facebook have a plugin that allows you to share the travel info with your network. I only use the LinkedIn option and do have to say it’s pretty cool. Over the past two years, I was able to re-connect with a bunch of people that I hadn’t seen in a while. People basically reach out and TripIt shows people who are close by. It’s an optional thing – I like it.
If you travel for business, I highly recommend TripIt. It is easy to use and really simplifies managing your travel stuff. It is a solid work horse and does its job extremely well. That’s why I love this app and that’s why I wanted to share it with you! Let me know if you have other apps that make the life of a business travel easier.
Less than six weeks ago I was lucky to get an invitation to Google+ . While I have not had too much time to play around with it, I do have to admit that I have a serious crush on this tool. Here are some early impressions:
Clean interface: Google+ looks awesome. It is pretty basic but that makes it beautiful. The design allows you to focus on the important stuff – the content.
Circles make sense: Circles allow you to group your followers into different groups (Circles). I have circles for business stuff, photography, friends etc.. You can simply drag and drop people to arrange your circles. Once you have setup the Circles you can then use them to control the flow of your content: a cool new photo ebook should only go out to my photo circle. The latest business analytics story goes out to my business circle. Circles is so much easier to use than lists on Facebook or Twitter. This makes Google+ much better suited for combining business with pleasure than Facebook or Twitter.
Posting stuff: Very simple and easy. Just like Facebook or Twitter. Along with posting stuff, you also determine that Circle that your content should go out to.
Share your content: You determine the Circles!
Slick iPhone app: The app is clean, looks great and works well. A bit cleaner than Facebook’s app.
Excellent traffic: A lot of people are already posting top content. Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Tim O’Reilly, Guy Kawasaki. I prefer following those guys on Google+ over Twitter. The interface makes more sense.
So far so good. But here is the question I am struggling with: How many additional networks do we want to maintain? I am active on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and StumbleUpon. Living and working in Germany also requires me to be on Xing. Arrgh. And now there is Google+. Do I want to give up one or two networks? Personally, I have not yet figured out a good strategy.
Summary: Google+ is a bit of a perfect mix between Twitter and Facebook: Much more versatile than Twitter. Just about as powerful as Facebook. A bit cleaner than Facebook. Circles allow you to use Google+ in a way that is very similar to Twitter. This might make Google+ the best social network out there today. I do have a crush on it! But every relationship needs to grow and there is still lot’s to discover. Let’s see where this one will end up. I highly recommend giving it a try sooner than later.
P.S.: Please let me know if you would like to have an invitation to join Google+. Drop me a note on Twitter via @cpapenfuss or send me a mail (christoph@performance-ideas.com)…..hmmm…you have to use Twitter to get on Google+….First come, first serve.
You might have noticed a few changes on this site: new URL and new layout. Encouraged by a bunch of friends and readers, I finally decided to migrate this blog from wordpress.com to wordpress.org. In other words, Performance Ideas moved from a hosted to a self-hosted model. The tremendous feedback and support from you along with the fun this project has been, led me down this path. When I started this blog in November of 2010, I had no idea how much traffic this site would generate. It was more about capturing a few ideas here and there. Many thanks to all of you for reading the posts and providing comments via this blog, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.
WHAT HAS CHANGED?
Not all that much on the surface. There is a new layout that will hopefully make it easier and more fun for you to follow the blog. Also, I am implementing better social media integration, analytics etc to enhance the overall experience. The URL is different as well. It is and easier to remember (nine characters less):
In case you have subscribed via email, you will have to sign-up again (sorry!!!). The old site will re-direct to the new site for a while.
WHY?
Running a blog in a hosted environment like wordpress.com or Blogger is really easy. But after a while, I found that the hosted environment is very restrictive. The possibilities to customize the blog are limited. You are pretty much dependent on the platform that you choose.
More options on the self-hosted blog
Think about the Facebook Like button: wordpress.com only added that feature about 2 months ago. The same is true for statistics: the ability to understand what works and why is also limited. If you are thinking about starting a serious blog, I would therefore recommend to consider a self-hosted model sooner than later. However, I do have to say that I was very happy with wordpress.com.
LESSONS LEARNED
The blog migration from wordpress.com to wordpress.org was a lot easier than I expected. It actually did not take that long. If it wasn’t for a few issues I had with my host, I could have completed the migration within an hour. Yes, it is that easy. But the devil is always in the details. And that’s where I spent a few hours fine-tuning the new site. Here are some of the lessons learned:
Get some help: My good friends @lermann and @wiemann have a lot of experience with WordPress.org, web development and blogging. It was extremely helpful to receive their input before and during the migration. It’s all about the team!
Effort: Establishing the blog in a self-hosted environment requires a lot more effort than I had anticipated. You will have to research and install a bunch of plug-ins to do ‘simple things’ like commentaries, ratings etc.. Getting the basics back up and running did take some time. Also, the on-going maintenance will require some effort here and there. But that’s part of the fun.
Pay: A self-hosted blog costs money: hosting space, templates, plug-ins, books etc.. I am also paying to re-route my old blog to the new one. The Euros quickly added up. You might want to anticipate this before jumping ship.
Migration tools: WordPress has an amazing export & import feature. All posts & comments were imported flawlessly. That process took less than 20 minutes to complete. I would highly recommend sticking to that.
Try: There are so many great WordPress templates. I spend some time customizing one that I initially liked. Later I found some other ones that looked much better. I therefore highly recommend downloading and trying a few before actually starting to put in the effort to customize everything.
Read: There are some great sites and ebooks that provide a ton of input. I highly recommend researching a few and scanning through these before actually starting the project. I especially found the migration pdf on www.blog-well.com helpful. The eBook ‘The WordPress Power Guide’ is a quick but effective read. If you are interested, I have some additional recommendations.
COMING UP
The initial blog migration is done. It’s been fun! But it’s not 100% done, yet. You can therefore expect additional changes in the next few months.
Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback. When I get a chance, I will put a short white paper together that describes the entire migration process. Many thanks for your amazing support!
Demos are a critical part of every business analytics implementation. There are frequent occasions during any project where we have to show present tools & processes: At the beginning, we might show the new software to our users to educate them. Later on we might want to review a prototype and we need to solicit productive feedback based on the demo. Training sessions require us to teach the new process and tool while also obtaining buy-in from the business. Overall, I would argue that being able to deliver a great demo is a critical skill for every business analytics professional.
This past month, I did something I haven’t done in a long time: I did not travel. Being home also opened up the opportunity to hang out in some of the famous beergardens in Munich. In case you haven’t been to a beergarden – it’s kind of like a social network: You connect with friends and strangers, you share, you chat, you collect and you sometimes get spammed (mostly by drunk people). One of those evenings I met a few people from a former job. The entire group basically consisted of pretty successful guys in their mid 30s and 40s. One of them raised the topic of social networking.
The other day, I made a bold statement about presentations: many of them suck and they especially suck when it comes to presenting data. Real meaning is often hidden in complex and dense charts. The problem is sometimes amplified by poor communication skills.
PRESENTATIONS ARE DIFFERENT
There is a fundamental difference between sitting in your office analyzing data and sitting in a meeting listening to a presentation. The second setting requires a lot of focus. Listening can be really hard at times and it is easy to loose track when we drop our attention for a few seconds. And there is no rewind button. Every time a new slide comes up our attention shifts to that slide. Our brain tries to make sense of it. Following the speaker during that brief moment is tough. The more complex a slide the longer this moment lasts and the higher the probability that the audience gets lost. To ensure that our messages are understood, we have to be thoughtful about how we present our data. Here are a few ideas that you can use to make your data sing:
1. VISUALIZE
One of the basic things I recommend is to utilize charts for presentation slides whenever we can. Reviewing raw data in a presentation setting is extremely difficult. We should not have to stare at a projector screen to make sense of data. It takes away too much focus.
Sure, there might be cases when people need to see that raw data but we can always share printed documents as backup materials if necessary. Make it simple for your listeners and visualize the data. Look at the two contrasting examples below: it takes a while to consume the table, but the line chart immediately makes sense. Even on first sight.
The table above is inefficient. The chart works much better with presentation slides
2. CHART TYPES
Make sure to carefully select your charts, though. Not every visualization lends itself to delivering a crisp message. Once again, the things that may work for us at our desk do not necessarily have to work when we follow a presentation. The rule of thumb is to choose the chart that can most easily be understood. That might sometimes require us to drop some information. Once again: we can always supplement our slide show with backup materials. If you have difficulties selecting the right type, take a look at some advice on this site.
What happened to our revenue? This is too busy & difficult for a slideRevenue decreased in a dramatic way. Although it is extremely colorful, this chart is a lot easier to understand.
3. SIMPLIFY
But even charts can either be too complex or we load them up with too much noise: 3D, logos, gridlines, pictures and unwise choice of colors. As a result, viewers and listeners have a hard time understanding. Presentation guru and author Garr Reynolds calls for a maximization of the signal to noise ratio: eleminate everything that could stand in the way (noise) of delivering our message (signal). Take a look at the example below. There is too much going on and our eyes tend to jump around.
Too much noise
Let’s reduce the noise and focus on the just the signal (below). Isn’t this much better?
Same date, less noise: much better!
4. MAKE IT EASY
We should eliminate everything that stands in the way of being understood by the audience. In other words, we should make it as easy as possible for them to quickly catch the important items. We can do this by amplifying the signal. Take a look at the slide above: the headline features the key message. Also, note how the 2009 bar in the prior chart immediately pops out: This must be the year our CEO left! I can see it immediately. A simple but effective trick.
5. CREATE FOCUS
Too many slides are way too busy and people easily loose attention. My basic rule is that we should only deliver one message per slide. Don’t try to cram everything into a single slide. Remember: slides are cheap! Nobody is forcing you to deliver your message in less than ten slides. It’s up to you to decide. Allow the audience to absorb the information and then move on with your story. A simple and single message on each slide ensures that the attention is quickly refocused on you – the presenter.
There is a lot going on here. But what is this all about?
The slide above is way too busy. We jump around and try to figure things out. But let’s apply the rules and also create focus on a single message that we will spread across two slides:
Slide 1: Aha! Region 2 is in a difficult situation….Slide 2: ..only two solid customers (A & B)…the story is obvious now.
NEXT STEPS
Try to incorporate these tips into your next presentation. They will make a big difference. And it does not have to be complicated. Applying these things will help you make meetings more effective. And by doing that you can make a big contribution towards making sure that the investment in Business Analytics does not go down the drain when we put our information on slides. We owe it to ourselves and to our colleagues.
Let me be blunt and honest: Too many presentations and their accompanying slide decks absolutely suck. And they especially suck when it comes to displaying and discussing data. Over the past few years, I have sat through days- worth of boring and utterly useless presentations. Such a waste! And there was so much potential: great data points and valuable information. But all this was well hidden behind complex and confusing charts. And believe it or not: that is a problem for business analytics.
THE PRESENTATION PARADOX
We spend so much time and money on implementing business analytics software. We create so many awesome reports and dashboards. There is so much potential. But way too many people take this valuable information and literally destroy it by using the trusted information to create useless and complex slides. Those slides are then presented in meetings where we try to sell ideas and we where try to make collective decisions. But due to the convoluted slides (often coupled with poor communication skills) most messages fall flat on their face. I am tempted to say that the ‘last mile’ of business analytics is broken in these cases. It’s about time to fix that.
A CRITICAL SKILL
Dense & confusing – A typical slide?
Famous statistician and popular data guru Hans Rosling famously discussed this issue and compared the presentation of data to playing music: “…few people will appreciate the music if I just show them the notes. Most of us need to listen to the music to understand how beautiful it is. But often that’s how we present statistics: we just show the notes, we don’t play the music.” It is not enough to create a sophistcated data warehouse and some shiny reports. No, we need to make the data sing when we present it to other people an especially larger audiences. Developing solid presentation skills should therefore be high up on the priority list for anybody who works in the area of business analytics.
COMMUNICATION
There is a big difference between presenting insights to an audience (meetings, events, etc.) and analyzing data at our desks. Following a presentation requires a different level of energy and focus: it is a lot harder to follow in many cases. Our brain tries to juggle processing the information on the slides while listening to the speaker. We therefore need to make it easy for our audiences to receive the messages that we have found and prepared. The reports and charts that work at our desks do not necessarily work in a meeting room. We have to think differently. And that’s the disconnect we often see and that Hans Rosling aludes to: we do not think differently and simply show confusing details when we should be showing a clear story. We are short-selling our efforts and the impact of our insights in effect.
But there is good news. Learning how to present and how to tell an inspiring story using data in a presentation does not have to be complicated. In a few days from now I will share some tips & tricks that you can put to immediate use. Start thinking about those presentations! As always, I am curious to find out what your experiences with this are.
About a year ago I discovered a true treasure: Blogs. No, I didn’t find out about them a year ago. Just like everybody else, I had been reading some of them here and there. Sure, I had a few bookmarks on my work & personal laptop. But I never really got into the habit of actively leveraging the awesome, inspiring and educational content many blogs offer us today. I never systematically participated in highly valuable discussions around certain posts that cover topics that are important to my job and personal life. And that is really too bad. Many of my friends and colleagues are running into the same issues. But the iPad and some awesome apps changed that. Here are some ideas for you to get started with enjoying the valuable content.
“The more we can lower or even eliminate the activation energy for our desired actions, the more we enhance our ability to jump-start positive change.” Shawn Achor
The biggest hurdle for me to really enjoy blogs was the process of sourcing the content. Bookmarks here and there didn’t do it for me. I tried loading a few RSS Feeds into my mail program but that didn’t work either. Google Reader did a somewhat decent job for a while but I do not usually enjoy reading on my laptop. Plus, I spend so much time on the road. But the iPad started offering some amazing Blog Readers. These apps allow you to easily subscribe to your favorite blogs and to take the content with you. Even offline. The apps basically automate the sourcing process. Suddenly I had access to valuable blog content even while sitting on an airplane. And that is what did it for me. Today, I read a ton of blogs on a daily basis. What apps are there? Well, I use three different ones. And I am not quite sure yet, which app is my favorite.
EARLY EDITION
The Early Edition looks and handles like a regular newspaper. You can literally sit down every morning with your coffee and read your personal blog and newsfeed paper. New blog posts and news are easily identified. Navigation is intuitive. The layout is very simple but effective from my point of view. All synchronized content is available offline (except for photos and graphics). The app is pretty fast overall. However, subscribing to new blogs is a bit tedious: You have to know the feed address and copy it into the app. This app currently costs USD 4.99 making it one of the more expensive readers.
PULSE
Pulse is one of the most popular readers (it’s currently free!) But I am still warming up to it. The interface looks sophisticated but it is a bit too loud for my taste. There is a lot going on which impacts the reading experience. On the other hand, subscribing to new blogs and newsfeeds is super easy: there is a catalogue and you can search for specific blogs. The original setup process is therefore a lot easier than with the Early Edition. You can also add Facebook updates to the reader. Content is available offline but without pictures and graphics.
BLOGSHELF
Blogshelf is an app that I just recently added. I was a bit frustrated with the fact that Early Edition and Pulse do not synchronize photos and graphics for offline use. Blogshelf fixes that issue and even allows you to save certain pictures to your photo collection. The app has a clean interface that looks and feels like iBooks. Searching for new blogs and other feeds is extremely easy and pleasant. It took me under five minutes to get the app up and running with my content. But organizing blogs is abysmal. The other two readers are much better at that. Identifying new blog posts requires you to scan through your entire bookshelf and to look for little orange triangles on the different subscriptions.
GET STARTED
If you own an iPad or a smartphone, take a look at these iPad Blog Readers. My personal favorite is still Early Paper but I am slowly migrating towards Blogshelf because of the ability to view the entire post (with graphics) in offline mode. All apps have definitely made a huge difference for me. There are some excellent blogs out there and it would be a shame to miss engaging with the content and/ or the authors. These apps lower the hurdle towards actively reading and following the blogs. And of course: Make sure to subscribe to this blog! 😉 Let me know if you have other iPad Blog Readers and experiences to share.
UPDATE – September 2012
Things have changed since the original post. Blogshelf is no longer available in the app store. It still works on iOS 6, although it does crash often. The Early Edition has received a major make-over and looks better than ever. You can also export all your feeds and import them easily to Google Reader. This app is by far my favorite. Pulse has improved dramatically as well. However, it only allows 60 feeds. I do follow a ton of blogs and this is not enough for my only personal taste.
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