I help accountants and auditors turn insights into impact by improving their business writing.
Writers get better by practising their writing AND from reading the work of other writers. You can do the same. Read finance reports and documents from inside and outside your organisation with a sense of curiosity. If you read something that seems to be very effective, ask yourself how does it differs from what you would write? Is the use of language or structure different? Or is the layout of the words and figures done in a way that is especially clear?
My philosophy in 12 words.
Tell them what they need to know rather than what you want to say.
We’ve all been in the audience of a terrible presenter. They’re smart, they’re a professional, they have data, they have PowerPoint slides behind them. But they have no idea what a good presentation is let alone how to deliver one. Don’t let this be you. Here are five reasons you might want to improve your presentation skills. 1️⃣ You’re not confident about facing an audience 2️⃣ You’re confident but your audience is not listening
You can remove the negative tone of your writing by using ‘and’ instead of ‘but’. When you write a sentence that uses ‘but’ to join its clauses try changing the ‘but’ to ‘and’ (or another conjunction). It’ll sound more positive. We all know when someone says, “Yes, but …,” they are disagreeing with us. When we get feedback from someone that follows the “[comment 1] but [comment 2]” we know the ‘but’ is the warning sign.
Often the best way for numerical information to be communicated in a document or a presentation is in a chart. I’ve written before about the need to declutter tables so that the reader/audience can easily see what is important. The same principle of removing the clutter applies to your charts. Download my short guide to learn four steps to make your charts stand out.
How to format a chart TIP: Remove the clutter from your charts. If you want your reader to get your message you need to make your message clear. Don’t just copy and paste a chart from Excel into a Word document or presentation. You need to format it first. Here’s how. ========== I’m Gary Bandy. I help finance professionals to have more impact by improving their writing and presentation skills.
People spend average of 26 seconds reading a piece of content. That means you’ve got about 120 words to get your message across and/or make someone decide to read more. This applies to emails, memos, reports, slack messages, everything you write at work. It’s demoralising that despite the effort you put into a major report the reader will skim it. Most of your words won’t be read. Embrace that.
Everyday I get emails from Axios summarising news stories. The stories are mostly American and of little direct importance to me but I don’t mind. I like the newsletter as much for its craft as its content.
Having written a post about the seven deadly sins of making a finance presentation, it is natural (predictable) that I would write a companion post about the seven virtues.
Using the standard list of the seven deadly sins as a guide, here are seven things to avoid when giving a finance presentation.