Editor’s note: Adam Gross is senior analyst at information and insights firm Nielsen, Reston, Va. and blogger at otherspecify.com. The views expressed reflect the views of the author and not necessarily those of Nielsen.
Listen. I know what it's like to get a 300-page set of cross tabs with the task of distilling everything into a short PowerPoint report.
The default reaction is to dump as much data as you can into the slides. You don't want to miss a finding after all; throw it all in there.
Of course, we all know that the corporate research world is rife with PowerPoint reports that are too long. A 20-minute questionnaire results in a 100-slide deck; then all of a sudden, the interesting points are buried somewhere in those 100 slides and neither you nor the C-suite (or client) knows what to make of the data.
Typical responses as to why reports end up like this include:
- That's how it's always been done.
- That's what the client wanted.
- All the questions were interesting.
- The client didn't give us enough direction.
With the exception of maybe the last answer, all of these excuses boil down to one thing: fear.
It's scary to write a report. It's scary to look at millions of data points and pull out the four or five that you think will be interesting. By making a subjective judgement as to what is interesting or not means that you are putting yourself out there to be judged … and that’s a little scary.
You can decide to play it safe, and just turn the data tables into charts and graphs, but by doing that, you've relegated yourself into a position that you probably will complain about later. "I feel like all I do is dump the data onto the slides; and I do no analysis," you might say.
I implore you to catch yourself the next time you say that and ask, “How much am I doing this because I'm afraid of putting myself out there?”
Remember, as an analyst, you're hired to analyze. That means rolling up your sleeves and deciding what data are useful and what data are not. People may not agree with you, but if you've done hard work and understand why the research was done, then you should have no problem defending your work.
Yes, I think you should learn better data visualization techniques. Yes, I think you should work to be a better writer. Yes, I think you take whatever tactical steps you think will be helpful in making you a better report writer. But you also need to acknowledge that writing a concise report also means taking a risk.