ANSWER FIRST

DRAFT 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 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 recommendatio

n and logic, making

tangential conversations

less likely

Provides structure, which

makes it all easier to grasp

quickly

DRAFT 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)

-Situation Complication

Question

Answer

Assertion 1 Assertion 2 Assertion 3

Summary

Next Steps

DRAFT 5

Rules of EngagementPR

EPA

RATIO

N 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

PR

ES

EN

TATIO

N 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

PARTIC

IPA

NT

APPR

OA

CH 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.